For the 5th time in a row 24-year-old Mahmoud al-Issawi known as Atef was shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers during peaceful protests near the Gaza Strip border fence.
Issawi was injured in December during peaceful protests at the Gaza border in which hundreds of young people in the Gaza Strip gathered near the border fence expressing their rejection of the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognize Occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Issawi’s wounds varied and when he was shot for the 5th time recently pain became intolerable as the bullet hit his nerves penetrating his right leg and damaging his knee.
Permanent wounds
The young man who is known on Facebook as ‘The lover of the intifada’ despite his wounds which have not healed yet intends to continue going to the border to protest the siege of Gaza and the repeated aggression of the occupation against Palestinian holy sites and he is ready to sacrifice even if he is shot with a tenth bullet.
He was shot by a bullet in the knee. Two weeks after being hospitalized he underwent a surgery in which doctors installed bars of platinum in his knee.
He described those moments: “We burned the tires and approached the fence while the soldiers were behind the fence. They heavily fired bullets and (tear) gas at us. Two young men were wounded. When I was wounded a bullet penetrated my right leg and then my left knee. Doctors gave me six blood units after severe bleeding.”
Issawi was injured for the first time on October 16 2015 during a peaceful protest on the border of Al-Bureij camp at the beginning of the Al-Quds Intifada. He was later injured in the foot and leg.
“I have a bullet in my left knee and a bullet in the right thigh a third in my left foot and a fourth in my right knee” he told the PIC reporter.
Growing pain
A few days ago he stopped participating in the protests after he started moving on a wheelchair. He underwent repeated treatment sessions organized by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). He does not stop rubbing his injured leg. The nerve pain caused by the bullet wounds keeps him awake at night. His right leg hurts him severely from the side of the foot as his left knee completely hinders his movement.
He is surprised by at the ugliness of the occupation which shoots bullets at the bodies of children and young men along the border fence while the most they could do is burning tires and gathering near the border and throwing stones at the Israeli forces sometimes.
Issawi suffers from very poor financial conditions. He has no work and can barely provide treatment. After his 5th injury he became in need for treatment and nerves injections as well as daily painkillers.
Issawi was one of the witnesses at an Israeli military court held a few weeks ago to decide on the murder of child Abdel Rahman al-Dabbagh near the Bureij refugee camp border: “In the court they asked me what I saw and why I went to the border? They tried to cover their crime by displaying a large number of guns to hide the flare bomb that killed the child but I was able to recognize the weapon (that killed him).”
Hundreds of Palestinian youths and children are subject to daily gunfire along the border fence which resulted in dozens of deaths and many amputees.
