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When Ayoub was sixteen he went to buy falafel for his family at the
center of the camp. High noon. Just then soldiers invaded the camp.
Rumor had it that reporter Yoram Binour had been kidnapped, and choppers
and jeeps and soldiers and live bullets were after him for the rescue.
He was not there. He was in the Mukata'a.
When they entered the camp, children threw stones, and the soldiers
opened fire in all directions. Live ammunition. Sixteen-year old Ayoub
was just climbing the last of the stairs up to the falafel stand. The
bullet got him from the back, hit the back of his upper thigh, and he
fell forward, hit the step, his crushed leg hanging as though from a
string.
Eighteen more camp residents were injured in that assault, Ayoub the
most seriously. His leg was crushed. He was hospitalized for months. The
Palestinian Authority paid. He spent time in Jericho and Ramallah
hospitals. He underwent surgery once. The final setting was not done yet
because he was still growing. They said they would get back to surgery
later. In the meantime, he had treatment and received medication for his
pains. Half a year later he went to Jerusalem in order to get to
Mukassad Hospital for ongoing leg treatment. Soldiers caught him. You
were throwing stones, they said. I wasn't, he answered. He was sentenced
and sent to Naqab Prison for half a year. Sixteen and a half
years-old. With a serious leg wound.
His parents were not permitted to visit him. The prison is inside Israel
and they are prevented from entry. He suffers pain. He limps. And then,
at some point in prison several soldiers beat him badly. About six of
them. All over his body. His belly. He remembers them well. His
condition worsened. Don't tell on us, they warned him.
He complied. Then he was sent to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva, where he
spent a month in the children's ward. And another week in the internal
ward. Shackled.
With a soldier standing constant guard. The hospital medical file states
he was diagnosed as a critical kidney case. He is staying with his
parents, wrote a woman doctor. Home phone number so and so. Living at
home. At Qalandiya refugee camp. This is what she wrote about the
shackled boy, suffering internal injuries unknown prior to his
imprisonment. A shackled boy, whose provenance is so obvious. Did she
really think he just arrived from his parents' custody? And still, so
she wrote. In his parents' custody. And did not report what was obvious
and should have been reported, the possibility of having undergone
abuse.
Not only soldiers maintain the brutal terror of Occupation.
She and the rest of the hospital staff who did not wonder how and why
such severe internal injuries: who did not summon the police, and a youth
investigator, who did not fill their duty to report the apparent abuse of a
child.
Of course not a Palestinian child.
There is no such thing as a Palestinian child. There is only a
Palestinian.
His age, his name - are his ethnicity.
"In the custody of his parents" the collaborator wrote about the
shackled boy.
And asked no questions. True, the soldiers at Naqab Prison are the
ones who abused him, who beat him, who perpetrated his severe kidney
condition. But the hospital staff who saw and kept silence, and turned a
blind eye and wrote that he was "in custody of his parents" are just as
bad as the ones who literally beat him. They inflicted the last blow.
He lay there and was treated and was sent back to prison. Until being
sent home. Since then his health has been deteriorating. He is nineteen
years-old now. He foams at the mouth. He falls to the ground and cannot
move and groans with pain. He cannot go to the bathroom. At times
several people have to carry him along. He is medicated for the pains he
still suffers in his leg, still not operated, but his kidneys that are
malfunctioning now, have no cure. You need dialysis, said his doctor in
Ramallah.
Ayoub has ten brothers and sisters. His elder brother is in prison, so
that practically speaking Ayoub is the eldest. His father is disabled
and hasn't worked for ten years. His mother suffers from a congenital
disease as a result of which her ear secretes pus into her brain. They
have no money for surgery. When she tried to go to Mukassad Hospital for
treatment, soldiers threw teargas at her. Several weeks before his
arrest, Ayoub had found employment at a chocolate factory in Ramallah.
On Tuesday, June 15th 2007, he was arrested in Beit Hanina. According to
his indictment, he tried to avoid a checkpoint, and two soldiers caught
him and asked for his ID, and he presented it to them and said, of his
own free will: I came to kill a Jew. And then they arrested him.
Why did you say that, Ayoub? Why? At first we couldn't believe it. That
you said so. This is not you. This is not like you. You didn't go to
kill anyone, you're not like that. We – Tami and I – were supposed to
meet him two days after his arrest. We had set the meeting for that
Friday, at the checkpoint.
True, people are not always predictable, but there are certain things
that are just plainly impossible. His mother, too, said this. Perhaps he
yelled, she said. Perhaps he threw stones. But to go out and kill
someone, that just can't be. That's just not him.
We thought that, as very often and perhaps usually happens, everything
was invented. That this was another case of soldiers – heady with their
own power and Occupation – thinking everything is permissible, including
false accusations. Perhaps they found Ayoub too rude and made up a
story. This is what inevitably happens, as predictably as punctuation.
Something his bold, fierce personality could easily inspire. This is how
they ruined his kidneys, too. Truly, it all sounded so made-up. That
they demanded to see his ID and he, of his own accord, told them he'd
come to kill a Jew. It all sounds so absurd, if he'd really wanted that,
why volunteer such information as no one had demanded of him. We were
certain this was invented. But we also know that he would most likely
confess. It is nearly impossible not to. As Anat of Physicians for Human
Rights has said, in the Russian Compound (Jerusalem Police Headquarters)
a human being confesses to being a lizard. The Occupation keeps
detainees for interrogation until they confess. There is time aplenty.
During this time, they are not in touch with lawyers.
And eventually they confess. Or in most cases. It just cannot be
otherwise. Or they sign something they do not understand. Because they
have been threatened or tortured. Or tricked, or words have been planted
in their mouths. But they always confess. And then they get to court, or
rather so-called court, very far from court in the normal sense. All
serving the Occupation and its values rather than truth or justice. In
other words, most arrests have nothing to do with real suspicion or
guilt. Even in the Occupation's terms, whereby resistance is criminal,
no court procedure can really establish guilt. People are mostly
arrested as a result of their names being cited by others under duress.
Who are coerced to turn someone – anyone - in. Fill a certain quota.
Under threat. I am saying that even in order to weed out insurgents, the
means taken cannot be effective. On the contrary. The sort of pressure
methods applied cause everyone to confess to anything regardless of
their actions, and agents are impossible to spot. Unavoidably, one
concludes that truth is not the issue. Perhaps the issue is to show
who's in charge. To sow fear and chaos and uncertainty, perhaps to
recruit collaboration and undermine Palestinian society. Just as the
permit-system is meant to recruit collaborators by depriving basic
rights that in order to regain them, one must give something in return.
The prisons must be serving the same purpose. So it
seems.
And after all, when the Occupation authorities have 'nailed' a guilty
person – according to their terms – they do not bother to try that
person in court. They simply 'eliminate'. Targeted elimination.
Since when is court necessary in order to discover the truth, as far as
Israel is concerned. Or in order to inflict punishment. No doubt, the
courts, beyond maintaining a proper façade, serve different purposes.
We came to the court. And we saw him. We saw Ayoub. And then we
understood. What we hadn't understood before. We realized that since we
had seen Ayoub, his spirit had been horrendously torn asunder. We
realized that the time gone by extended longer than him. Deeper. More
obscure.
"I confess", he said, before the judge finished reading aloud the entire
indictment.
"I confess. Let's get this over with." "Listen to the charges first",
said the judge.
"I confess. Send me to prison. Why don't you get this over with?"
His lawyer approached us, visibly upset. He's refusing any aid, he said.
Even the indictment does not contain proof of intention or attempt. Only
what he himself said. After all, he did not do it. I could get him off
with just a few months but he refuses. He'll be sitting for ten years,
like this. Or seven. I don't know what to do. He doesn't want any help.
Except for saying hello, with that bright face of his, he did not direct
his gaze.
It was withdrawn, intense, fierce.
We no longer saw nineteen-year old Ayoub, whose childhood was crushed by
the Occupation and racism and abuse by occupier-terror. We no longer saw
that intelligent, pained boy who cried out "No!", who had wanted to
maybe go abroad to study, who tried with all his might to get care for
his failing health, who ran to help his mother whenever the UNRWA
deliveries arrived, and concealed the pains in his leg, who
raised his hands up high while soldiers were shooting at him, and shout
"Aya, how are you!?" Silly, cute, too-young hero.
What we saw was a wound that looked like a boy.
An open wound without borders or names.
Whether prison-bound for years or not, I hope he stays alive. I hope his
kidneys hold out. I hope he will not be beaten up again. I hope he is
treated with dialysis when the moment comes, when there will be no
choice. That one day he will find happiness, and calm, that one day his
life will be easier. He is exactly the same age as Amos, Tami's son.
Ayoub, our dear friend.
Translated by Tal Haran
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