Mariam Barghouti
Mondoweiss / November 10, 2022
Ra’afat Al-Issa was killed by Israeli soldiers as he travelled through a breach in the apartheid wall on his way to work. He is now known as the “martyr of daily bread.”
On Wednesday afternoon, November 9, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in Jenin — the second in the span of 12 hours. Ra’afat al-Issa was 29 years old and shot near an opening in the apartheid wall west of Jenin.
His body remained in the morgue until his parents, who live in Jordan, were able to arrive to bury their young son, who was killed for the sake of earning a living.
On Thursday, November 10, Al-Issa’s father kissed his son’s cold forehead before being laid to rest in his home village of Sannour, 26 km southeast of Jenin. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, 50 of whom were killed in Jenin, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Medical negligence and intentional delay
Al-Issa was shot near the Israeli apartheid wall located in the western part of Jenin. A Palestinian worker attempting to reach his place of employment, Al-Issa was not only shot, but later denied medical care by soldiers as he bled out.
“Al-Issa’s leg was blown up like a balloon,” Mahmoud al-Saadi, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin, told Mondoweiss. “He was shot in his thighs, hitting a primary artery, which resulted in internal bleeding, and it eventually cost him his life.”
According to Al-Saadi, the injured man was delayed medical care for almost an hour and a half before finally being handed over to Palestinian medical services. “[Al-Issa’s] face was pale,” Al-Saadi recalled of the slain man. “He was thirsty and asking for water, which soldiers didn’t seem to have given him,” he said.
As a Palestinian with West Bank identification, the Israeli military would not take him for care at an Israeli hospital, despite being responsible for his injury. This practice, which extends beyond the killing of Al-Issa, has become defined as “conditional” healthcare by Palestinian analysts.
“Issa’s case is threefold,” Al-Saadi explained to Mondoweiss. “First is the shooting of Issa, then the movement of Issa and provision of care on the spot, and the third is the ways in which the injured man was handed to us by the Israeli army.”
However, in addition to the way in which Al-Issa was mistreated, his case also sheds light on a fourth layer — the condition of Palestinian laborers working in Israel. Al-Issa, who became known as “the martyr of daily bread,” exemplifies the painful cost of securing daily bread in Palestine, and the impact of the apartheid wall on the safety and financial security of Palestinians.
The martyr of “daily bread”: livelihood in context
Even before the economic crisis produced by the global COVID-19 pandemic, almost 47 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and besieged Gaza were impoverished or below the poverty line. In the past decade, this phenomenon has increased at an alarming rate in the West Bank.
The apartheid wall impedes Palestinian access from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and historic Palestine (the lands now making up what is now the State of Israel).
Erected during the early 2000s, the concrete wall was ostensibly built as a strategy to deter Palestinian armed resistance. Two decades later, however, it has clearly been unsuccessful in this objective, especially in light of the resurgence of Palestinian armed resistance in the West Bank.
The apartheid wall — part of the illegal military occupation of the West Bank — also allows for better control of Palestinian movement, especially Palestinian laborers.
Palestinian laborers, even children, are often subject to systemic abuse by their Israeli employees, but also by soldiers manning the checkpoints through which they must pass. More than this, Israel holds Palestinians captive by using its permit system to deny or allow formal employment.
This forces a large segment of Palestinians to search for alternative ways of securing a livelihood, even if through informal employment. Many sneak through openings made in the apartheid wall in order to get to their place of work. The danger they face in going through these breaches has considerably increased during the past year.
Only last July, Israeli soldiers lynched and murdered 32-year-old Ahmad Ayyad from Gaza as he was going through a breach in the wall outside of Tulkarem. Ayyad had a permit to work in Israel and was battling a colon disease. As of the time of writing, there has been no accountability for the crime of his murder.
“The events are repeating themselves,” Al-Saadi told Mondoweiss as he reflected on his years as a medic during the early 2000s in Jenin. “It’s horrifying.”
Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for Mondoweiss
