JIHAD’S CASE

In 2005 Jihad Khaled was a regular 15 year old teenager with dreams of opening a big shop that would rescue his family from poverty. He lived in Biet Fajjar (a quartier, administratively dependant on the Bethlehem municipality, now under control of Palestinien Authorities) with his parents and his four siblings. He went to school and brought home average grades.

Life drastically changed for Jihad and his family on may 17th 2005. No one in the village had been warned that the israeli army was conducting a patrol mission in the area that afternoon. They were all afraid of soldiers. Jihad wouldn’t have gone out had he known about it. But he didn’t.

He was riding his bicycle, and saw the soldiers in the distance (around 200 meters). He started to cycle away from them as fast as he could, but It was too late. The soldiers had also seen him. They shot him in the head, a single bullet that penetrated the right side of his cranium and exited the front. Jihad was left bleeding on the floor, alone. His friends waited half an hour until the soldiers disappeared, then drove him to the nearest hospital.

His mother was warned by her neighbours. She thought Jihad was dead, because he was shot by what they called “a hunter”, an israeli soldier who always shoots to kill. Palestinian media also denounced that Jihad had been killed. Even Jihad’s friends almost proclaimed him dead.
Jihad would never be the same again. He would not speak the way he used to, or scurry the streets the way he liked to. He went on to depend on his mother to dress and to understand the world around him. Half of his body would be forever paralised, but he wasn’t dead. He spent 20 days in a coma, 10 days in the ICU of a hospital in Hebron (another municipality under control of the Palestinien Authorities), and was finally sent to the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR), where he spent some six months following an intensive rehabilitation program.

When he arrived to the BASR, Jihad needed assistance in all functional activities. He suffered from right sided hemiplegia and obvious cognitive disorders as well as aphasia. A BASR team implemented a rehabilitation program consisting of medical and nursing care, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and psycosocial intervention.

Jihad gradually improved and became independent in most activities of daily living, except those of dressing and undressing. He received an orthopedic device for his right leg, which allowed him to start walking again. BASR managed to offer the device free of charge, since Jihad’s father, the family breadwinner, had been longtime unemployed.
Currently Jihad lives with his family in the same village, Biet Fajjar. He still requires some supervision from his mother, and attends the BASR for periodical check ups