http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=18&datee=5/14/99&id=46423
Ha'aretz, May 14, 1999
His son's life
Five years ago, an Israeli soldier shot a 14-year-old Gaza boy in the head. His severely
disabled father looked after him with devotion. Last week the boy died. The soldier who
shot him was sentenced to two months in prison
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz Magazine
This week, in the courtyard of the house adjacent to Yasser Arafat's
bureau in Gaza, a bereaved father sat bewailing the death of his son. The
father is a refugee, and confined to a wheelchair - he has no legs, only
one arm, and is blind in one eye. With his one hand, he wiped the tears
away.
I first met Hassan Abu Hajer in June 1994. It was in room 602 of Shifa
Hospital in Gaza, during the waning days of the Intifada. The occupants of
the room were three Palestinians who had suffered head wounds; all
were comatose. One of them was Mahmoud Abu Hajer, almost 14; he
had been an eighth-grade student in Gaza City's Zaitoun School. Three
weeks earlier, an Israeli soldier had shot him in the head three times in
front of the school, perhaps after he threw a stone at the soldier's truck,
which was protected by window-bars. What I saw in Shifa Hospital has
haunted me ever since: a disabled father - like his son, Hassan Abu Hajer
was also seriously injured as a child, on his way to school - feeding his
comatose son directly into the stomach, holding in his one hand a bottle of
puree he had prepared, and softly stroking the boy's face with the stump
of his other hand
This week, Hassan's lawyer, attorney Hussein Abu Hussein from Umm el
Fahm, called to inform me that Mahmoud had died a few days earlier in
the Tel Aviv institution where he had been hospitalized for the past few
years. He was not yet 19. The Intifada had claimed another victim.
We parked on Yasser Arafat's sandy helicopter pad, mumbled some
identification to the bored Palestinian soldier who was guarding the site -
Arafat was in Ramallah - crossed the road and entered the yard of
Hassan Abu Hajer's house, or hut, on the Gaza seashore, next to Arafat's
presidential offices.We could see Abu Hajer sitting in his wheelchair from
the helicopter pad. Since our meeting in 1994, his beard had turned gray
and old age had beset his sad face. In the hospital, he had somehow
managed to get around on his artificial legs, but now he sat, half a body,
half a human being, hunched over in his tattered wheelchair. Last year he
had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. "I prayed for Mahmoud, but really I
prayed for everyone. For a little quiet, for a little calm, for peace."
During the past four years Abu Hajer visited his son every few days at the
Naot La Guardia institution in Tel Aviv. Mahmoud's mother stayed at
home, busy caring for the couple's nine other children. It is no easy matter
for a Gaza resident to travel to Tel Aviv to be with his comatose son; and
it's even more of a burden for someone with the physical disabilities of
Abu Hajer. Someone would drive him to the Saja'iya neighborhood, from
where, if he had managed to get up in time to arrive by 5 A.M., he would
take a workers' bus to Jaffa, get another bus to the Central Bus Station in
Tel Aviv and then a third bus to the institution, which is in the Yad Eliahu
neighborhood in the city's south. And all with a wheelchair - don't ask
how. Abu Hajer had no place to stay in Tel Aviv, so he had to get back to
Gaza the same day. Once he missed the workers' bus and slept on the
sidewalk in Jaffa. A policeman who approached him and heard his story
let him sleep there, on the sidewalk.
And we haven't yet mentioned the permits. For the first few months after
he was wounded, Mahmoud was hospitalized at Soroka Medical Center
in Be'er Sheva. His father was not allowed to visit him. A security risk,
don't you know. And attorney Abu Hussein had his work cut out for him
to arrange for Abu Hajer to visit his son regularly in Tel Aviv, including a
request to the Haifa District Court, where Abu Hajer's compensation
claim was being heard. Even this physically broken man, whose life was
blasted out of shape in 1959 when, as a 10-year-old, he stepped on a
land mine on his way to school - even he had to wend his crippled way
through the labyrinths of the occupation bureaucracy so he could visit his
comatose son in a nursing home. "However much Mahmoud suffered, I
suffered more. Because Mahmoud is resting now, but I have to go on."
He saw his boy for the last time a few days before his death. Two weeks
ago his phone rang; attorney Abu Hussein was on the line: Mahmoud was
dead. He took possession of the body at midday at the Erez checkpoint.
He took Mahmoud home for a few hours, for a final visit, and then set out
for the "cemetery of the martyrs" in the Jabalya refugee camp to bury his
son. Mahmoud was a shahid, the last of the Intifada's dead, for now. Last
December, Lulu Abu Dahi from Rafah, who had been shot in the head by
an Israeli soldier 10 years earlier, when she was six, died. She was the
last victim, it was said in Gaza at the time.In his visits to Tel Aviv Abu
Hajer tended to his son. He cleaned the hole in his throat through which
he breathed, he wiped the spittle that drooled from his mouth. Sometimes
he would move his limbs a little, in a kind of morning workout. Mahmoud
lay on his bed, eyes open, his gaze fixed in space. That is how I remember
him in room 602 at Shifa. Then he still contorted his face sporadically,
forced to breathe through the incision. His father would stroke him and
calm him, and constantly turn him over on his other side. At the institution,
they were apparently less vigilant, and this shattered Abu Hajer.
"I would come and see that they hadn't turned him over for a whole day.
How could it be that I sat with him from morning until evening and no one
came to turn him over? How could they not turn him over?" He's
convinced that his son would have been better off at home, but he didn't
have the strength to look after him. "At home Mahmoud would hear noise
and turn, he would hear talking and react. All that ended in the institution."
Mahmoud was transferred there when the court ruled that the state had
to pay for the hospitalization of its victim. Abu Hajer would explain to the
staff how to look after the boy. But they didn't understand Arabic. Abu
Hajer communicated with them by gesturing with his one hand.
Now he can no longer control his tears. "Until they took him to the
institution in Israel, I was with him 24 hours a day. I saw to all his wants,
even with my disability. If they needed some medicine at Shifa I would go
all over Gaza until I found it. I bought the best meat in Gaza and I would
grind up the best piece and inject it into his stomach. I brought him every
kind of fruit. The purest honey, the freshest milk. Mahmoud was my arm.
My hand. He was one of the best students at school. From the age of 10
he went to sea with the fishermen, and he would get his portion like the
most experienced of them. Because he was so smart the fishermen would
give him a double portion. He always said that when he grew up he would
look after the family." Mahmoud's father wipes away his tears with a
paper hankie.
This week, children holding posters demonstrated against road accidents
on the street where Mahmoud was shot. The street in Gaza has been
transformed. A year after the shooting, Master Sergeant Liad Yehuda
went on trial in the military court of the Southern Command. He was
charged with aggravated wounding, unbecoming conduct, making a false
report and failing to obey orders by driving without an escort. In a plea
bargain he was sentenced by Col. Yaron Shlein to two months in
prison."You tell me," Mahmoud's father said this week, "as human beings,
what you think of that? A man kills your son, who is part of your heart, and
he gets two months in prison. What do you have to say about that? A boy
who was on the way to school, even if he threw a stone - does he
deserve three bullets in the forehead? And the soldier who did it gets two
months in prison?"
After Mahmoud was transferred from Soroka to Shifa, his desperate
father took him to Egypt, to a hospital run by the Red Crescent. Maybe
there, he thought, they would revive his son. But two months later he
returned to Gaza, broken-hearted. In July 1995, attorney Abu Hussein
informed him that Israel would pay for his son's hospitalization for the rest
of his life. On July 17, 1995, Mahmoud was transferred to the Naot La
Guardia nursing home. A year ago, the Haifa District Court ordered that
he be paid NIS 432,311, after the state had offered NIS 32,000 "for pain
and suffering" and NIS 100,000 "for the claimant's shortened lifespan."
Abu Hajer doesn't want to talk about the money. "There is no
compensation for Mahmoud. All the millions in the world will never
compensate me for Mahmoud. I claim the real compensation only from
God. It is enough for me that Mahmoud is now resting in paradise.
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