Israeli police shattered this Palestinian elder’s bones — and drove away
Haj Suleiman Hathaleen protesting in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills
Ali Awad and Awdah Hathaleen report in 972:
On the afternoon of January 5, the Israeli occupation forces entered the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills, where we live, to confiscate unregistered Palestinian cars. An elderly man from the village, Haj Suleiman al-Hathaleen, tried to peacefully prevent them from leaving with the cars, when an Israeli police tow truck ran him over, causing severe injuries throughout his body. He is lying in critical condition in the hospital, closer to martyrdom than to life.
There are many well-known policies used by the Israeli occupation to displace Palestinians from our villages in Masafer Yatta, including by declaring a military firing zone on the land of twelve villages, and even invoking Ottoman-era laws to confiscate Palestinian-owned land for Jewish settlements. But lately, it seems that the policy of “breaking bones” — a strategy infamously promoted by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the First Intifada — has once again become a central method to displace us and to crush any hope of Palestinian popular resistance.
Haj Suleiman is an anti-occupation activist in his late 60s, who we have known our whole lives. Every time we go to his house in Umm al-Khair, he greets us with a cup of tea and a smile. Everyone in the South Hebron Hills knows him well — especially the Israeli occupation soldiers.
While Suleiman was peacefully resisting the confiscation of his neighbors’ cars on Wednesday, the Israeli police truck ran over him and dragged him for ten meters while he was caught underneath it. The police, however, simply left the scene of the crime, with Suleiman lying on the ground, bleeding and critically injured. His neighbors were the ones who called the ambulance, and he was transferred to a hospital in Hebron.