On 9 July 2000, I finished work later than usual, at 9 P.M. My dad asked me to go to the Malha Mall to fix his phone. One of the workers from the factory rode with me. When we reached the French Hill junction, the traffic light was green but a soldier was standing almost in the middle of the road and I couldn’t drive. I flashed the lights and honked for him to move, but he didn’t move and I had to stop really close to him, with the traffic light still green. I asked him to move aside because he was putting his life in danger. The soldier told me I was being too cheeky and ordered me to keep driving, but in the meantime the traffic light had turned red so I refused. There’s a camera at the intersection and it was just a soldier who happened to be standing there, not a police officer.
The soldier demanded that I show him my ID card. I refused and told him to order a police car and that I’d give the ID to the police. The soldier called someone on his phone, read out my license plate number and instructed me to park after the traffic light, on the side of the road. I was scared because he had taken my license plate number, so I did what he said. The soldier followed behind me. At that moment, another soldier passed by and asked the first soldier what was going on. He replied that I was trying to be a big man and that he was going to teach me a lesson.
When I heard that, I immediately called the police 100 emergency hotline. I told the woman who answered that I was in trouble and gave her the address of the place. Suddenly, two Border Police jeeps showed up and blocked me. One stopped in front of my car and the other behind me. There were ten police officers there, in addition to the two soldiers. Three police officers attacked me and hit me while I was still in the car talking to the police hotline. Then they grabbed me by my clothes and dragged me outside. Four of them hit me all over the body and others removed the worker who was sitting next to me from the car. They punched him a few times and made him stand on the side. They beat me for about ten minutes.
Then the officers told me to get up, but I couldn’t. They picked me up and threw me into one of their jeeps, in the back. Four police officers got into the jeep and drove towards the police station in Neve Ya’akov. Along the way, they kept beating me. They kicked me in the groin and the rest of the body and cursed me. A police officer saw me and asked me what had happened. I told him and he felt sorry for me and told me to ask to be taken to a hospital. The cops who beat me told him to open a file for me but he refused and said I should be taken to hospital first.
At some point, my father came to the station and told the cops to take me to the hospital. He threatened that he would file a complaint against them and only then they took me to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, where I was treated. One of the workers at the hospital, whom I know, wrote down the number of the jeep that brought me in, as well as the name and service number of each of the officers.
Then an officer came to the hospital and asked that we “bury the hatchet”. He told my dad that if I didn’t agree they would arrest me, so I agreed. Two days later, I filed a complaint against the officers with the Department of Internal Police Investigations.
At the French Hill intersection, East Jerusalem, 9 July 2000
The testimony was given to Raslan Mahagna on 20 August 2000
I live in al-‘Esawiyah, East Jerusalem, and work as a carpenter at a furniture factory in which my father is a partner in the Atarot Industrial Zone. Every day I leave for work around 6:45 A.M. and get home at 5:00 P.M.
Beyond the physical injury, the situation hurt me very badly mentally. People kept saying: You’ve been married for five years, how come you don’t have any children yet? I was depressed and preferred to avoid contact with people and save myself the embarrassment.
At that time, I also neglected my work at the factory. It was just because of my dad that they didn’t fire me long ago. I was always on edge and felt helpless because of my condition. I felt that people were mocking me and talking about me behind my back, saying I wasn’t enough of a man. My father covered all the expenses for the treatment, and without him I would not be healthy and would not be able to have six children. Today my eldest daughter is 15 years old and my little boy is two.
After my eldest daughter was born, I regained my confidence. I felt that I was coming back to life and started going out of the house again and renewed social ties. But even so, when I had two children, I decided to leave Jerusalem and move to Eilat. Because of the assault, I felt that Jerusalem was not a safe place for Arabs and I didn’t want my little children to grow up in a city that was unsafe for them and full of racism. Eilat, on the other hand, is a city with a lot of tourists and allows people of different nations to live together. My children now attend Jewish schools and have German and Russian friends. My family lives in Eilat, but I work all over the country. I took several courses in Germany in installing operating room furniture and laser doors, and during the week I go through all the hospitals and medical centers and work in them. In the weekend I return to my family.
Years ago, I went to the Department of Internal Police Investigations to find out what was happening with the complaint I submitted. They told me I had not filed a complaint, although I clearly had. I understood that the department is just a front that is not really intended to serve victims like us. That may also have affected our decision to move to Eilat. We had lost all trust.
Today you opened up old wounds and flooded me with bad memories that I don’t want to recall. I only agreed to sit with you because you explained to me that the purpose was not to file another complaint. I have no faith in any system that is supposed to get justice for Arab victims whose rights have been violated. It’s hard for me to talk about it and I have nothing to add. Let’s stop now, there’s no point in digging up the past.
Medhat a-Shweiki, now 42 and a father of six living in Eilat (southern Israel), spoke with B’Tselem field researcher ‘Amer ‘Aruri this year and described the repercussions of his assault:
When the cops attacked me in 2000, I had been married for about a year and a half. We didn’t have any children yet, we had decided to wait a while. But after that assault, I couldn’t have children. I went to a doctor and he told me that it was because of the severe beating I’d received in the testicles, and that I needed treatment so I could have children. I was treated by a doctor in Ramallah, which cost 20,000 USD.
After reviewing the investigation material in the case, I decided not to prosecute the officer due to lack of sufficient evidence.
Letter to B’Tselem dated 5 February 2001 from Eran Shendar, Director of the Department of Internal Police Investigations