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<h1 id="reader-title">Israeli captain: "I will make you all
disabled"</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nora Barrows-Friedman</a></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-09-01T18:53:00+00:00">1 September 2016</span></span>
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media="(min-width: 72rem)"><figcaption
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<p>The Israeli army invaded the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/dheisheh-refugee-camp">Dheisheh
refugee camp</a> near the occupied West Bank city of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bethlehem">Bethlehem</a>
early Friday morning last week.</p>
<p>Soldiers shot the legs of two youths among those
confronting the raiding army.</p>
<p>Israeli forces also raided the home of a political
prisoner from the camp, locking his mother and sister
inside the house to pressure the prisoner’s younger
brother to turn himself in, the Ma’an News Agency <a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=772865">reported</a>.</p>
<p>Soldiers blew off the door to the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ibdaa-cultural-center">Ibdaa
Cultural Center</a>, adjacent to one of the entrances
to the camp, “and occupied the rooftop of the building,
from where Israeli snipers fired live ammunition and
tear gas canisters at local youth,” according to Ma’an.</p>
<p>Such raids are nothing new, nor is the camp’s
resistance against them. The army has shot approximately
30 residents of Dheisheh, which has a population of
approximately 15,000 Palestinians, with live ammunition
since January. Most have been shot in the legs and
knees.</p>
<p>In several testimonies gathered by The Electronic
Intifada, youth in the camp say that an Arabic-speaking
officer with Israel’s domestic intelligence agency known
as the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shin-bet">Shin
Bet</a> has been provoking youths during clashes and
threatening them with physical harm. The officer goes by
the alias Captain Nidal.</p>
<p>“They choose [to shoot at] the leg to disable and
torture you,” 20-year-old Muhammad, not his real name,
told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>During raids, snipers shoot protesters under Captain
Nidal’s directives, youth say.</p>
<p>Youth <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.738889">told</a>
the Tel Aviv newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> that they
believe the Shin Bet officer is exacting revenge after
someone took his photograph during a raid and posted it
on Facebook.</p>
<h2>Threats</h2>
<p><a
href="http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/77-2016/4629-pr-en-230816-37.html">According
to Badil</a>, a human rights group based in Bethlehem,
Captain Nidal has threatened youth “before, during and
after the raids, and during interrogations and arrests.”</p>
<p>The Israeli army raided Dheisheh three times between
the end of July and mid-August, the group says.</p>
<p>During the recent incursions, at least 18 youths –
between 14 and 27 years old – were shot in their legs.
Eight were shot directly in the knee and several more in
both legs, Badil reports.</p>
<p>Badil’s study was published just days before the
Israeli army raided the camp on Friday last week and
shot two more youths.</p>
<p>Youth have testified to Badil that Captain Nidal has
made statements such as “I will make all the youth of
the camp disabled,” “I will have all of you walking with
crutches and in wheelchairs,” “I will make half of you
disabled, and let the other half push the wheelchairs”
and “I will make all of you stand in line at the ATM
waiting for your disability subsidies and assistance.”</p>
<p>“The explicit threats by the Israeli army leadership
show the willingness to commit criminal acts,” Badil
states.</p>
<h2>Impact on families</h2>
<p>In the last two years in Dheisheh, “at least 81 youths
have been injured by bullets in the limbs, about 60 of
whom have suffered permanent disabilities,” <em>Al-Quds</em>
newspaper <a
href="http://www.alquds.com/articles/1471072971885122500/">reported</a>
on 13 August.</p>
<p>All of those injured over the last two months have been
previously imprisoned by Israel, according to <em>Al-Quds</em>.</p>
<p>Some youth were recently released from Israeli
detention but were re-arrested during these violent
raids.</p>
<p>“In the camp, when the soldiers come, you will find
200, 300 kids and also older people throwing stones or
even just standing in the streets, trying to show the
enemy, the Israeli occupation, that they are not welcome
in our camp,” explained an activist and resident of
Dheisheh.</p>
<p>The activist told The Electronic Intifada that during
these raids, Israeli soldiers swarm the camp in the
middle of the night, and hidden snipers shoot at youth
from the rooftops of residents’ homes.</p>
<p>During a recent invasion, the activist said that the
Israeli soldiers were shooting “continuously for two
hours – at whom, we don’t know.”</p>
<p>At least 10 residents, including teenagers, have been
arrested during these overnight raids over the past
month, he said.</p>
<p>When youth are shot in the legs and knees, the impact
on them and their families can be devastating.</p>
<p>The recovery period, along with long-term physical
therapy and medication, puts the young people, their
families and the larger community under economic and
psychological pressure in an area where poverty and
unemployment are already high.</p>
<p>“This is what Captain Nidal and the Israeli army want,”
the activist said. “They want the families to stop the
youth from going out [and resisting], creating a
fragmentation within the community.”</p>
<h2>“Intentional”</h2>
<p>Khaled, not his real name, another 20-year-old resident
of Dheisheh, says he was shot defending the camp during
a pre-dawn army raid on 1 August.</p>
<p>“A soldier made me come out from behind a tree where I
was hiding and told me to come out man to man,” Khaled
told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>As the soldier approached him, Khaled said a hidden
sniper shot him in the leg, five centimeters below the
knee.</p>
<p>He has received two operations and will need physical
therapy, he added.</p>
<p>“It was definitely intentional that the shooting was in
the leg because it can disable you and give a lesson to
the youth not to go out and throw stones,” Khaled said.</p>
<p>Muhammad told The Electronic Intifada that he was
injured in the same raid.</p>
<p>The youth says he was coming home from working a night
shift when he heard that the army was inside the camp.
He joined other youth to find and repel the invading
soldiers.</p>
<p>“I was injured in the knee area, [which produced] a
hole in the bone – nothing was broken, just a hole. And
in my other leg I was hit in the flesh. A bullet in one
leg and two bullets in the other,” Muhammad said.</p>
<p>“During the confrontations one young man was injured,
so I went to carry him and as I was carrying him I was
shot in my right leg,” he added.</p>
<p>“I kept walking and he shot me in my other leg, but I
still kept going. Then he shot me again and I fell down.
The youths came and carried us both away. We were very
close to the army and if I had not pulled the other guy
away they would have taken him. They [the army] would
have taken both of us if the guys hadn’t come and taken
us,” Muhammad explained.</p>
<p>Badil says the pattern of “intentional wounding” of
demonstrators “amount[s] to a systematic policy and an
implementation of Captain Nidal’s threats.”</p>
<h2>“We’ve grown up with this”</h2>
<p>Inside a camp with such a strong history of political
organizing and resistance, Israel has long implemented
policies of “collective punishment … to create a new
generation of disabled people,” the activist in Dheisheh
said.</p>
<p>“We’ve grown up with this,” he added.</p>
<p>Since the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/first-intifada">first
intifada</a> of the late 1980s, Israel has employed
various tactics to repress popular uprisings and
community defense of Palestinian cities, towns, villages
and refugee camps.</p>
<p>Israeli Prime Minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yitzhak-rabin">Yitzhak
Rabin</a> imposed what became known as the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/force-might-and-beatings-indelible-images-first-intifada">“breaking
bones”</a> doctrine of brutal force during the first
intifada.</p>
<p>In the first few days of second intifada, in the fall
of 2000, as the Israeli army’s then-chief of staff <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shaul-mofaz">Shaul
Mofaz</a> sought to “vanquish” the resistance,
soldiers <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/more-than-a-million-bullets-1.127053">fired
more than 1.3 million bullets</a> on Palestinians.</p>
<p>As <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu">Benjamin
Netanyahu’s</a> administration unleashed 51 days of
attacks against the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014,
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes">killing</a>
more than 2,250 Palestinians, including over 550
children, Israeli forces inside the West Bank used live
ammunition against demonstrators, causing permanent
injuries – <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/world/evidence-emerges-israeli-shoot-cripple-policy-occupied-west-bank">perhaps
by design</a>.</p>
<p>And just two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/teenager-killed-during-massive-raid-refugee-camp">fatally
wounded an unarmed Palestinian teenager</a> with live
ammunition during a massive raid on al-Fawwar refugee
camp in the West Bank city of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hebron">Hebron</a>.
Twenty-three people were wounded during the raid.</p>
<p>The Israeli military <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.737148">told</a>
<em>Haaretz</em> that during the raid on al-Fawwar camp,
Palestinians were shot “in their lower extremities by
rounds from the Ruger rifle, considered to have less
force than live fire.”</p>
<p>An army spokesperson <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.738889">told</a>
<em>Haaretz</em> that soldiers use the Ruger – a <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/another-made-in-usa-%E2%80%9Cless-lethal%E2%80%9D-weapon-kills-in-palestine/">US-made
weapon</a> – in the kinds of raids seen in Dheisheh.</p>
<h2>Fertile ground for abuse</h2>
<p>The “culture of impunity which now characterizes
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory has proven
fertile ground for severe human rights abuses and
international crimes,” explained Simon Reynolds, a
researcher with Badil.</p>
<p>“It is a culture which has come to be institutionalized
through the introduction of live-fire directives which
fail to comply with international law, and the abject
failure of Israeli military authorities to adequately
investigate and prosecute accusations of criminal acts
committed by members of its own forces,” he said.</p>
<p>More than 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli
forces so far this year in the West Bank, <a
href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/protection-civilians-weekly-report-2-8-august-2016">according</a>
to United Nations data.</p>
<p>Israeli forces have carried out a <a
href="http://www.ochaopt.org/content/protection-civilians-weekly-report-16-22-august-2016">weekly
average</a> of 71 “search and arrest” operations
across the West Bank in 2016.</p>
<p>The military carried out 86 raids during the first week
of August alone, the UN monitoring group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ocha">OCHA</a>
<a
href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/protection-civilians-weekly-report-2-8-august-2016">reports</a>.</p>
<p>“West Bank refugee camps and the decades-long
structural hardships and deprivations suffered by
residents have long engendered Palestinian popular
resistance, political engagement and protest,” said
Reynolds.</p>
<p>“It is difficult to view the ramping up of Israeli
raids and the shoot-to-disable policy as anything other
than brutal attempts to suppress the Palestinian voice;
to demonstrate the ‘cost’ of challenging the status
quo,” he told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>In Dheisheh, Muhammad explained that even though they
face routine threats of physical and psychological harm
from the Israeli army, the youth of the camp won’t be
deterred from resisting the Israeli army’s routine acts
of violence.</p>
<p>“They do this to stop the youths [from] going out and
resisting,” he said, “but despite this we’re waiting for
them, even if we’re disabled.”</p>
<p>According to Khaled, “The determination of the youths
is increasing and the struggle is continuing. They are
not going to destroy the determination of the youth with
these injuries.”</p>
<p><em>Nora Barrows-Friedman is an associate editor of The
Electronic Intifada.</em></p>
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