Death of a student stirs revolt in Gaza

[Behind the Aegis]

ON the night before she was killed in crossfire as she walked home from university, Hibba Msebeh, a 21-year-old student, sat up late with her family, passionately condemning the Palestinian factions whose street battles last week sent Gaza drifting towards civil war.

Ifaf Msebeh, her mother, said that Hibba, who had been due to marry next summer, clapped her hands in glee when her grandmother denounced the gunmen on both sides for thinking only of their petty interests while Gaza starved.

“My daughter said, ‘Now grandmother is a spokeswoman for the Palestinian people’,” Msebeh, 46, recalled last week, sitting in mourning, wrapped against the winter cold in a black hijab and houndstooth black-and-white wool coat. “She was so happy.”

Hibba, the only girl among seven brothers, had wanted to study politics at university but was dissuaded. “Study something useful,” insisted Mohamed Msebeh, her 51-year-old father. She enrolled to read economics but never lost her interest in politics. Now her father, a dentist, sits inconsolable in a black jacket and trousers, his arms wrapped tightly around his upper chest.

more...

[pelsar]

1. i only wish...

intifada I, started with a car accident.....and the palestenains took to the streets en mass.....if they could do a repeat of that, gaza would have a chance. I dont really see a realistic other option for them.....