At times, the flocks are so numerous as to block out the sun. The sheer volume makes life extremely difficult for the Israeli Air Force. Every autumn they return the same way: nightjars and sparrows, owls and gulls, bee-eaters and flamingos, some birds forming “long vees of honking intent”, others riding as “sole travellers skimming low over the grass”, according to Colum McCann. Every spring, 500 million birds representing 400 species migrate north from Africa to Europe. The bird world’s second busiest superhighway charts a course over Israel’s West Bank. And each man lost his daughter to the violence of the other side: the bullet that killed Abir was fired by an Israeli soldier, while the suicide bomber who killed Smadar was Palestinian.© Sarah Lee / eyevineContact eyevine for more information about using this image:T: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709E: In their youth, each man played his part in the violence: Bassam served seven years in jail for throwing a hand-grenade at a group of Israelis Rami was a soldier in the Israeli army. So the two fathers have much in common, but Bassam is Palestinian and Rami is Jewish. Abir was shot in the head with a plastic bullet outside her school on the West Bank and Smadar was killed in a suicide bombing when she was shopping with her friends on a busy street. The two families live in Jerusalem and their daughters died in the conflict there.
Bassam's daughter Abir was 10 when she died Rami's daughter Smadar was 14. Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan found out in the hardest way possible how precious life is, when their lives were torn apart by the deaths of their children.
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