Hell’s Gate At Aroub Camp

Palestine Monitor

8 June 2010

A slew of settler-related violence struck the Hebron area last week. Two Palestinians died in separate incidents with settler vehicles on Sunday and Wednesday. Thursday morning an Israeli settler seriously injuring two 16-year-old boys after opening fire on a group of teenagers walking home from school. The unidentified shooter turned himself into Israeli authorities on Thursday night. Palestine Monitor interviewed one of the victims, Ibrahim Muhammad Biss at Al-Ahli hospital (Hebron), where he is recovering from a bullet wound to the abdomen. His close friend, Moataz Musa Omran Benat, remains in critical condition.

“I was finished with my exam. Then I left school. My friends and I were walking beside Al-Aroub College,” Ibrahim said from his hospital bed. “We were at the entrance of the college, waiting for the traffic to pause to cross the street. A settler came, stopped his car, and started shooting toward us.”

Ibrahim Muhammad Biss, age 16

Photo: Jillian D’Amours

The shooting took place on Highway 60 across from the entrance to Aroub camp, where Ibrahim and his friends live among 10,400 refugees. Ibrahim reported that the shooter remained behind the steering wheel while he shot at the boys with a non-automatic weapon. Ibrahim said that when he first saw the man, he did not expect that he was a settler, since they do not usually stop their cars near groups of Palestinian youth. He assumed the man to be a tourist with a question about the area.

Highway 60

Photo: Kara Newhouse

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The entrance to Aroub refugee camp outside Hebron

Photo: Kara Newhouse

Ibrahim’s father, Muhammad, hypothesized that since his son and Moataz, who have been friends since kindergarten, were the tallest boys in the group, they were easiest to target. A bullet struck Moataz first. Ibrahim did not see his friend get hit, but another camp resident drove them to the hospital together in his car, according to Ibrahim’s mother, Kheetam.

The bullet that wounded Ibrahim entered his abdomen at an upward angle, striking three internal organs and exiting through his back. He underwent surgery at Al-Ahli immediately following the attack and will remain hooked up to an IV( Intravenous) for at least two weeks.

Bandages cover Ibrahim’s gunshot wounds

Photo: Jillian D’Amours

“I feel that all that happened was a dream, not a reality,” said Ibrahim. His brother-in-law, Muhammad, said that Ibrahim sleeps in short stints before waking up afraid and in shock. Ibrahim had one exam left before he would complete tenth grade. His mother expects that since he finished his other exams with good marks, the school will take his scores from the first semester to allow him to continue in the next year. The 16-year-old wants to go to university to get a degree in physiology and eventually become a doctor.

Ibrahim rejected the Israeli authority’s claims that he or his friends had been throwing rocks at settler cars before the shooting. “We were standing just waiting for the cars to pass in order to cross the street toward the camp,” he explained. His father added that the gate to the camp was closed at the time of the shooting. “If they really wanted to throw stones,” he pointed out, “the gate should be open so they can run away quickly.” He pointed to the existence of an Israeli army watch tower 200 meters away as another deterrent to such action. “Everything is watched,” Muhammad said.

Ibrahim’s father further insisted that neither his family nor the family of friend in the ICU have ever had problems with the Israeli authorities. He offered his travel permit for work in Jerusalem as evidence of their clean records and proof that “there is no justification for what happened.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported 120 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and Palestinian property as of June 1, 2010. This number more than doubles the violent incidents reported for the same five-month period in 2009.

Although only Ibrahim’s family was present when we visited his room, his mother said that his friends had visited the hospital from the first moments after the shooting. She also said that the governor of Hebron, representatives from the department of education, and older students from the boys’ school had arrived to support Ibrahim, Moataz and their families.

Ibrahim said that he feels relaxed when his friends are at his side. Asked for his thoughts about Moataz’s conditions, he replied, “I wish him a better situation,” a statement which holds double meaning in regard to health and politics in Occupied Palestine.

Article written by Kara Newhouse

Mahmoud Jabari contributed to the reporting of this article