Mujhed Abadi weakly holds up a packet of paracetamol – the only medication he says he is being given – before curling his head down under the blanket of his hospital bed and groaning in pain.
Weeks after images of him strapped to the front of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military vehicle prompted international outrage and accusations that he had been used as a human shield, the 26-year-old remains in hospital in Jenin, a northern city in the occupied West Bank. He has undergone operations on his leg and arm, where he was shot. In one leg he has no feeling, he says. His back was burned from the heat of the vehicle – temperatures reached 32 degrees that day.
Abadi was staying at his uncle’s house when he heard a disturbance and says he went outside to see what was happening, and got caught up in what have become regular Israeli raids in Jenin’s refugee camp. The city is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, but the camp is also seen by Palestinians as a centre of resistance; Israeli forces consider it a hub of “terrorist activity”.
After he was shot, Abadi was left bleeding for hours, then strapped to the vehicle by soldiers. Dashboard footage showed that it drove past two ambulances before he was finally untied.
He says he was kept there for about 15 or 20 minutes, until the soldiers realised he was not a “wanted” person and asked an ambulance to take him. He says some of his relatives were arrested in the same raid.
A video of Abadi on the front of the vehicle was widely shared on social media. Among those who reacted was US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, who called the video “shocking” and said people “should never be used as human shields. The IDF should swiftly investigate what happened [and] hold people accountable”.
Abadi says in the aftermath he received a call from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, asking how he was and wishing him a “speedy recovery”.
The charge of using human shields has repeatedly been levelled at Hamas in Gaza by Israeli forces and politicians, with the military blaming it for the high civilian casualties. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 7th is approaching 40,000, according to its Hamas-run health ministry, most of whom are believed to have been civilians.
In 2005 Israel’s supreme court ruled that the Israeli military’s practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields was illegal. “You cannot exploit the civilian population for the army’s military needs, and you cannot force them to collaborate,” said Israeli chief justice, Aharon Barak. Rights groups had documented Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinian civilians to approach suspected militant hideouts ahead of them, ordering them to pick up suspected explosives, making them stand in front of soldiers as they fired guns or being locked inside when the military took over their homes as bases. Despite the supreme court ruling, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said the practice continued.
In a statement to The Irish Times, the IDF said Abadi had initially been a “suspect” who was injured “during counterterrorism operations” after “terrorists opened fire at IDF troops”.
“In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle,” the statement said. “The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values of the IDF. The incident is being investigated and is being dealt with accordingly.”
During the same June raid, Mahmoud Alsadi, the director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin, said medics with his organisation were also kept as “human shields”: placed close to soldiers and told not to move for hours as the raids continued. “We weren’t allowed to leave or save people,” he said.
In a statement, an IDF spokesman said “the accusation that Israeli forces used medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent as human shields is false and against the code of conduct and values of the IDF”.
Alsadi says there are often Israeli attacks on his team of 26 people, plus volunteers, when they are rescuing or moving the injured. For that reason, it is now mandatory for them to wear Palestinian Red Crescent-branded red flak jackets and helmets during raids. “Before [October 7th] we knew how to deal with Israelis ... how to approach [them]. Now they seem like they’re not in communication with each other, and anyone can shoot.”
On whether they are being deliberately targeted, he says: “You know from the sky [the Israelis] can see an insect from the ground. I believe Israel is targeting the medical and health institutions, not only here but in Gaza. This is to prevent health treatment. They want the people to die.” He says he knows of several preventable deaths in Jenin where injured people were stopped from reaching medical care. Though the medics gather evidence of Israeli military behaviour, he says, they have no faith that there will be any repercussions.
The IDF spokesman said the “IDF’s operations are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the protection of civilian objects and medical facilities. The IDF recognises the importance of ensuring access to medical care and takes actions to ensure it is accessible”.
Though international attention is focused on the mass death and destruction in Gaza, locals say a slower kind of war has been taking place in the occupied West Bank for years. The UN recorded nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank between January 2020 and the beginning of June 2024, with at least 271 of them in Jenin governorate. That compares with 84 Israeli fatalities over the same period, with six of them in Jenin.
On July 19th, The Hague-based International Court of Justice delivered an advisory opinion saying Israel’s occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories was unlawful, and Israel was obliged to end it as soon as possible. But international law feels far away in Jenin.
During an interview in his office, Wisam Baker, director of Jenin Governmental Hospital, called the area a “war zone”, and said Jenin’s hospitals had been pulled in.
In one incident, just down the corridor from Abadi’s room in the Ibn Sina Specialised Hospital, Israeli forces shot and killed three men on January 30th, 2024. CCTV videos show armed Israeli soldiers dressed in disguises, including medical scrubs and women’s clothes. A spokesman for the hospital told journalists that one of the men who was killed had been undergoing treatment since October and was “paralysed”. Two of the dead men were claimed as members by militant group Islamic Jihad, while one was claimed by Hamas.
From his bed, Abadi worries about his future. He says the Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to be in full control over Jenin since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, should be covering his medical care, but staff in his hospital, a private one, are now telling him to leave, with no guarantees about what happens next. “I’m in need of a continuation of medical treatment,” he says. Kamal Abu Al-Rob, the Palestinian Authority’s governor of Jenin, had not responded to a request for comment in time for publication.
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Abadi’s cousin, Ali, says Abadi’s father is trying to resolve the situation. Another cousin, also present in the hospital room, describes how Abadi became dizzy when he stood up, and only one of his legs would move when he attempted to walk with a walker. “His body is very weak,” says Ali. “I escorted him to the toilet. I tried to take him. He [was] falling on the floor.”
Abadi was working at a vegetable market until the incident happened; now he worries he will be unable to work again. He says he has filed a complaint against the Israeli army in the Israeli courts with an Israeli lawyer. “I am a person that was attacked,” he says. “I am innocent. I did nothing. I really need my justice. I was a really normal person before this and now I became a person with disabilities.”
He worries aloud that the court filing could lead to him being arrested at one of the hundreds of Israeli military checkpoints or other mobility blocks dotted throughout the West Bank. “Now I’m sure my name is mentioned everywhere,” he says. “If I move between the cities they will arrest me. Maybe they will put pressure on me so I don’t continue in my case.”
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