Our house is about 30 meters away from the main Tulkarm-Nablus road. It has three small rooms and no windows panes or shutters. In winter we cover the windows with plastic. My five older children go to UNRWA schools in the camp, and the two little ones stay home with me.
On 13 October 2001, Israeli tanks entered Tulkarm. Since then, our lives have become hell. The tanks are in the grove in front of the camp, about 500 meters away. There are also tanks on a hill about 500 meters behind the camp, hidden by the houses. Every day we hear shelling and shooting, and sometimes helicopters over the camp. The firing usually increases at night, when there are exchanges of fire between Palestinian gunmen shooting from the alleys of the camp towards the Israeli tanks, which massively shell the camp.
That’s why, as the evening draws near, we all go inside and dare not go out. We are afraid of being hit by the shooting. Every time the shooting starts, I quickly sit my kids down near the stairs that lead to the roof, because it’s the safest place in the house. If the kids are asleep when the shooting starts, they wake up from the gunfire and stay up until it’s over. When there is an exchange of fire during the daytime, the children come home early from school.
On Thursday, 1 November 2001, we all woke up at 6:00 A.M. My husband went to work and I dressed the kids and got them ready for school. They drank tea, ate biscuits and went to school. At 8:30, I heard helicopters circling in the air. I watched from the balcony and saw three tanks traveling in a column towards the village of ‘Anabta on the Tulkarm-Nablus road. Just then, my children came home. They said the teachers had released them early because they feared the helicopters intended to shell the camp.
Around 9 A.M. we heard loud firing. As always, I took all the kids to the stairs that lead to the roof. We all crowded in there, me and the seven kids, in a small area of about one square meter. Some of the children sat on the stairs and some stood. I stood holding my little boy, Muhammad, who is one year old. Meanwhile, the gunshots and the noise of the tanks increased. Suddenly, our whole house shook. My daughter Hanan shouted that her neck hurt. I put the baby down and looked at her neck. I saw that she was bleeding, but I didn’t know what had hit her.
I reassured her and told her that when the shooting stopped, I’d take her to the doctor. Then I saw Iman fall to her knees. I went over and saw that she was bleeding heavily from the neck and back. I hugged her and started shouting and crying out to her, but she didn’t answer, she had already lost consciousness. I thought she was dead and started screaming for help. My other kids started crying and they all lay down on the floor. I didn’t know what to do.
Just then, several young men came into the house, took my two injured girls and went outside with them. I didn’t know what was going on with them and blacked out myself, probably because of the stress. Then I woke up and saw some of my neighbors around me. They calmed me down and told me Hanan and Iman had been lightly wounded by shrapnel and were being treated in hospital in Tulkarm. I insisted on seeing them and one of the neighbors took me to the hospital. By that point, the shooting had stopped.
When I arrived at the hospital, Hanan was sleeping. I woke her up and she told me she felt alright. One of the doctors came in and told me her injury was minor and that I could relax. I didn’t see Iman and when I asked about her, I was told that she was in an ambulance on the way the hospital in Nablus. My husband’s cousin Fathi went to Nablus and in the evening, when my husband returned from work, we returned home with Hanan.
Later, Fathi called and said they had transferred Iman to al-Muqassad Hospital in Jerusalem, because she was in bad shape. He went there and stayed with her until Saturday, and then my husband replaced him.
I can’t get to Jerusalem because I don’t have a permit to enter Israel and because it’s very hard with the closure and the checkpoints. I talked to my husband on the phone. He said Iman’s condition was serious, that the shrapnel had caused a spinal injury and that she could not move her right arm or leg. The doctors said that when her condition stabilized, they might operate on her.
in Nur a-Shams Refugee Camp, Tulkarm District, 1 November 2001
The testimony of Najah Abu Sha’ala, 33, a mother of seven, Iman’s and Hanan’s mother
The testimony was given to Raslan Mahagna on 5 November 2001
I have seven children. The eldest is 12 years old and the youngest 1. My husband does sanitation work at the Tulkarm Municipality and is our only breadwinner. He suffers from a neurological disease and headaches, so he doesn’t work a full month and his salary is low. My husband is known as a quiet man who has nothing to do with politics and only focuses on supporting the family. My daughter Sundus, 2, was burned a few months ago in the chest and stomach from hot water that was on the stove. She has big scars and has to undergo plastic surgery, but we have no money to pay for it. I am seven months pregnant and have diabetes.
That morning we were at school, at recess. We heard bombing and there was a helicopter right above the school. It was so close that the soldiers could easily jump out into the yard. There was a terrible panic, everyone was screaming and crying, the students were running around crashing into each other out of fear. The teachers tried to gather us in a safe place and calm us down, and after a short while the principal and the teachers told us to go home. My older sister Hanan grabbed me by the hand and we left school. At the exit there was a large tank and youths were throwing stones at it. It was the first time I’d seen a tank and I was very scared. It was huge and threatening. In the end, we got home and I calmed down a little, because I thought the house was a safe place, but that turned out to be wrong.
At the entrance to the camp, across from our house, there was another tank. I was standing by the stairs leading to the roof when I heard an explosion inside our house. We were all sitting on the stairs, and my little brothers and sisters were crying. Then I don’t know what happened. I woke up in hospital, completely naked. The paramedics were searching for where I was hit. The doctor asked me where it hurt and I told him that my whole body ached. My sister was in the bed next to me and called out to me, she tried to reach out to take my hand. I was crying, the pain was so bad.
I was taken to al-Muqassad Hospital. I cried a lot because my mother couldn’t come with me. Someone who was sitting in the ambulance told me not to be afraid. He said he was a relative of mine and that he would take care of me. Only afterwards did I learn that he was my aunt’s husband. I didn’t know him because we did not join our mother on her visits to relatives.
I kept crying until my father came to the hospital. Only then did I calm down. I wanted to go home and begged my father to let me get up, but I wasn’t allowed out of bed. In the end, after I begged and cried, my father brought a big wheelchair, picked me up and sat me down in it. I couldn’t move a muscle. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized I would be confined to a wheelchair for a long time.
I stayed two weeks in the hospital and then they took me to the Abu Raya center in Ramallah for physiotherapy. My maternal aunt took care of me because my mother was pregnant. She visited me maybe twice. Whenever she came, I was so happy. She was quiet and gentle, and I felt how much she loved me and how close we were. I wanted her to stay, but even though I was little, I realized she couldn’t. I cried a lot, and she cried too. I was in bed all the time, staring at the ceiling, unable to move or do anything. My arms and legs were strapped so I wouldn’t fall out of bed.
After a few months I went home for a visit during a holiday, either ‘Eid al-Fitr or ‘Eid al-Adha. An ambulance brought me home in a wheelchair. I was very happy. I met my baby brother, who had been born in the meantime, and everyone came to visit me, including my school principal and teachers. I saw in their eyes that they were very sorry for me. I was a top student and my grades were always good. A few days later I went back to the Abu Raya center and stayed there for another few weeks. In March, I went home.
I didn’t have the wheelchair anymore, but my right leg still hurt. It wasn’t strong enough and it was very difficult to walk all the way to school. It’s a long walk that takes about 15 minutes. I was often late to school because I had a hard time getting there. Some of the girls made fun of the way I walked.
I had to have another operation to get the shrapnel out of my neck. The doctors said that otherwise, it could cause me complete paralysis or even death. The surgery was scheduled in Jordan and I was due to travel in May 2002, together with my father. But on 10 April 2002, soldiers shot my father and killed him on his way to work, at ‘Anabta checkpoint. It was a terrible blow for me. My father was the one who picked me up and made me laugh and would find all kinds of tricks to convince me to eat because I was very thin at the time.
There was no one to go with me to Jordan, so in the end I went with my maternal uncle. He was with me for three-four weeks. In the surgery they removed the shrapnel from my neck but not the fragments in my head, because they said it would endanger my life. After I got back, I had to have physical therapy again. After the surgery, I was like a baby taking her first steps.
Although my condition has improved, my right leg still feels weak and I can’t stand or walk much. My right hand was also weak and things would fall out of my hand. For example, in the middle of eating, the spoon would fall and the food would spill onto my clothes. Now things have improved thanks to physical therapy. I graduated from high school and started studying accounting at the al-Quds Open University. I also studied makeup but couldn’t continue because the work affected my body and I became weak and exhausted. I also worked as a secretary at a doctor’s office, but he wasn’t considerate about my condition and didn’t understand it, so I left. I hope I find a good job soon.
Over the years, several young men asked for my hand in marriage, but when they learned of my injury, they changed their minds. At first my mother would get angry and upset, she would suddenly become a completely different person. I got engaged twice, but the engagement was canceled. The first time I got engaged to my cousin who lives in Jordan, but I canceled the engagement because I felt he would treat me like a maid and want me to stay home all the time. The second time I found out the guy wanted to get engaged just to get a permit to work in Israel which only married men can get.
I had already given up and didn’t believe I would ever get married, but five months ago I got engaged to a young man from Tulkarm. I don’t know what my life will look like now. I am very worried about the future. I’m afraid that pregnancy and childbirth will make my health worse and that my husband will abandon me. My fiancé doesn’t visit me as much as he did at first and I always think it might be because of my injury. I’m afraid that maybe he doesn’t love me, maybe the way I walk bothers him. I know that people talk about me. I had a lot of accusations hurled at me after I canceled the previous engagement. Everyone treats me like a crippled girl who can’t get married, give birth and take on the tasks that come with marriage and children. Everyone sees me as a girl who is lacking something and if I get married then my husband will probably be disabled like me.
It’s hard for me that I’m not seen as a girl who can fall in love, or have someone like her back, who can love and be loved. I’ve been paying the price of my injury my whole life. I’m expected to live like someone who’s worth less than others. I want to live like any other girl, I want to have a family and children to love and protect.
Iman Abu Sha’ala, now 26, spoke with B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i this year and related what she has been through since the severe injury:
My childhood was difficult. I was the fourth child in a large and very poor family. I always sat on the side and was very quiet. But on 1 November 2001, everything changed. It was a black day that turned my life upside down.
- Our investigation into the matter revealed that on 1 November 2001, terrorists who were planning to carry out an attack in the Sharon area were identified riding in a taxi between the villages of Bal’a and ‘Anabta. After the identification, shots were fired from a helicopter at the taxi. This killed two Hamas terrorists.
- Palestinian reports submitted to the Israeli forces after the operation stated that as a result of the helicopter fire, the child Iman Abu Sha’ala was seriously injured and later taken to hospital in Nablus. This matches, as noted, the information you submitted, according to which Iman and her sister were injured by shrapnel in the family home near the Tulkarm-Nablus road (on which the village of ‘Anabta is located).
- After reviewing the overall circumstances of the incident, the decision is that there are no grounds for ordering an MPIU investigation on this matter.
Letter to B’Tselem dated 8 April 2003 from Col. Einat Ron, Chief Military Prosecutor