A folded, empty wheelchair lay in a sea of debris. It is an image that has haunted Viola for months.
Davide Frattini, writing in Corriere della Sera on July 13, reported what happened: "Two drones dropped warning shots before dawn, but the sounds did not wake them. Even if they had heard that double blast on the roof, it would have been nearly impossible to escape. The center held thirteen patients; most were visiting relatives for the weekend, celebrating Ramadan in their own way." The disability care center in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, founded in 1994 by Jamala Alaywa, was among the first targets struck by the Israeli military that July. Three children living in the center were killed.
Five minutes to escape. A short time for anyone—Viola thinks—but utterly worthless for someone who cannot see, cannot hear, cannot process the warnings they receive, cannot move. For someone with a disability, in other words. The destruction of one of the few care centers in Gaza dedicated to people with disabilities was a devastating loss.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has ancient roots of bewildering complexity. This is not a place to take sides. It is only to note that war scatters victims in its wake—and some victims are more victimized than others.
Every armed conflict, beyond the body count, manufactures disability on an industrial scale: amputations, paraplegia, blindness, deafness, compound fractures, disabling wounds, mental trauma. A grim catalog, well known to psychologists and rehabilitation centers—many of them Italian—that receive the wounded from distant lands. It is the least visible face of global violence.
Did Israel hesitate less in attacking a disability center because of the "kind" of people it served? Did Palestinian armed groups feel fewer qualms hiding behind lives deemed "less valuable"?
We will never know. What remains is the sorrow of that wheelchair in the rubble. Silent, powerless, and useless. And all the questions its presence raises.
Giulia Galeotti. 2014