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CounterPunch
February
21, 2003
The Raid on Nablus
A Hero in the
Midst of Horror
by ANNE GWYNNE
"3
Palestinians killed and 25 injured in Nablus," say the headlines. It tells you nothing at all...
I have just come from Raffidia Hospital
on the North Mountain in Nablus, formerly the most beautiful
and prosperous city in the ancient, cultured and peaceful land
of Palestine, where most of those 25 people were taken and where
one of the injured, FERAS MABROUKI aged 21, has just died of
the wounds he sustained a few hours earlier. Also under the sanitized
'3 dead' heading come AYMAN KAMAL abu ZANT aged 20, and MOHAMED-SAMIR
TAKRURI, aged 35. All, I am told, murdered by shots to the head--all
human beings with families suddenly and grievously bereaved tonight.
Three more innocents murdered--three more Martyrs in Nablus.
Under a continuous, year-long, brutal,
illegal military occupation, the suffering of the people of Nablus
goes on day after day in ever-escalating terror inflicted upon
them by what the people here can now only describe as the crazy
and totally evil Jewish-Israeli soldiers. Today demonstrated
that, in the most terrible fashion. The desperately injured and
the dead in the Hospitals of Nablus are witnesses-without-a-voice
to the murderous assault upon an innocent civilian population
on a sunny, shopping-eating-laughing Sunday afternoon.
At 1.30 pm, a massive force of occupying
soldiers swept into the City Centre, in huge tanks and armoured
personnel carriers bristling with weapons of very large calibre.
I wonder how readers out there visualize these friendly-sounding
vehicles, the APC's, which are actually like a smaller version
of the tanks, lacking only the 800 mm cannon. They are bringers
of death just like the tanks, but can move faster and go down
narrower streets. There were many Hummer "Officer Class"
jeeps, many jeeps laden with soldiers, and still more navy-blue
jeeps with the psychotic Druze police in them. Just like a Western
film, they came in firing from the hip, completely indiscriminately.
All this armoury was to arrest one man--Mr. Tayseer Khaled, a
prominent public figure and a member of the Executive Committee
of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. He was arrested with
3 members of his staff.
The situation then turned ugly when the
soldiers started to fire on youngsters jeering and throwing stones.
In answer to a call for help I rushed to the Midan al Hussein,
the formerly beautiful gardens of the City Centre (destroyed
by tanks which rolled over them for no reason). Skirting the
Midan, I saw an armoured vehicle fire at a car coming towards
me. It sprayed the brain of the driver over the front of a parked
car and onto the wall across the street. On the other side sprawled
the remains of a car, from which the driver had narrowly escaped
before a passing tank rolled over it. And a third car, over whose
offside rear a tank had careered. It's a helluva use for US tax
dollars.
As I turned into Sharra Sofian my heart
turned to stone at the sight of a homicidal soldier discharging
his gun into the side of our UPMRC Ambulance at close range,
and then shooting in through the open near-side window at the
driver, Feras al Bakri--almost universally acknowledged here
as the best and the bravest. Caring and always courteous, even
at the most dreaded checkpoints, competent in all situations,
cool and calm under fire, courageous and conscientious beyond
the call of duty, Feras' total integrity has earned a respect
I have seldom felt for anyone.
Feras' head, heart and hand were within
some 30cm of each other as he drove the Ambulance but, thanks
be to God, this time it was his left hand which was hit, the
bullet exiting through the offside window. I had to thank Allah,
even though I do not believe in any God. The first bullet, through
the side of the Ambulance, had seriously injured an unusually
beautiful young Volunteer, Mohamed Ka'abi, aged 21, from Balata
Refugee Camp. 21 years old and he has been shot through the testicles--imagine
the pain and the consequences for his life.
Feras rushed him to the Hospital, and
then received limited first-aid for his own shot hand. He did
not go back for proper treatment, but continued to work all afternoon,
taking the dead and injured to Hospital without thought for himself.
Of the 24-25 patients, Feras carried 12 or 13 in our damaged
Ambulance. There were many other ambulances around, but the carnage
was inside the ring of firing--only he was courageous enough
to come through every time to the very centre, where the street
was covered with blood that ran in rivulets into the gutter.
It was always only the UPMRC Ambulance which entered the dangerous
area, driving right up to the tanks to pick up the youngsters
where they lay amid the spreading blood--bullets coming from
every side and ricocheting off the walls all around.
One particular instance stands out. A
boy was hit by a tank advancing from the Sharra Feisal. As he
lay there, the tank kept on coming--huge in the city street.
From the other direction came Feras in the much-loved Savannah
with its UPMRC markings--suddenly looking quite small, faced
with the cannon and guns of the tank. Ambulance and tank stopped
side by side with only centimetres between them; Feras, one-handed,
leapt out to help get the boy inside. Shooting was coming from
every side, including the continuous fire of machine-guns. This
is not hearsay--I was actually in the middle of it for the whole
time, and I could not hear for several hours afterwards, deafened
by the proximity of the firing. Each time Feras came back to
rescue another wounded soul, I stood by his door in the hope
that the presence of an international might stop a gunman firing
at him. Afterwards, Feras said he had been working so much on
autopilot that he had not seen nor felt my hand on his arm.
So many persons involved in the events
of the afternoon expressed the same words, with a few minor variations,
that they should be recorded--"Look, where are the other
ambulances? Who is here--Feras, always Feras, in April the same.
He is a hero."
The centre of the attack was the 9-storey
building where the PLO have their office. I would remind you
here that this is a perfectly legitimate office and that, under
International Law and Convention all occupied/oppressed peoples
have the right to struggle for their rightful freedom. Many people
had been trapped in there, and we were able to get them out.
As we did so, two IOF ambulances arrived--we wondered if some
of their gunmen had been injured in a separate attack upon Palestinian
freedom fighters.
At every junction there were tanks, APC's,
jeeps (singly or in combination) forming a 'ring of fire' around
the city centre. In the streets of a large city on a sunny Sunday
afternoon they look like the scenario for a science fiction movie.
With two other Internationals I was able to help evacuate a large
building in which there was much firing, and to escort a few
people to safety on the street; we were also able to help some
shopkeepers close-up to save their stock.
Quite suddenly after about two and a
half hours, at 4.00 pm the attacking gunmen, tanks and APC's
left and, within five minutes the city resumed its normal life--until,
of course, the illegal lock-down curfew at 6.00 again cleared
the streets.
As I write this in the late afternoon
sun of a beautiful day in Nablus, I stand in pools of blood being
hosed from the Ambulance floor, its stretchers, lockers and footwells
surrounded by young Volunteers in blood soaked clothing--the
road strewn with discarded surgical gloves dyed red by the endless
blood they have handled. I notice that someone has drawn a circle
in blood around the new bullet-hole in the near-side of the Savannah.
However much water is hosed over the interior, the next time
I look blood has seeped from everywhere again. Later, when we
take some of the Volunteers home the floor is still stained.
So much blood.
THE INJURED I SAW THIS EVENING IN RAFFIDIA
HOSPITAL
12 -year-old Magdi F'tijan is under intensive
care, lying on his blood-soaked bed with blood still pouring
from his nose, watched over by his silently-weeping mother. We
hugged each other wordlessly for a long time. Magdi has extensive
injuries to his face from a large-calibre bullet which has blown
away part of his nose and maxillary bone, torn out the base of
his tongue, cut a hole in his neck. In addition, there is extensive
loss of soft tissue and part of the hard and the soft palate.
With massive oedema, he is on a respirator, and Insha'Allah,
he may live. If he does, he faces years of pain and suffering
in reconstructive surgery. He threw a stone. AT A TANK.
Moussa abdul Rahman, 25, from Qalqilya
has a serious injury to his jaw. All of his tongue is seriously
damaged with facial palsy, the result of an explosive bullet
inside his mouth. His face is appallingly oedemic. An exploding
bullet against a man in the street. Sheher abu Eishe (a proud
name in Nablus) was hit by an M16 bullet, still in his upper
left arm because the hospital was too busy to operate tonight.
He is from Beit Wasser village and was just going out for tea.
Mohamed B'Sharra, 19, was shot by Druze police in his left arm--he
was just standing on the street. Abdul Abbas, 20, from Askar
Refugee Camp--his leg was broken when it caught a casual bullet
as jeeps just shot everywhere. Ahmed Mohamed, 27, has two injuries--an
extensive wound in his leg, and serious injury to the scrotum.
Saleh Aslee, 21--In a hail of machine-gun fire he took four bullets
to the left leg which is smashed, swollen and suppurating; one
bullet to the right leg, one to the right hand, and one to the
left. Six months ago he was also extensively injured, leaving
him with a series of livid scars.
Dear heaven, what a use for tax-dollars.
Later, I again was privileged to be allowed
to sit at the bedside of some severely injured young men at the
Nablus Special Hospital--to hear the extent of their pain and
to ask what they were doing when they were so illegally shot.
Without exception, they were doing nothing except going home,
going to meet a friend or standing in the street looking at the
tanks.
Alaa Joudat Mohamed abu Sharkh, aged
21, lies very critically ill in a deep coma from which he is
not expected to recover because his brain has been terribly injured
by a 25mm bullet. He was operated on, but later developed a massive
haematoma in the brain and underwent a further operation. He
had simply been walking in the street.
In the Intensive Care Unit of the same
Hospital I was permitted to peep quietly at 20 year old Bashar
Iya'esh--a horrific 25 mm bullet injury to the chest. As I stood
with his brother, he opened his eyes and whispered 'Anna'. He
reminded me that I had saved him from an Israeli gunman during
another attack on civilians at the Sharra Amman--was it three
weeks ago, I don't remember--I felt very humble that he should
remember me in these terrible circumstances. I spoke with Dr
Ray'yan about him, and he told me that the bullet tore through
Bashar's liver and right lung. He suffered very severe bleeding,
losing 3 litres of blood--5 pints.
These young men were shot as they went
about their lawful, peaceful business because, presumably, the
Israeli gunmen become quite frenzied when they see a Palestinian
anywhere in the vicinity of their designer American weaponry.
After the horrific day, Feras could take
no more of this and so we left. I watched as he stood beside
the Ambulance, very quiet and traumatised, holding his heavily-bandaged
left-hand. This has been a day in which the murdering Israelis
plumbed the depths of terror, and Feras al Bakri reached the
heights of heroism.
Anne Gwynne
is working with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees
in Nablus. She can be reached at: gwynne_anne@hotmail.com
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February 15
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