An investigation into everyday suffering

It all started with a headline from the Ma’an news website:  “Israeli forces shoot mentally disabled man”. When the EAPPI team met Ma'moon Amin Nasser, the story had already changed several times – but remained another sad example of everyday suffering under the occupation.

When we read the article on the Ma'an website, Ecumenical Accompaniers based in Yanoun decided to find out the true story. The following day we set out to inquire in Madama, a village south of Nablus near the illegal Israeli settlement of Yitzhar. A modern highway which most Palestinians are banned from using connects Yitzhar with  other  settlements and Israel proper, while the road connecting the Palestinian villages is narrow, rough and badly maintained. It crosses the main road through a tunnel. 

The residents of Madama regularly suffer from aggressive acts committed by settlers:  beatings, cutting down olive trees, stone-throwing and theft of livestock.

Hassan Ziyadeh, a member of the Madama village council, told us a different story to that reported by Ma’an:

“The man is not mentally disabled, but he likes to be by himself”, he said. “He was not shot, but severely beaten by settlers, not the IDF, and then brought away in a car and abandoned near Huwwara in the middle of nowhere. People then brought him to a hospital in Nablus.”

We went to the house of the victim, who coincidentally arrived just about the same time as we did, coming home from hospital. We were invited inside, and over tea and coffee finally got the details of the story from the victim, 34-year-old Mamoon Amin Nasser, a shy and silent man, and from his mother Hudda, who had heard the story before. He related the story as follows:

Mamoon took his sheep to the fields of his family near the top of a hill, as he did every day. He was stopped by the Israeli army. He was already known to the soldiers and had been harassed and even beaten by settlers before. The encounter with the soldiers resulted in an argument over access and identification. The soldiers beat Mamoon severely. An Israeli army spokeswoman later described the beating as ‘use of moderate force’, according to Ma’an, but it resulted in numerous bruises and hematomes on Mamoon Amin Nassers head, chest and arms, which he showed us. Even the soldiers must have felt uneasy about his state - they delivered first aid, then took him to an Israeli hospital before taking him to the village of Huwara, where he was left to his fate.

Mamoon and his family had some harsh words about the way he had been treated for being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. The Amin Nasser family told us, a little resigned, that this was not the first incident with a violent outcome. But they said that they would continue to herd their animals in the area – after all, it was their land and they would not let the settlers or the army drive them away from it.

The army said they would "consider the incident a lesson in the event that procedures were altered." For us as EAs, the whole brutal tale demonstrated the need to show our protective presence as much as possible where such things happen, and to be with the people affected and assure them that their suffering will not go unnoticed.