Battle Scars Run Deep for Palestinians

One bullet nicked 14-year-old Mohammed Hamamreh’s right leg just below the knee. The second bullet tore through his left calf, severing a tibial artery and nerve. He may never walk normally again.

“Try to move your foot,” the doctor tells the boy. The foot and the leg attached to it are swollen to almost twice the size of Mohammed’s other, skinny limb. There is no discernible movement.

Like Mohammed, thousands of Palestinians have been crippled, maimed, blinded or otherwise wounded by Israeli gunfire in nearly three months of revolt--a devastating toll of potentially permanent disabilities added to the about 300 Palestinians who have been killed during the same period.

Israelis also have been killed and wounded, including three children from the same family whose limbs were severed by the terrorist bombing of their school bus.

The Palestinian casualties, however, represent a much higher percentage of the overall population and will incapacitate a large number of youths likely to become a burden on a society ill-equipped to handle their rehabilitation.

Israeli authorities say the Palestinians are responsible for most of their own losses because they provoke or place themselves in confrontations with better-armed Israeli forces.

But numerous human rights groups, plus the United Nations, have accused Israel of using excessive force in its attempts to put down the uprising, in violation of international law. While Israeli troops have often faced Palestinian gunmen, many of the dead and wounded have been teenagers who were unarmed, or armed with stones and Molotov cocktails, when cut down.

The high rate of Palestinian casualties has the long-term effect of further cementing their people’s hatred for Israelis, which in turn makes reconciliation less likely. And the level of bloodshed has begun to give Israelis pause about their military’s tactics; for the first time since the conflict escalated, some are questioning their government’s insistence that it has followed a policy of restraint.

Mohammed, the 14-year-old, said from his bed in Jerusalem’s Makassad Hospital that he was shot Dec. 3 while throwing rocks at Israeli troops in Hussan, his West Bank village. He had been an eager participant in previous clashes, having seen kids on television doing the same thing.

“I wasn’t afraid,” said the ninth-grader with large, wide eyes. “I didn’t think I’d get hit.”

Palestinians say troops fired that day on villagers gathered around a boy who was being beaten by Israeli soldiers. Some of the villagers were hit as they headed to evening prayers at the mosque, they said.

The Israeli army said the boy whose detention triggered the melee was trying to steal a soldier’s weapon.

Blood-Soaked Jeans Kept as War Trophy

A few beds away from Mohammed, Othman Shiha writhed in pain. The 17-year-old dropout, who helps his father on construction jobs, was shot Dec. 1 as he led a protest against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the village of Anata near Jerusalem. The bullet penetrated the front of his right thigh and tore a 2 1/2-inch gash as it exited.

He can get out of bed only with the aid of a walker. His mother sits by his side and keeps her only son’s blood-soaked jeans, cut from his body the day he was shot, in a plastic bag as a war trophy “to show my grandchildren what the enemy has done to us.”

Mohammed and Othman probably will end up at the Abu Raya Rehabilitation Center here in this West Bank city. Opened to treat the wounded from the first intifada in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Abu Raya is swamped with a new influx of men and boys on crutches and in wheelchairs. The 50-bed center is the largest of only a few such facilities in Palestinian areas.

More than 10,000 Palestinians have been wounded since fighting erupted in late September, according to doctors and the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Of those, as many as 10% will suffer long-term or permanent disability, said Dr. Ghazi Hanania, who heads the Abu Raya center.

The rate is about twice that of the first intifada, a reflection in part of the greater firepower used by Israel this time, he said.

The Israeli response in turn reflects the increased gunfire from Palestinians. Of 364 Israeli soldiers and civilians wounded, 18 suffered injuries “of moderate severity or greater,” according to a new report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. About 40 Israelis have been killed.

The Israeli medical system is larger, more affluent and better able to absorb and administer to the casualties, at times lending care to Palestinians as well.

Hanania said Palestinian authorities do not give priority to rehabilitation. The number of wounded “is a very big burden on society as a whole,” he said.

The physical scars include damage to muscles, blood vessels, nerves and kidneys or intestines. In addition, Palestinians have suffered paralysis, fractures, shortened legs and “foot drop,” a condition in which the injured can no longer flex a foot because of injuries to the nerve.

Many patients will have to undergo costly therapy for months or years and will face a lifetime of wheelchairs, metal braces, medicines, colostomy bags, catheters and infection. Many will never be employable; the youngest may lose interest in school.

M-16 Rifles Do ‘Horrendous Damage’

Forty-two percent of gunshot or shrapnel injuries have been to extremities and 18% to the head and neck, the Palestinian Health Ministry reports.

Most of the gunshot wounds are from M-16 assault rifles, which do “horrendous damage,” said Dr. Robert Kirschner of the University of Chicago’s School of Medicine, who led an investigation here for Physicians for Human Rights.

“Even in the United States, under the best conditions, reconstructive surgery would be a daunting task,” he said. “It’s a complicated surgery, and you add the numbers that you have there, and they are overwhelmed.”

From its investigation, Physicians for Human Rights concluded that Israeli forces used live ammunition and rubber-coated bullets “excessively and inappropriately.”

“Based on the high number of documented injuries to the head and thighs, soldiers appear to be shooting to inflict harm, rather than solely in self-defense,” the Boston-based group said. It and other human rights organizations say the Israelis should have employed other kinds of riot-control equipment, such as water cannons and tear gas, before using guns.

The army maintains that it has shown restraint in its handling of demonstrations, which usually involve huge numbers of youths against small units of soldiers.

“A large portion of those injured by live bullets were those that we indeed wanted not only to wound but to kill,” Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland wrote to a human rights attorney. “They are the ones who fire live ammunition at us.”

However, B’Tselem found that nearly three-quarters of clashes in which Palestinians were killed or wounded as of Nov. 15 involved no Palestinian gunfire, based on the army’s own statistics. The Israeli organization also found that the military routinely ignores its own rules of engagement. The army disputes these findings, saying Palestinian gunfire has been more common than B’Tselem reports.

The Israeli Defense Forces have strict regulations on when to use lethal force and switch to live ammunition from less deadly rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. Live ammunition is permitted only when the soldiers’ lives are in danger, although wide discretion is allowed.

Israeli Army’s Use of Live Ammo Questioned

According to B’Tselem, Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at times when their lives were not in danger, and Palestinian gunfire on several occasions began an hour or more after the Israelis had begun to use live ammunition.

The army, in response to B’Tselem’s findings, said it “places a great value on human rights and educates its soldiers [accordingly]. . . . The army’s use of force in response to Palestinian attacks is very restrained and a byproduct of the reality.”

“The Palestinian Authority bears full responsibility for the hundreds of casualties in the last months,” the army said. Israeli officials say Palestinian leaders place civilians in violent riots to increase the number of injuries and gain international sympathy

The 51-page B’Tselem report, released Dec. 2, bears out the observations of foreign journalists through much of the conflict. But it has added authority as the work of an Israeli group--albeit one not accepted in right-wing circles.

Presence of Youths at Protests Is Criticized

B’Tselem also was highly critical of Palestinian officials for failing to prevent children from joining demonstrations. More than one-third of the Palestinians killed were younger than 18; a similar portion of the wounded were minors.

Hamzeh Rashid, 16, was shot in the left buttock Dec. 11 after he and five other kids scaled the fence at an unused municipal airport and took down sandbags used by Israeli soldiers for cover. Mohammed Assad, 19, was shot in both thighs Nov. 19 as he led demonstrators from his refugee camp north of Jerusalem. A bullet shattered Jamil Hmeid’s right thigh Nov. 22 when the 21-year-old carpenter tried to pull a wounded youth to safety during clashes near his village, Tekoa.

While most of the patients bunking six or more to a room at the Abu Raya center and at the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation facility in Beit Jala acknowledge that they were shot during demonstrations, many other victims were passersby or caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In one of the few cases that the army has investigated, it found that a soldier deliberately shot an American news photographer and then lied about it.

Yola Monakhov, 26, who was on assignment for Associated Press, was shot in the abdomen Nov. 11 near Rachel’s Tomb on the edge of Bethlehem, a frequent site of conflict between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. She was shot by a soldier as she crouched for cover inside a doorway. At the time, the photographer said, no clashes were taking place.

Initially the army denied responsibility. But under pressure from reporters and U.S. officials, it investigated and found that the soldier who shot Monakhov--as well as his commander--disobeyed regulations limiting the use of live ammunition and lied to cover up their actions. Both are to be court-martialed, and the army formally apologized.

Monakhov suffered severe injury to her bladder, bowel and pelvis. She remains hospitalized.

There has been very little real questioning of such tactics among the Israeli public. Most of the criticism has come from within the leftist peace camp and a handful of local newspaper articles. Some Israelis, frustrated at their government’s inability to quell the violence and feeling their own safety eroded, demand the use of greater force, not less.

But slowly there is a realization that something is amiss.

A senior Israeli government official acknowledged Dec. 13 that soldiers have made mistakes “under pressure, threats to their lives or wrong interpretation of orders.” He was responding in part to an article in the influential Haaretz newspaper, which reported that senior officers had become convinced that soldiers frequently resorted to excessive force against the Palestinians and that legal oversight of field operations was nonexistent.

Palestinian Kids Died Needlessly, Writer Says

Haaretz’s military affairs writer, Amos Harel, quoted an unnamed senior officer as saying: “No one can convince me that we didn’t needlessly kill dozens of children.”

“As the conflict drags on,” Harel concluded, “the army sometimes looks like a boxer with his eyes shut, punching blindly in every possible direction.”

Ehud Sprinzak, an Israeli specialist in radicalism and political violence, told a recent conference in Jerusalem that Israel’s dependence on lethal force to quell demonstrations has had the adverse effect of playing into the Palestinians’ hands and tarnishing the nation’s image.

“Do not fire on civilians--those are the tactics of Tiananmen Square,” he said. The solution is not rubber bullets and live ammunition, he said, but nonlethal riot-control weapons, “which would have helped a lot in calming the intifada.”