RAMALLAH // In the top drawer of his desk, Richard Zananiri has an unopened envelope. Inside is a certificate made out to one of his students, Nadeem Nawara. It is a commendation that his 17-year-old student will never receive.
Nadeem was killed outside Ofer Prison on May 15, alongside another Palestinian, Mahmoud Salameh, 16, during a protest on the 66th anniversary of Nakba, when millions of Arabs were displaced following the establishment of the Israeli state. Nadeem's friend, Mohammed Aziz, was also shot but survived.
Nadeem and Mahmoud were both killed with what Palestinian medics claim were live rounds but the Israeli authorities maintain were rubber bullets. On May 28, an Israeli soldier was suspended for firing the lethal shots, after CCTV videos and pictures refuted claims by Israel that a Palestinian sniper was to blame.
All that appears academic walking around the St George’s Greek Orthodox School in a leafy suburb of Ramallah and hearing Mr Zananiri talk of a student who had shown little interest in politics before his death. The smart building is a far cry from the shabby refugee camps of Kalandia and Al Am’ari, set up to take in thousands of refugees displaced following the Nakba. It is a middle-class school in a wealthy neighbourhood.
“Nadeem was always talking about something: music, football and girls. He was like Don Juan — all the girls loved him. He was always smiling. I didn’t notice that he was a person who wanted to protest,” says Mr Zananiri, who was Nadeem’s head teacher for just over a year since the teenager joined the school in 2013.
Nakba is always a big event in the West Bank, and this year a huge march was organised in Ramallah. Mr Zananiri, however, did not want his pupils to take part as — in his experience — children in previous years just used the holiday as day off rather than to commemorate the Nakba.
Instead, he had organised a party, and Nadeem had been one of dozens of pupils to spend the previous day getting the building ready, even climbing on to the roof to put up a canopy to shade the playground from the sun. It was for his help that day that Nadim was to receive the certificate that still sits in his teacher’s desk.
At 11.45am on May 15, Mr Zananiri took a walk around the halls and saw Nadeem chatting with his history teacher. He had heard that some of the students were thinking about going to Ofer, but did not think that Nadeem would be one of them.
That was the last time he would see him alive.
At the Nawara family home a few streets away, Siam Nawara sits in an armchair, dark rings around his eyes. He has become accustomed to journalists asking him about his son’s death, but that does not make recalling it any easier. Behind him, a huge photo printed on canvas of Nadeem dressed in his trademark backwards baseball cap and a kaffiyeh — taken the day he was killed — rests on the mantelpiece.
“I did not expect my son to participate in a protest. That was not the Nadeem that I knew,” he says.
In fact, father and son had argued about the protest that very morning. Nadeem’s brother and sister had told Mr Nawara that their brother intended to go to Ofer with his friends. Before he left for school, Mr Nawara had pleaded with him not to go. He had called him again at 1.15pm, and again asked him to come home; Nadeem had laughed and said that he would. Within an hour he would be dead.
Photographs and CCTV videos taken that day show Nadeem on the ground, school bag on his back, writhing in pain before he is carried to an ambulance. By the time his father was called at about 2pm and told that Nadeem was injured and taken to hospital his son had died.
Mr Nawara says that one of the saddest aspects of Nadeem’s death was that he was only now coming to know his son, through the videos recorded by his friends. He takes out his mobile phone and plays a video in which Nadeem fights with a friend over a band that they disagree on, and clips of his son slam-dunking on the basketball court. “I never knew he was so active in sports — since his death I have learned so much about him,” he says.
A religious man, it is now for Nadeem’s friends that Mr Nawara prays. He and Nadeem’s younger brother, Daniel, don his baseball caps for a photograph and then the young boy turns and puts his arms around his father’s neck. “I never hugged my sons enough,” Mr Nawara says quietly, and then to Daniel: “You are my eldest son now.”
Mahmoud and Nadeem were not the only boys shot that day.
A third young man, Mohammed Aziz, 15, was also at the protest. Sitting at home in Al Bireh, on the other side of Ramallah, Mohammed recalls the moment he saw the Israeli soldier pull the trigger.
“The protest wasn’t so big when we got there [at about 10.30am], there were only around 70 boys and four soldiers who were shooting rubber bullets and tear gas. When we went to the front, everyone was moving fast and throwing rocks. I was looking directly at a soldier under the vine tree and I wasn’t moving,” Mohammed recalls, sitting next to his father in their detached home.
“Then I heard the sound of the rifle. I thought it was a rubber bullet but then I felt something burning inside me. I started running with some of the other guys and they told me that I had been shot in my back. Some people picked me up and carried me to the ambulance.”
Mohammed does not remember the ride to the hospital. His father, who was at work when he heard about the shooting, remembers seeing his son on a hospital gurney and knowing at once that he would live. But then he saw Nadeem, who had just been brought in with a gunshot wound to the chest.
“When I saw Nadeem, I was seriously worried. I knew that he wouldn’t live and I imagined my son in his place,” Mr Aziz says.
For both Nadeem and Mohammed, this was their first protest. Indeed, Mr Zananiri, the head teacher, has heard from friends of Nadeem that another boy had to show him how to tie his kaffiyeh around his face. Nadeem wanted to be a basketball player and Mohammed, a circus performer — he currently studies at the Palestinian circus school.
Like Mr Nawara, Mohammed’s father had not expected his son to go to the protest at Ofer.
“I am not mad [at Mohammed] because we taught our children to love Palestine and to resist the occupation. But I don’t agree with the way that they do it. It is not a fair fight. The kids with their hands and soldiers with guns,” Mr Aziz says.
Mr Zananiri agrees. “I saw Nadeem’s corpse, and I hope to forget that ... but [the Israelis] have to know that there are hundreds of people who are like Nadeem. If I thought my son was not like that, I would throw him out of the house.”
For Mr Nawara, who has lost a son, such political considerations are a luxury, and Nadeem’s absence hangs over the family home like a shadow.
If there can be anything positive about the snuffing out of a young man’s life, it is the love and support his family has received from neighbours, friends and strangers, Mr Nawara says. Thousands lined the streets for Nadeem’s funeral and no less than 16 journalists have visited him since to learn more about his son.
“The response of the people since Nadeem’s death has been great,” he says. “It gives me a strong push to understand what it means to be a community, a town and a nation. I feel like I belong more and more to my people.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
CHINESE GRAND PRIX STARTING GRID
1st row
Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari)
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)
2nd row
Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes-GP)
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
3rd row
Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing)
Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull Racing)
4th row
Nico Hulkenberg (Renault)
Sergio Perez (Force India)
5th row
Carlos Sainz Jr (Renault)
Romain Grosjean (Haas)
6th row
Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
Esteban Ocon (Force India)
7th row
Fernando Alonso (McLaren)
Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren)
8th row
Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso)
Sergey Sirotkin (Williams)
9th row
Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso)
Lance Stroll (Williams)
10th row
Charles Leclerc (Sauber)
arcus Ericsson (Sauber)
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
How to increase your savings
- Have a plan for your savings.
- Decide on your emergency fund target and once that's achieved, assign your savings to another financial goal such as saving for a house or investing for retirement.
- Decide on a financial goal that is important to you and put your savings to work for you.
- It's important to have a purpose for your savings as it helps to keep you motivated to continue while also reducing the temptation to spend your savings.
- Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
INFO
Everton 0
Arsenal 0
Man of the Match: Djibril Sidibe (Everton)
Things Heard & Seen
Directed by: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton
2/5
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
End of free parking
- paid-for parking will be rolled across Abu Dhabi island on August 18
- drivers will have three working weeks leeway before fines are issued
- areas that are currently free to park - around Sheikh Zayed Bridge, Maqta Bridge, Mussaffah Bridge and the Corniche - will now require a ticket
- villa residents will need a permit to park outside their home. One vehicle is Dh800 and a second is Dh1,200.
- The penalty for failing to pay for a ticket after 10 minutes will be Dh200
- Parking on a patch of sand will incur a fine of Dh300
Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
MATCH INFO
What: 2006 World Cup quarter-final
When: July 1
Where: Gelsenkirchen Stadium, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Result:
England 0 Portugal 0
(Portugal win 3-1 on penalties)
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.
The bio
Studied up to grade 12 in Vatanappally, a village in India’s southern Thrissur district
Was a middle distance state athletics champion in school
Enjoys driving to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah with family
His dream is to continue working as a social worker and help people
Has seven diaries in which he has jotted down notes about his work and money he earned
Keeps the diaries in his car to remember his journey in the Emirates
SPECS
Toyota land Cruiser 2020 5.7L VXR
Engine: 5.7-litre V8
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 362hp
Torque: 530Nm
Price: Dh329,000 (base model 4.0L EXR Dh215,900)
MATCH INFO
Newcastle 2-2 Manchester City
Burnley 0-2 Crystal Palace
Chelsea 0-1 West Ham
Liverpool 2-1 Brighton
Tottenham 3-2 Bournemouth
Southampton v Watford (late)
Contracted list
Ashton Agar, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Tim Paine, Matt Renshaw, Jhye Richardson, Kane Richardson, Billy Stanlake, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, Andrew Tye.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The specs: 2018 Peugeot 5008
Price, base / as tested: Dh99,900 / Dh134,900
Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Power: 165hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque: 240Nm @ 1,400rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 5.8L / 100km
GROUPS
Group Gustavo Kuerten
Novak Djokovic (x1)
Alexander Zverev (x3)
Marin Cilic (x5)
John Isner (x8)
Group Lleyton Hewitt
Roger Federer (x2)
Kevin Anderson (x4)
Dominic Thiem (x6)
Kei Nishikori (x7)
