Mustafa Dhawaba, money changer

Last Thursday [14 February 2008], at about 4:20 P.M., I was standing next to Abu Gharib’s shop, on ‘Anabta’s main street, near Town Hall. A young man, Hani Barakat, came over to me and asked me to exchange shekels for Jordanian dinars.

As Hani Barakat was standing before me, a small army jeep passed by heading east from Tulkarm toward the Einav checkpoint. After the jeep had gone about 150 meters from us, I heard the sound of stones being thrown from the side streets north of the road. The jeep stopped and two soldiers got out and began to fire into the side streets which the stones had apparently been thrown from. Then I saw one of the soldiers turn and aim his rifle at us. At that moment, Hani and I tried to get inside the shop, but the bullet traveled faster. I was shot in the left leg and fell onto the floor of the shop. Hani Barakat, too, was hit in the left leg.

Within a few minutes, friends and relatives arrived. An ambulance took me to the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarm. The bullet hit a main artery, and I lost lots of blood. The doctors decided to transfer me to the hospital in Ramallah. At the hospital in Ramallah, I underwent a 3 ½ hour operation and was hospitalized there until sunday [17 February], when I was returned to the hospital in Tulkarm. Now I am in the intensive-care unit.

In June 2007, I underwent a bypass operation, and the doctors took a vein from my left leg for the operation. The bullet hit the main artery of that leg.

The soldiers fired at us even though there weren’t any stone throwers near us and we were 150 meters from the jeep. I think they fired to take revenge.

Mustafa Muhammad Mustafa Dhawaba, 66, married with seven children, lives in ‘Anabta, Tulkarm District. The testimony was given to ‘Abd al-Karim Sa’adi at the hospital in Tulkarm on 18 February 2008.