Gideon Levy :To Understand What 'To Neutralize' Means, Look at This Broken Palestinian Man
A
young Palestinian participates in a tumultuous demonstration, Israeli
undercover men knock him to the ground and shoot him point-blank. The
result: Mohammed…
www.haaretz.com
If you want to see what things look like from there – meaning, not in Israel – visit the cafeteria at the Beit Jala rehabilitation hospital, 15 minutes from Jerusalem. Managed by a charity organization, this Palestinian counterpart to Israel’s Beit Loewenstein is considered the West Bank’s best rehab center. Its patients include some of the victims of the events of recent weeks. They were “neutralized” by Israeli security forces but were lucky: They weren’t killed and weren’t arrested (or they were detained and then released); they were “only” wounded seriously and crippled, temporarily or for the rest of their life.
The cafeteria probably
reflects the atmosphere in the territories better than any opinion
survey. It is a spacious hall with three large TV screens attached to
the walls, all displaying images of violence that Israelis don’t see and
don’t want to see, but which Palestinians watch nonstop. The screens
depict a parallel universe, one of turbulent demonstrations and brutal
suppression; of funerals and wailing ambulances, all broadcast live and
uninterrupted. Columns of smoke, tear gas, shooting, people wounded and
killed – courtesy of Palestine Today, a television station that
broadcasts from the field.
Only a very small fraction of
the events broadcast here in an unedited format reach Israeli stations,
which are engaged almost exclusively with the stabbing and
vehicle-ramming attacks. Indeed, the parallel reality that pervades this
cafeteria is unknown in Israel, which is occupied only with its own
victims. Here, though, it flickers on the giant screens or is embodied
in the wheelchairs, the stretchers and the beds occasionally wheeled in,
carrying young people who will never walk again, or perhaps never talk
again. Here, too, patients’ families spend their days staring at the
violent scenes on the screens as their loved ones struggle to recover
their physical abilities. And here their consciousness is forged, too:
It’s hard to remain indifferent after a visit to this place.
Mohammed
Ziada is about to be brought in to the cafeteria; we are waiting for
him while he undergoes physiotherapy. With us is his father, Othman, who
stays here day and night. For the past month, Mohammed has been half a
human being, or should we say a whole human being with half a
functioning head. He’s 19, from the village of Bitilu, near Ramallah.
Last year he tried to enroll
in Bir Zeit University, but his grades were too low. His father decided
to establish an electrical-appliances store for him in the village,
where he could earn a living. But Ziada continued to contemplate the
university; he wanted to study law. Othman talks about this as the
television shows yet another stormy demonstration in Hebron, with thick
black smoke rising in the air and soldiers trying to take control of the
situation by force.
It was a similar demonstration
that sealed Ziada’s fate. On that black day, October 7, Mohammed went
to buy items to stock his still-unopened store, his father explains.
That’s when he was caught up in the tempestuous demonstration staged by –
of all people – Bir Zeit students, opposite the Beit El settlement and
the adjacent DCO checkpoint. Maybe it was chance, maybe he went to
demonstrate with his friends. It was a large-scale protest on a
particularly violent day in the West Bank. The Palestinian Health
Ministry reported afterward that 100 Palestinians were wounded in the
events, 10 of them by live fire.
Othman now steers his
son into the cafeteria in his wheelchair. He is a broken young man: His
right hand hangs down limply, paralyzed; a big scar, now mostly covered
by curly hair, slices across his head from front to back; and on the
left side of his head there are signs of two holes – one entry wound,
one exit wound – that have healed. His speech is slurred and somewhat
slow, his mouth is drooping and slightly twisted, his memory
occasionally fails. His father says that he is not able to recognize all
his visitors.
At the first sight of this
young, crippled man, the full implications of the harrowing term “to
neutralize” – often used by the Israeli media to describe the results of
actions by security forces against Palestinians, in attacks or
demonstrations – become devastatingly clear. Yet even so, his condition
is relatively good: Things could have ended differently, and far worse,
for him.
Mohammed relates that after
buying some things for his store, he was on his way back to Bir Zeit to
try to sign up for a pre-university preparatory course, when he
encountered the demonstration. He says he became trapped there, but we
can be excused for doubting that, and thinking he went intending to join
the protesters.
Suddenly, the young man goes
on, four masked individuals rushed at him from the crowd. They looked
like all the other demonstrators, threw stones like them and spoke
Arabic among themselves. They started to hit him in an apparent attempt
to subdue him and finally knocked him to the ground. He was stunned, he
says, but nevertheless tried to resist. They struck him on the head with
a pistol butt to neutralize him. And then, he says, while he lay on the
ground, they fired one bullet into his left temple – the bullet entered
from the front and exited from the back – ostensibly to finish the job
of neutralizing him. The images on his cellphone show him being carried
by three soldiers like a sack (“Is this how you carry someone who is
wounded?” his father asks), and a moment later he is lying on the
stone-strewn road next to an Israeli army jeep. Also taken into custody
is another young man, Ahmed Hamad, from the village of Silwad, who, like
Ziada, was wounded and detained. (Hamad is still in detention.)
After being taken to a nearby
army base in the jeep, Ziada was transported in an army ambulance to
Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Karem. He was unconscious on arrival,
underwent surgery, and for the first five days was under arrest, his
hands and feet bound to his bed. His parents, who managed to get to the
hospital the next day, were not allowed to see him. He says he was
questioned in his room and was hit by his interrogators when he told
them he didn’t remember anything.
After five days, Ziada’s
lawyer arrived at the hospital with an Israeli order for his discharge,
unconditional and without bail, and his guards left. He left Hadassah
the next day and was transferred to the Ramallah Government Hospital. A
week later, he was moved to the rehabilitation center in Beit Jala, at
whose entrance is a sculpture adorned with a prickly pear cactus and a
plaque that says, in English, “Every patient is first and foremost a
human being.”
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit
made this statement to Haaretz this week: “While confronting a mass
public disorder, the force provided medical care to a wounded individual
present at the demonstration, and evacuated him to a hospital. The
individual, Mohammed Ziada, arrived at Hadassah Medical Center on
October 7, and two days later, military police began keeping watch on
him. The IDF is investigating the incident, and with the conclusion of
the investigation, the findings will be analyzed.”
Ziada is in room 305, on the
third floor, which is accessed by people in wheelchairs, stretchers and
beds via a winding ramp. The walls on the way up are painted a deep
green, on which are hung photographs of a stormy sea and sailboats.
There are four more patients in Ziada’s room, all of them paralyzed to
one degree or another. Othman moves his son out of the wheelchair and
into the bed, takes off his shoes and helps him lie down. When the
rehabilitation process ends, many months down the line, he will go back
to his store and try again to enroll in the university, the young man
says. He then uses his left hand to shake hands – the right hand is
paralyzed – and gives us a strained smile.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
Commenti
Posta un commento