2011 began on a grim note with the death of three Palestinian civilians on the first two days.
Jawaher Abu-Rahma, 36, died in the West Bank village of Bil’in after Israeli forces used tear gas on a joint Israeli-Palestinian demonstration against the separation barrier on 31 December 2010.
Activists tweeted from the scene in real time, reporting that one demonstrator had been critically injured. Eyewitnesses reported that an extraordinary quantity of CS tear-gas canisters were fired at non-violent demonstrators, causing a cloud of tear-gas from which it was hard to escape. According to later reports by her family, Abu-Rahma apparently inhaled the gas, lost consciousness and fell to the ground, and her evacuation was delayed by the presence of the gas.
According to her doctors, she was unconscious when admitted to a hospital in Ramallah and was treated unsuccessfully in the Intensive Care Unit. She died at 9 am the following day, 1 January. Palestinian activists have called upon the Israeli army to stop using CS gas during suppression of demonstrations. Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv the same day in protest at her killing.
The Israeli army has rejected the claims regarding death from exposure to tear-gas, suggesting they were fabricated by leftists, and has claimed that the circumstances of Abu-Rahma’s death are unclear.
Also on 1 January, AS,* a 20-year-old man from Gaza, died of a serious disease after being prevented access to lifesaving care in a specialized hospital.
In September 2010 AS was diagnosed with Budd Chiari syndrome, a liver disease that eventually led to liver failure. In mid-December he was referred to Maqassed hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment, and an appointment was set for 26 December 2010. Although the family submitted a request for a medical permit to exit Gaza on 13 December, they only heard back from the Israeli authorities almost two weeks later.
The patient was summonsed to an interrogation with the Israeli secret police (shabak), scheduled for 30 December – four days after the hospital appointment – as a precondition for a decision. However, by this time AS was in a coma. Although the family explained that he was already unconscious and needed to reach a specialized hospital urgently, and despite repeated requests made by Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, no further response was received from the Israeli authorities. AS died of his illness at Shifaa’ hospital in Gaza on 1 January.
Finally, on 2 January, Mahmoud Daraghmeh, 20, from the village of Toubas in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint south of Nablus on his way to work. Eyewitnesses reported that he was unarmed and that he was carrying only bottles of soft drinks.
The Israeli army later claimed that the shooting was a result of a ‘misunderstanding.’ Daraghmeh was transported to an emergency clinic in Toubas where doctors confirmed that he was dead. The Israeli army has announced that it has initiated a probe into the incident.
According to Israeli online news site Ynet, initial findings of the probe show that eight bullets were fired at Daraghmeh, all from within a protected structure at the checkpoint, at first by a single soldier, and later by two others, who ‘assisted their friend,’ despite the fact that they all knew that Daraghmeh was unarmed. All the soldiers belong to the Duchifat Battalion of the Kfir Brigade.
* The full name of the patient from Gaza has been withheld for reasons of medical confidentiality.
Photo by Joseph Dana, @josephdana1 on twitpic
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