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A Dubai-based Palestinian artist has spoken of his grief after being told by relatives in Gaza that his father, a 70-year-old heart patient, was detained by Israeli forces and is being tortured in detention.
Hazem Harb said the news of his father, Riad Harb, was relayed to his uncle's wife by a teenager who had also been held by Israeli troops.
Hazem's family has not heard from his father since he was taken from his home in Al Rimal district of Gaza city on February 2.
“He said Riad was very, very tired,” the aunt, Ghadeer Harb, tells Hazem in a recording of their phone conversation played to The National.
“At some point he said he thought Riad had died. They hit him on the head,” she adds.
Ms Harb met the 17-year-old former detainee at Al Nasser hospital, in the south of Gaza.
“I don't understand why they would take him,” Hazem told The National.
“He is weak, needs constant care and would collapse without regular intake of salt. He can barely walk.”
The Israeli army did not respond to The National’s request for comment on the elderly Mr Harb's whereabouts, or why he was detained.
Hazem said his father was detained after Israeli troops stormed the building he was living in with other family members.
The artist's sister, Huda, witnessed the assault by soldiers, but was not told where he was taken.
Hazem had been issuing pleas on social media for news of his father, who he last saw in September when he travelled to Gaza to be with him during a heart operation.
He said his sister was visiting with her family to check on their father when soldiers entered the building and began firing shots.
One of the bullets ricocheted and wounded their father.
“They placed explosives on the building walls,” Hazem said, recounting what his sister told him in a phone call soon after the incident.
The soldiers began entering flats in the building and ordered all residents outside, before separating the women from the men.
The males, including Hazem's father, brother, brother-in-law and nephews, were all stripped and arrested, he said.
Some were later released, including one of Hazem's six family members who were detained.
He said his nephew Mohammad, 16, had become “effectively a mute” because of trauma.
Hazem said his agony over his family's ordeal, amid Israel's war in Gaza that has claimed about 28,000 lives in a little over four months, has only been compounded by seeing one of his three sisters and a niece speaking about their plight in videos posted on news outlets.
In one video Huda, who fled to the southern city of Rafah, speaks to Al Jazeera about being targeted by Israeli strikes. Her daughter spoke to The National about the same ordeal.
Hazem described the difference between what he saw during his last visit to Gaza and his family's situation today as “surreal”.
At the time his sister, who now lives in a tent among more than a million displaced Gazans in Rafah, had cooked the famous Palestinian dish maqluba for him in a beautiful home on Gaza city's corniche, he said.
The artist said he enjoyed living there, even though most of his time was spent at the city's main Al Shifa hospital, now destroyed by the war, while his father underwent open-heart surgery.
“I took 11,000 photos,” he said.
“It was almost as if I was saying goodbye.”
The%20specs
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- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Fixtures and results:
Wed, Aug 29:
- Malaysia bt Hong Kong by 3 wickets
- Oman bt Nepal by 7 wickets
- UAE bt Singapore by 215 runs
Thu, Aug 30: UAE v Nepal; Hong Kong v Singapore; Malaysia v Oman
Sat, Sep 1: UAE v Hong Kong; Oman v Singapore; Malaysia v Nepal
Sun, Sep 2: Hong Kong v Oman; Malaysia v UAE; Nepal v Singapore
Tue, Sep 4: Malaysia v Singapore; UAE v Oman; Nepal v Hong Kong
Thu, Sep 6: Final
TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa
Rating: 4.5/5
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Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Scotland v Ireland:
Scotland (15-1): Stuart Hogg; Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Sam Johnson, Sean Maitland; Finn Russell, Greig Laidlaw (capt); Josh Strauss, James Ritchie, Ryan Wilson; Jonny Gray, Grant Gilchrist; Simon Berghan, Stuart McInally, Allan Dell
Replacements: Fraser Brown, Jamie Bhatti, D'arcy Rae, Ben Toolis, Rob Harley, Ali Price, Pete Horne, Blair Kinghorn
Coach: Gregor Townsend (SCO)
Ireland (15-1): Rob Kearney; Keith Earls, Chris Farrell, Bundee Aki, Jacob Stockdale; Jonathan Sexton, Conor Murray; Jack Conan, Sean O'Brien, Peter O'Mahony; James Ryan, Quinn Roux; Tadhg Furlong, Rory Best (capt), Cian Healy
Replacements: Sean Cronin, Dave Kilcoyne, Andrew Porter, Ultan Dillane, Josh van der Flier, John Cooney, Joey Carbery, Jordan Larmour
Coach: Joe Schmidt (NZL)
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
