It was dusk, the parents were not at home and Manal was watching her younger brothers. It was a canvas shelter in which they have been living since the destruction of their third house. Manal saw the soldiers approaching, and maybe she got scared. Maybe she thought they were coming to destroy again, maybe they brought back memories. The IDF spokesman says she started throwing stones at them - perhaps one of the rocks broke the jeep's mirror.
Palestinian neighbors say nothing of the sort happened.
In an interview with her this past weekend in the newspaper Al-Ayyam, Manal said a soldier got out of the jeep and started beating her with no provocation. By evening she was rushed to the hospital in Hebron and has been hospitalized since. No less cruel is the story of the old man. In the winter of his days, he wanted to bequeath an apartment to another one of his eight children. He added a single story to his house in Silwan.