RAMALLAH, April 5 (Xinhua) -- How large can the wreckage be of an intercepted missile falling from the sky?
Some pieces are barely the size of a palm. Hold one in the hand, and it could pass for an ordinary, jagged scrap of metal. It's almost impossible to imagine that this unassuming shard, so small and inert-looking, could carry the power to inflict deadly harm.
In the West Bank, a tiny fragment once severed power lines in a city center, causing outages and sending repair crews scrambling between heavy rains. Another landed in a parking lot, where a civil defense team had to bring in heavy machinery to lift it from a tree as tall as five stories.
Some wreckage can be much larger, four or five times the size of an adult, and thus more dangerous. At times, it landed just dozens of meters from homes or farms, still smoking as it fell, like an unexploded missile.
"Wherever you go, there is great fear. If the missile (wreckage) had fallen on the house, it would have killed 4 to 5 members of the family," Ahmed Daoud, a villager living in Salfit, northern West Bank, told Xinhua.
Situated between Iran and Israel, the West Bank has found itself caught in the crossfire of the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict, suffering heavy damage.
Fragments from missiles intercepted by Israel frequently fall near Palestinian neighborhoods across the West Bank. Since the regional escalation on Feb. 28, the Palestinian Civil Defense documented at least 396 incidents of falling missile fragments as of March 31.
Daoud Mohammad Darwish was among the victims of these fragments. In mid-March, one struck his house in Salfit, piercing all four floors from roof to basement and sparking a fire. On every floor, it left a massive hole roughly the span of an adult's outstretched arms.
A loud explosion was heard while he was praying in a nearby mosque that night, Darwish told Xinhua.
"When I finished (praying), I found someone waiting for me who told me a missile (wreckage) had landed on my house," he recalled. "I went home and found my wife, everyone, and even the Civil Defense had arrived."
Standing beside the massive hole in his destroyed kitchen, Darwish estimated the total repair cost at 100,000 shekels (about 32,000 U.S. dollars). "I pray that there will be peace," he said.
In a fatal incident in mid-March, falling debris struck a hair salon in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, killing four women and injuring several others.
These episodes with falling debris have already proven destructive, yet the deadly threats Palestinians face go far beyond that.
In late March, missile debris landed in Salfit, gouging a deep crater into an olive grove on a hillside. As Xinhua reporters joined local residents in measuring the damage, panic suddenly swept through the Palestinian onlookers. Shouts rang out: strangers are coming! Some feared an attack by Israeli settlers.
Dozens of onlookers quickly gathered, their faces etched with tension, some raising sticks and gesturing downhill in an attempt to ward off the strangers. Moments later, however, the alarm was lifted. The people approaching were not Israeli settlers but a group of foreign journalists.
Palestinian villagers had reason to be wary, though. Israeli settlers in nearby communities often use force against Palestinians harvesting olives.
Even amid the falling missile fragments from the sky, the dangers Palestinians face on the ground continue unabated.
In March, over 200 settler attacks have resulted in casualties or property damage across more than 100 communities in the West Bank, a recent UN report showed, noting that six Palestinians were killed by settlers, the second-highest monthly toll since 2005.
In one of the attacks in late March, Israeli settlers set fire to homes and vehicles at night in a Nablus village, in the northern West Bank.
Samer Omar Khader, a villager, recalled to Xinhua that when the attack started, he rushed to lock the door from the inside to protect his family. Settlers set fire to the car and hurled flammable materials into the house. Khader and his children fled to the roof, trapped by flames and thick smoke, until fellow villagers arrived to help.
"They (settlers) were trying to open the door on us, but thank God they couldn't," Khader said.
Tragedy can also come from unexpected quarters. In mid-March, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian couple and two of their children, aged five and seven, in Tubas, in the northern West Bank.
When the incident happened, Israeli military and Border Police forces were in the area to arrest suspects, and "a vehicle accelerated toward the forces, which felt endangered and opened fire," Israeli police later responded.
"We were on our way home. We didn't know there were special forces," Khaled Ali Bani-Odeh, a surviving son who was also in the car when Israeli forces opened fire, said at the funeral for his family.
"My father was killed ... My mother screamed loudly, and then she was killed, and all my brothers were killed at once," the 11-year-old kid said.
As the procession carried the bodies to the cemetery, Khaled leaned in, speaking quietly to his father, mother, and brothers, tears streaming down his face. No one knew what he said. What is known for sure is that there is one more Palestinian orphan on this land. ■
