Yazan Abu Jamaa

Bedouin family’s only son slain by rocket. Killed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ar'ara on October 7.

Yazan Zakaria Abu Jamaa, 5, was killed on October 7 when a rocket fired from Gaza struck his home in the southern Bedouin town of Ar’ara.

He is survived by his parents and three sisters.

A neighbor, Alaa Abu Jamaa, told AFP that Yazan, “was standing at the door of his house near a car. When the rocket exploded, the car was blown out of place and burned with a number of other cars… Yazan was killed. He was blown into parts.”

Yazan’s father Zakaria, a driver, recalled with tears that he “was in Eilat on Saturday morning when I learned of my son’s death. I came back in the midst of the exchange of bombing between Hamas and Israel and saw my son in the hospital.”

His voice broke and he could not continue.

The family noted that their town lacks sirens and rocket shelters, and they believe that his life would have been saved otherwise.

A week after his death, Zakaria told Ynet, “I’m broken, I can’t talk about this now, I just can’t… I leave my house just to go to the cemetery. The rest of the time I sit on my balcony and I smoke and drink coffee.”

In January he told Makan, the Arabic-language public TV station, that “every night I wake up and I see that the pain in my heart just grows and grows.

“Where is the Iron Dome? Why didn’t it work? Why didn’t it shoot down the rocket?” Zakaria asked.