Jafer Was Packing Up His Hebron Market Stall When Israeli Police Shot Him, Shattering His Face - Twilight Zone - Haaretz.com
Three photographs. In one, a muscular, good-looking man in a blue T-shirt and a smile on his lips, is carrying his 1-year-old son in his arms. In the second, the father’s face is shattered, horribly disfigured: His nose is smashed, his eyes are bulging, the flesh is exposed, everything is covered with blood clots. The face evokes a dead man. That photo was taken two months ago. In the third image, his face is recovering but still twisted and scarred, a few teeth are missing and his nose is askew. This is a photograph we took this week.
This is what happens when a Border Policewoman who’s bored or looking for some action, or perhaps is vicious or negligent in her duty, fires a sponge-tipped metal bullet from an illegally close range of a few meters straight into the face of a clothes peddler in the bustling Hebron market while he is standing innocently next to his booth.
The occupation authorities shut down the market in the Bab al-Zawiya neighborhood, with its hundreds of stalls, whenever the city’s settlers are celebrating a Jewish holy day and want to visit the tomb of the biblical judge Othniel Ben Kenaz, which is situated next to the market. Such was the case on on July 27, the fast day of Tisha B’Av, when Hebron settlers flock to the tomb.
Jafer Abu Ramuz at the hospital, after being shot.
On that morning, Jafer Abu Ramuz set out as usual for the Bab al-Zawiya market to open his booth – his earnings have supported his family for the past six years. He arrived there at 8 A.M., as usual, removed the merchandise from the locked booth and put it on display, as always. Nothing foretold what would happen a few hours later, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, designated as a day of fasting in memory of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people on this day.
Abu Ramuz sells only men’s shirts, at 20 shekels ($5.25) each; on a good day he will sell 20 shirts. The market was quiet, despite its proximity to a Border Police compound and to the city’s Tel Rumeida settlement. Work proceeded normally. None of the hundreds of merchants in the market had any idea that it was Tisha B’Av, on which all booths must be shut down and the Palestinians have to make themselves scarce, so the settlers can observe their commemoration unhindered. This procedure is repeated not only on Tisha B’Av but also on other Jewish holidays and festivals, at the will of the settlers.
The day was like any other until shortly after 4 P.M., when Border Police forces swept into the market and ordered the merchants to shutter their booths immediately – it was the holy Tisha B’Av. The children who work in the market or hang out there began throwing stones at the Israeli troops – also a regular part of the occupation routine here.
Like the others, Abu Ramuz, 49, who has seven children and has never been in trouble with the authorities, also started to pack up his wares and close his booth. He saw four Border Police officers pursuing stone-throwing children up and down the stairs that lead to the market, and firing tear gas at them. Footage shot by one of the merchants shows the stores and booths closing up and the market emptying out. In the video, four Border Police officers, one of them a woman, are standing idly by and observing events, rifles at the ready, of course.
Border police at the Hebron market, minutes before Jafer Abu Ramuz was shot in the face.
Suddenly one of them opens fire at an unknown target for no apparent reason, a brief laugh is heard in the background and the video ends. That was not the shot that decided the fate of Abu Ramuz. The shot in the video was fired a few minutes before the shot that hit him, though it’s not clear why, or whether anyone was hurt by it. In the clip, which we played for Abu Ramuz, he identified the four troops as the ones he saw on the street before he was shot, among them the policewoman who shot him, as eyewitnesses told him later.
Abu Ramuz and his family live in the heart of densely populated Hebron, in the al-Hares neighborhood; getting to his home was time-consuming this week because of the very heavy traffic – nothing unusual in the city’s center. Their apartment is small and modest but tasteful – Jafer himself built it, and he decorated the walls and ceilings ornately.
A framed photograph of his daughter Juri wearing a graduation gown – in this case to mark the completion of kindergarten – hangs in the living room. Six-year-old Juri, who is now in the first grade, came home while we were visiting. Dressed in her school uniform, her hair in braids, kissed the cheeks of the guests.
For years he worked in Israel, distributing soft drinks to shops in West Jerusalem. He was never in any kind of trouble.
Jafer was shot at about 4:30 P.M. – he doesn’t remember the exact time. He was standing in front of the stall; the street was quiet, he says, there was no stone throwing. Suddenly he felt a powerful blow to his face and heard an explosive sound. He started to lose consciousness and sat down on the ground as blood oozed from his face. A year ago he suffered a heart attack and has been taking blood thinners since then, which probably aggravated the bleeding. His first thought was that he had been shot with live ammunition and that his life was about to end. He says the Border Police officers were 4 or 5 meters away from him before they shot him.
Settler face off with Palestinians in Hebron, last November.Credit: MUSSA ISSA QAWASMA/Reuters
A spokesperson for the Israel Police this week issued the following statement to Haaretz: “Without referring to one case or another, we will note that the security forces were operating to safeguard worshipers in the Tomb of Othniel Ben Kenaz in the alleys of Hebron. During the activity, a disturbance of order began, in which rocks, glass bottles, paint and tires were thrown in an attempt to penetrate the circle of security. In the wake of the violent disturbance and the danger of injury to the forces, [crowd] dispersal means were used. We note that the event you describe is not known [to the police].”
The event is not known. Without referring to one case or another. And last but not least, the disturbance: the closure of the market for the settlers’ commemoration constitutes order, the natural resistance to the closure is a disturbance of the order.
People in the market immediately bundled Abu Ramuz into a private car and took him to the city’s Alia Hospital. The photograph taken then shows his clothes bloodied and his face bandaged. The eyewitnesses related that after the shooting, the Border Police officers went about their business normally, as if nothing had happened. They crossed to the other side of the street and continued to preside over the closure of the market ahead of the big commemoration. Someone in the market photographed Abu Ramuz’s stall after he was taken to the hospital – the floor in front is stained with blood.
His son Yusuf, who’s 2, is curled up in his arms now. When the staff in Alia saw the seriousness of the injury, they summoned an ambulance to rush him to the more advanced and better equipped Ahli Hospital. He was taken to surgery at once – a four-hour operation to try to save his shattered face. He received six blood transfusions and then spent seven days in intensive care, until he was well enough to be discharged.
Jafer Abu Ramuz with his son in Hebron, a year ago.
He returned home with his face bandaged. His two oldest daughters, aged 12 and 15, had to change the dressing every day, and – appallingly – saw their father’s disfigured face. Only his two oldest sons, who are 19 and 22, visited him in the hospital; the other children didn’t see him until he returned home. The little ones flinched with fear. It took them more than a month, he says, until they got used to his new appearance.
The road to full recovery is still long. When the wounds heal and the pain subsides, he will undergo more operations to correct his nose, teeth and jaws. In the meantime, he can eat only liquid or soft food. The pains remain fierce, even two months after the incident. And two months after being shot, he still hasn’t returned to his market stall – he says he’s incapable of working – and the family is living off of small loans from good people. They have no income at all. Lately he has also started to worry that his eyes, too, were affected by the bullet, as things seem to be increasingly dark. However, he doesn’t have the means to visit an eye doctor.
Our impression was that Jafer Abu Ramuz is a broken man, a person whose world fell apart in the blink of an eye, though he did nothing wrong.