December 1989, Page 19

From the Hebrew Press

A Report From Gaza: I Had to See to Believe

By Dr. Joseph Algazy

I am skeptic and one thing I heard in Tel Aviv I couldn't believe. I had to travel to Gaza to see with my own eyes what had happened there to a man with a Palestinian flag tattoo on his arm.

Twenty months of the intifada have done something to the city of Gaza. The landscape has changed, poverty and neglect have grown and the people, in spite of the suffering, demonstrate great vitality and provocative obstinacy. One has to be blind not to understand that in the battle of Gaza, the Israeli army, the mightiest in the region, has been defeated by the civilian population.

We met Jamal Ahmed Hussein Radwan at Al-Shifa Hospital. Near his bed were his wife and family, and shocked onlookers, as well as six-year-old Ahmed-one of five sons. Jamal, 29, lives in the Yibne quarter in the Rafah refugee camp and was working in the Tel Aviv Carmel market. He told us:

"My little son Ahmed was strolling in the neighborhood and I went to look for him. I encountered a patrol of soldiers, one of whom saw a tattoo of the Palestinian flag on my left arm. He went wild-grabbed my hair, banged my head against the wall, took a knife from his pocket and with one cut peeled a piece of tattooed skin from my arm. I was screaming with pain. When my mother came, shouting about what they were doing to me, she was beaten up by the soldiers."

"I fled from the place, but the soldiers came running after me. A car picked me up and the soldiers fired at it. I was brought to the hospital in Khan Yunis where I was treated. The wound became inflamed and I developed a fever. In the Gaza hospital they grafted skin from my right leg. The doctors say the graft on the arm is successful, but the wound on the leg heals slowly. I know the wound in my heart will never heal."

We saw he was crying quietly. We left, shocked. We could not say a word.

Dr. Joseph Algazy is a member of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, P.O. Box 14192, Tel Aviv, Israel. This is a condensation of an August, 1989 report he prepared for the league, which is headed by Dr. Israel Shahak. The full text of his report is contained in the November issue of Dr. Shahak's monthly From the Hebrew Press, available to Washington Report subscribers at $25 a year from the American Educational Trust, PO Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009.