Gideon Levy : The West Bank terror you never hear about
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haaretzMohammed Jarara was seriously injured after Israelis ambushed the car he was driving in in the West Bank
Alex Levac
He
lies on an iron bed in the living room of his home in the West Bank
town of Asira ash-Shamaliya, a white fluorescent light illuminating the
large black skullcap atop his head. The cap conceals a fresh scar with
42 stitches arcing across his skull. There is also a deep wound on his
brow, above his right eye, covered with a bandage. He is still frail: He
has difficulty rising from the bed, and speaking is also a strain for
him.
Mohammed Jarara is the victim of a hostile act, a casualty of terror. At the beginning of the Sukkot holiday, three Israelis – settlers
or their guests – ambushed the car he was in, stopping it and hurling
stones into it. A large stone hit Jarara’s head from just a few meters
away, seriously injuring him. This week, he returned home after two
operations on his head and some 10 days in a hospital.
Jarara, a 29-year-old bachelor, is a policeman in the Palestinian
National Security Forces; a week of service on his base alternates with
a week at home. For many years, his father has been ill with
Parkinson’s disease and Mohammed has been helping to support the family;
there are four brothers and four sisters. Their small town is situated
not far from Nablus, and the road to it passes through olive groves
where the harvest began this week. The harvest is a family event in the West Bank:
Everyone comes to help – climbing ladders, hitting the trees with
sticks and shaking their branches to make the olives fall onto the
plastic sheeting spread out on the ground.
On
October 5, Jarara was a passenger in a car, returning to his base in
Bethlehem after attending a friend’s wedding in the village of Bruqin,
near Jenin. Together with him were two of his colleagues from the
security services, Thair Abeidi, 43, and Ghassan Qasrawi, 23. Just after
9 P.M., they left the wedding and headed back to their base. They were
traveling in Qasrawi’s car, a white 2010 Kia, and Qasrawi was driving.
Abeidi was sitting next to him and Jarara was in the back, on the
right-hand side, with the adjacent window open. The three were in a good
mood. For Jews, that evening marked the end of the first day of Sukkot.
Just
before the junction for the entrance to the settlement of Shiloh, on
Highway 60, they saw from afar three figures standing by the roadside.
One of them was turning a flashlight on and off to signal them to stop.
Convinced it was an ad hoc army or police roadblock, they hastened to
slow down. Abeidi related what happened next to Salma a-Deb’i, a field
researcher from the human rights organization B’Tselem.
“At
approximately 9:45 P.M.,” Abeidi said, “we reached the area of Shiloh.
About 500 to 800 meters (1,640 to 2,625 feet) from the intersection that
leads into the village of Turmus Ayya, I saw the flare of a handheld
flashlight and a number of people standing by the roadside. We were
about 50 to 80 meters away and I figured they were police or soldiers. I
asked Ghassan to slow down. We were going at about 80 kilometers (50
miles) per hour and he did indeed slow down.
“I
was surprised to see three people in civilian clothing, one of them
holding the flashlight. The other two threw stones at us. We were just a
few meters away from them. One stone broke the window next to me. The
other hit Mohammed. I heard Mohammed scream and I realized he had been
hit. I turned to look at him and saw his face was covered in blood. I
used a jacket that was lying on the back seat to stop the bleeding. I
was surprised at the extent of the injury. He had a deep gash in his
head. The stone had smashed into him directly. His window had been open
and so he took a direct hit from the stone. He was screaming and
groaning in pain and said he was about to die. I tried to calm him down,
but I was really scared for him.”
The
driver, Qasrawi, told B’Tselem: “One stone hit the side window on the
right side of the car and sounded like an explosion inside the car. I
heard Mohammed screaming in the back seat. I asked: ‘What happened to
you?’ He said, ‘My eye has exploded.’ I looked at him and saw blood
covering his face. I went crazy and drove really fast to get away from
the settlers. I looked in the mirror and saw a number of settlers on the
right side of the road, who looked as though they were trying to avoid
being seen. The settlers have grapevines in this area.”
From
his bed, Jarara gave a similar description of how events unfolded: They
were driving, they saw some figures – one of them, he says, was wearing
a white shirt and a large skullcap, with long earlocks dangling on his
cheeks. All three settlers were standing behind the railing alongside
the road; they looked like they were 16 or 17 years old. He did not see
any weapons in their possession.
They
slowed down the car, at which time the stone hit Jarara in the head. He
did not lose consciousness, but there was a lot of blood streaming from
his head. His brother, Imad, shows us a photo showing the stone on the
back seat after it hit Mohammed. It is larger than a fist. Imaging from
the hospital shows the damage done to the front of his skull, part of
which was crushed.
Qasrawi
accelerated immediately and sped in the direction of the village of
Turmus Ayya, where he stopped at the local clinic, which is run by the
Palestinian security services. After being given first aid, Jarara was
taken by ambulance to the government hospital in Ramallah. After his
superior officers intervened, Jarara was transferred that same night to
the private Istishari Arab Hospital in the city, where there are doctors
who specialize in neurosurgery.
For
his part, Abeidi contacted the regional commander of the national
security service, Riyad Salahat, and reported the incident to him. He
also called Dr. Rassam Abu Rabia,who is in charge of the military
medical services, and told him about Jarara’s head injury; it was Abu
Rabia who arranged the transfer to Istishari.
Jarara’s
family only heard about the injury the following morning from his
security service colleagues, and his siblings rushed to the hospital in
Ramallah. However, that was the day of the settlers’ Sukkot race, which
the Palestinians call a marathon, and Highway 60 was closed to traffic.
The drive to the hospital took nearly two hours, via side roads, instead
of the usual 40 minutes. Jarara was in the intensive care unit when
they arrived and they were not allowed to see him. The next day, he had
two operations on his head: A number of bones in his skull had been
smashed and a metal plate was implanted in his forehead.
Jarara’s
two companions in the car filed a complaint the next day with the
Palestinian liaison command in Beit El, to be sent on to the Israel
Police. They noted that the Shiloh junction is covered by many security
cameras. After filing the complaint, they are yet to hear anything, and
no one in the Israel Police has taken evidence from the three men.
Shai
Police District spokeswoman Shlomit Bakshi did not respond when asked
early this week by Haaretz whether the police had launched an
investigation into the incident.
When
we visited Jarara’s home this week, a delegation from the Asira
ash-Shamaliya Municipality visited, headed by Mayor Hazem Yassin.
“He
has worked with me for a long time,” Abeidi told us, “and he is like a
brother as well as a friend. We could all have been killed, and not just
him. The people who did this were trying to kill. If the driver had
been injured, all of us would have died.”
Insofar
as is known, the Israeli media has not published anything about the
incident: Apparently, it’s of no importance and not interesting to
Israelis.
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