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October 2002
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'THE IDF'S ARROGANCE CONCEALS A LACK OF STRATEGY'Collateral damageby MICHEL REVEL *
IN ALL 2,435 Palestinians were killed between September 2000 and August 2002 in the colonial war that Ariel Sharon's government calls self-defence against terrorism; 497 of them were aged under 18 (1). It also left thousands of others permanently handicapped. Yet there is only one proper rehabilitation centre in the entire Gaza Strip, the Al Wafa rehabilitation and health centre, which opened in 1995. It has only 51 beds. The director, Dr Ibrahim Ghazal, showed me some of his patients. What sort of life can Fadi, who is 14, expect? On his way home from school one day in January, he was hit in the head by a bullet fired from a tank. He has been in hospital ever since. Unable to control his muscles, he still cannot sit up properly in a wheelchair. He is also aphasic. He spends most of the day in a rehabilitation room with physiotherapists who are working to reduce the stiffness in his joints. I saw one of them joke with him as he stretched the boy's muscles and attempted to bend his knees. Fadi alternately laughed and winced in pain. What will happen to him later? Will he, like Riad Ali Nasser, have a devoted family to look after him? Riad, now 43, was also hit in the head by a bullet, 12 years ago during the first intifada. He cannot stand, has very limited vision in his left eye, and very poor hearing even with a hearing aid he provided by a charitable organisation. I watch his son, Muhammad, 17, and his wife, Itaf, carry him to his makeshift wheelchair from the cart in which he had travelled to visit his brother. They pushed it up to the table where his daughter, May, served tea for the guest Zeinab al-Falit is 45 and has 11 children, aged from 6 to 23, the eldest in dialysis. Like most Palestinians, her husband is unemployed. On 8 April, ZeInab was weeding aubergines and tomatoes in her garden when she was hit by three bullets from a tank protecting an Israeli settlement 150 metres away. One bullet traversed her lumbar spinal column. Since then she has been paraplegic. Though her legs have no muscle tone, they may eventually be able to support her over a short distance on flat ground, with heavy braces and crutches. She will be able to urinate only through a catheter, with a permanent risk of infection. She will never work in her garden again. Randa al-Kassir is 38. Her first husband was killed in the first intifada. Her second is unemployed. She has four children, aged 6 to 15. In the Rafah suburb where she lives, she was fired at from a tank on 1 May. A bullet shattered a dorsal vertebra. The muscles of her trunk and lower limbs are permanently paralysed, and she will have difficulty in moving about in a wheelchair. She will always be at risk from urinary infections and bedsores that will regularly put her in hospital. The life of Alam al-Kabta, 23, has also been marred by repeated hospitalisation. He has been a tetraplegic since 23 December 1992, when he went for a walk with his father in the Gaza market. He was hit in the neck by a bullet. Alam was a bright boy who wanted to be an engineer. Now he is dependent on his father and his six brothers and sisters to wash and feed him, and move him from his bed to his wheelchair. Kamal Britka, aged 16, Nassar al-Rizzi, 18, and Yussef Muhammad al-Mansi, 17, were less promising pupils who had planned to look for work farming and building. All three were hit by bullets while walking in the street. Kamal and Nassar are paraplegic, and Yussef a hemiplegic. They will be always have difficult and limited mobility. On 11 February Awad Sifi, 49, a primary school teacher, was sitting at home near a window when he was hit in the neck and lower jaw by a dumdum bullet fired from a tank. He was in a coma for eight weeks. Dr Amee Jameh told me that Awad was known in Jabalia for his helpfulness. Now he is tetraplegic, and still has a tracheostomy tube. His wife and 10 children are impatient for him to return to their badly damaged home. He will need their help for the rest of his life. Wail Joudia, 32, a carpenter, is luckier. On 4 May he was on his way home from Israel, where he worked as a day labourer, when he came under fire from the Netzarim settlement. A complex fracture of his right ankle was operated on in Egypt. After lengthy rehabilitation, Wail will retain only some stiffness and pain in the joint and will probably, although with difficulty, be able to continue working as a carpenter. He will be able to manage to climb scaffolding, but the long walks along steep footpaths that skirt Israeli roadblocks are another matter. It is impossible to say how many of the 40,000 Palestinians (including 8,000 minors) wounded in the second intifada will remain handicapped. Many will have lasting or permanent injuries, and join those handicapped through disease, or as a result of domestic, road and industrial accidents. How are we to evaluate the psychological damage sustained by this population, for whom the terrors and traumas of early childhood have been followed by aggression and humiliation? * Professor of physical medicine and rehabilation in Paris Read: Israel: the army in command (1) According to AFP, 1,842 Palestinians, 604 Israelis and 50 foreigners were killed from the end of September 2000 to 16 September 2002.
Translated by Barry Smerin
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