'Ali 'Abahreh, taxi driver

Yesterday, 3 March 2008, around 7:15 P.M., I left Jenin in my taxi with three passengers on our way to Sinjil, which is in Ramallah District. About fifty meters past the entrance to Yitzhar, I felt something hit me hard in the face. At first, I thought it was a bullet because it hurt so much and because of the amount of blood. I couldn't see anything due to the pain and because the windshield had been shattered. I felt as if I was about to lose control of the taxi and I stopped, but the passengers shouted at me to drive on because the settlers were chasing us and still throwing stones. I couldn't continue driving. The young man sitting next to me turned on the ignition and caught hold of the steering wheel. He told me not to be afraid, and that if I continued to push down on the gas pedal everything would be okay.

We drove until we got to the Yitzhar checkpoint. Lots of cars were waiting to cross. The young men in the taxi asked me not to wait in line, but to drive up to the soldiers. I turned on all the taxi's lights and drove forward. The soldiers shouted at us. When we got to them, one of the passengers told them that settlers had thrown stones at us. I got out of the taxi. I felt dizzy and nauseous, and one of the soldiers said he would call a doctor. Then, another soldier came over and said he was a doctor. He took me to a jeep and took out a device for checking blood pressure and first-aid equipment from a kit that was in the jeep. He bandaged my wounds and checked my blood pressure. He told me in Hebrew that the ambulance was on the way.

About 10-15 minutes later, a Red Crescent ambulance arrived and took me to Rafidyah Hospital, in Nablus. I was in bad condition. I had trouble breathing. I was cold and my head and chest hurt a lot. At the hospital, they took X-rays and found that the cornea of my left eye was bleeding and that I had been injured in the cheek and chest. I am still in the hospital.

I did not see the settlers who threw the stones. The passengers who were in the taxi later told me that they had seen 5-6 settlers standing on a high dirt or stone pile next to the settlement and throwing stones at us. The rock that hit me is still inside the taxi. The passengers told me that they had driven the taxi to a safe place in Huwara and had then gone to Sinjil in another car.

'Ali Muhammad 'Ali 'Abahreh, 49, a resident of al-Yamun, Jenin District, is married and has five children. He gave his testimony to Salma a-Deba'i at Rafidyah Hospital, in Nablus, on 4 March 2008.