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Now
For nearly a month now, a young Palestinian
has been hospitalized at Beilinson Hospital; soldiers shot him
at a checkpoint in northern Nablus on Saturday, November 4. Haitem
Yassin, 25, is conscious now, but he is still hooked up to a
respirator. In recent days, he has been suffering from a high
fever, apparently caused by an infection in his abdomen, which
was wounded in the shooting. His family is still waiting for
a report from the hospital about the number or type of bullets
that caused the serious injury.
At the Samaria Brigade, they
are still investigating what happened that day at the fortified
and isolated Asira al-Shmaliya checkpoint, through which only
the inhabitants of several villages are permitted passage. However,
according to testimonies taken by a researcher for B'Tselem -
The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, it emerges that Yassin had irritated the soldiers.
He dared to suggest to them that their demand of women to feel
their own bodies to carry out a "security check" was
inappropriate. So annoying was he that a soldier shoved him.
Yassin, who had returned from
overseas a few months earlier, had apparently not yet internalized
the fact that it is dangerous to remind a soldier that a Palestinian
is a human being. When the soldier shoved, Yassin shoved back.
The soldier, according to the testimonies, started to scream
and curse and hit. He quickly received reinforcement from two
other soldiers, who fired into the air and at the ground. Even
though Yassin fell to the ground after the shooting, the soldiers,
relate the witnesses, threw him onto a concrete block, handcuffed
him and kicked him. They also kicked him in the head, according
to the testimonies, and beat him with their rifles.
In a village in the Nablus
area, S., another young Palestinian, is recovering from the trauma
he suffered from a harsh beating at the hands of a soldier at
the Jit checkpoint, midway between Nablus and Qalqilya. The office
of the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman has stated that it was
the young man who had shoved and hit a soldier who told him to
return to his vehicle, whereas the soldier only fended him off,
but the testimony of S. is completely different. He, like many
others on that day, November 9, had got out of his vehicle while
on the way to the Jewish settlement where he works, in order
to find out why, just when everyone was hurrying to work, the
line of cars at the checkpoint wasn't moving.
According to one taxi driver,
the soldiers announced that the cars would not be able to go
through until noon. S., according to his own testimony, intended
to return to his vehicle when the soldier approached him and
looked as though he was going to hit him with his rifle. S. grabbed
the rifle and pushed it aside. This apparently really bothered
the soldier, who grabbed him, pulled him away from the rest of
the people, flung him to the ground, and proceeded to him in
all parts of his body. Including his head.
Other soldiers, at the Beit
Iba checkpoint west of Nablus, also got annoyed: At a student
who felt he was suffocating among the mass of people who flocked
to the checkpoint on October 9, and who felt the only way he
could get some air was to climb a pole. When he refused to obey
the soldiers' orders to come down, because there was no room
and no air, they fell upon him and beat him with a rifle. According
to the testimony of a friend, who spoke to an activist from Machsom
Watch, the soldiers also broke his glasses and punished him:
They detained him in "solitary confinement," in a kind
of punishment cell into which the soldiers and the commanders
throw Palestinians who "misbehave." The cell is intended
for security suspects, but all too often people who dare to argue
with the soldiers are thrown in there, or held in another sort
of punishment cell at other checkpoints.
In tens of thousands of homes
in the West Bank live others, who may have not ended up in the
hospital, but who every day accumulate harsh impressions of the
nature and behavior of almost the only Israelis whom they encounter
- the soldiers at the checkpoints. The non-Palestinians who pass
through the checkpoints can also reach a similar conclusion -
that most of the soldiers stationed at them are crude, arrogant,
boastful and definitely hardhearted. All too often it appears
that the soldiers intentionally cause the line of cars and people
to dawdle at a checkpoint for a very long time. All too often
they are seen laughing and grinning at the sight of the hundreds
of people jostling and crowding in the slow line behind the narrow
inspection turnstile.
The Palestinians are not interested
in, and do not need to be interested in, the explanations that
Israel will give: It's a difficult mission; the soldiers are
afraid; maybe someone will come bearing an explosive belt; they're
young, still children; they're defending the homeland; if they
weren't posted at checkpoints in the middle of the West Bank,
suicide terrorists would be free to enter Israel.
The truth is that even the
soldiers' parents should not be interested in these explanations.
They should, however, be very worried about their country sending
their sons and daughters on an apartheid mission: to restrict
Palestinian mobility within the occupied territory, to narrow
the Palestinian expanse in order to enable Jews to move freely
within that same occupied territory and in order to increase
their expanse within it. In order to carry out this mission in
full, facing the natives, the soldiers must feel and act like
"superiors."
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