Muhsan described to Ynet on Wednesday the events which had taken place
on Saturday a week and a half prior: He was on his way from Nablus,
where he studies economics and accounting, to his hometown of Naqura
for a family wedding. On the way, he encountered four soldiers in an
armored vehicle.
The soldiers spotted Muhsan and asked him to stop. One of them asked for his ID and asked him to stand on the side of the road next to another Palestinian, who possessed a videotape of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. One of the soldiers told him to read what was written in Arabic on the videotape and translate it.
When Muhsan said he didn't know how to translate into Hebrew, the soldier retrieved a wooden staff from his vehicle. According to the youth, the other Palestinian ran and the soldier, unable to catch him, bound Muhsan's hands and forced him to come looking for the other man.
'Hizbullah blood, Hamas blood'
"The soldier asked me 'Why did you tell him to run?' When I said that I hadn't told him anything, he started hitting me…with the stick, mainly in the head. I told him 'That hurts very much, I haven't done anything.'"
Muhsan said that soldiers in a jeep driving by called upon the four soldiers to leave him alone. "One of the guys in the jeep said 'I'll ask them to release you'. They quit for a few minutes, but once the jeep passed, continued to hit me."
"I started bleeding, mostly from my head, and they said 'That's Hizbullah blood, that's Hamas blood'. They threw me into a nearby ditch and threw stones at me, stepped on my face and said 'Here's where you're going to die'," he recounted.
At that point, Muhsan said, the jeep was heard again. "The soldiers put something over my eyes and mouth and threw me into their vehicle so that the jeep wouldn't see." The whole time, he recalled, the driver of the vehicle did nothing to intervene. "When I tried to free myself and shout out to the jeep, he kicked me," he said.
'Threatened to kill me'
Muhsan claims that the soldiers barely checked passing Palestinians, and hurried them along in order to return to beating him. Finally, they examined his wallet, returned it and released him. "They said: 'If you tell anyone about this, we'll kill you'," he said.
Muhsan said that when he asked for his cellphone, he was beaten again, and when he asked for his ID, he was beaten another time. According to the youth, they issued renewed threats to kill him.
Muhsan said: "I noticed NIS 1,000 were missing from my wallet, so I returned and mentioned it to the soldiers. They laughed and then jumped on me…One of them grabbed me and said 'we'll kill you if you talk'."
The youth finally made it to his home town, where he received stitches to stop the bleeding in his head. He immediately lodged a complaint with Israeli human rights organization Betselem and met with a representative the same evening.
The next day, he was contacted by security forces in the nearby settlement who promised him to take care of the incident. A few days later, he went to coordination headquarters at the Hawara crossing to give his testimony.
"I intend to continue to struggle for my rights, for my honor and for the money that was stolen from me," he said. Betselem, in response to the incident, said that "the IDF must make every possible effort to fight against this phenomenon (of abuse)."
*this article was reprinted from the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranoth
