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Photos:
Majed Mustafa, a 16-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem’s Isawiyah neighborhood. Credit: Alex Levac

Majed Mustafa had to undergo a splenectomy after being shot by Israeli police. He's accused of throwing stones. Credit: Alex Levac
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Majed Mustafa, a 16-year-old from East Jerusalem who was convicted of throwing stones, is recuperating from a splenectomy. After that, it's back to jail

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz

Here’s a brief history of the life of Majed Mustafa, the 16-year-old son of a construction worker from Jerusalem’s Isawiyah neighborhood, which abuts Mount Scopus: two convictions; half a year in prison; 14 months under house arrest far from his home; a fairly serious gunshot wound inflicted by the police; surgery and hospitalization, including removal of the spleen; severance from his school and friends. And in less than another two months, after he recovers from his injuries, he is slated to return to prison. He’ll never complete his education, he’s missed three years of school: He left in the eighth grade to enter prison, and never returned; today, his friends are in the 11th grade. He also lost any contact with most of those friends during the years in which he was cut off from his home. And all because of stone throwing.

This is the lost boyhood of Majed Mustafa, a Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem, not in the Gaza Strip and not in the West Bank.
He’s lying now on the sofa in his parents’ living room, his face pale, recovering from the splenectomy he underwent after the police shot him in the hip with what was either a rubber-coated bullet or a sponge grenade. His boyhood came to an end on July 18, 2015; that was the day his life went into free fall, and it hasn’t yet resumed its trajectory. On that night, police officers came to his home in the heart of Isawiyah, wrested him from bed and arrested him. He was 14 at the time. He was taken to interrogation room No. 4 – infamous among Palestinians – at the police station in the Russian Compound in downtown Jerusalem.

“Do you see that door?” the interrogator asked him. “You have a chance of not entering it if you admit now that you threw stones. If you don’t admit it, you will enter that room and never come out again.” Majed was interrogated for some three hours, and then incarcerated for 22 days. Remember, we’re talking about a 14-year-old boy.

Following that, the Juvenile Magistrate’s Court ordered him placed under house arrest until the conclusion of the proceedings against him – in the home of his aunt and uncle in Beit Hanina, a north Jerusalem neighborhood some distance from his home. The only people living there were his aunt, Rima Rashayed, 56, and her husband, Mohammed, 80. Majed was trapped in their home for 14 months. The court rejected the request of his parents, who didn’t want him to fall behind in his studies, that he be permitted to attend school in his new neighborhood. Even a visit to a doctor necessitated a special permit from a lawyer. Otherwise, the only time Majed was allowed to venture across the threshold of the house was when he was ordered to appear in the courtroom where his trial was being conducted. The boy was a detainee, in exile from his own home.

After about half a year, the parole officer permitted Majed to go to the parole board’s offices twice a week to play and paint with other children his age. His parents and siblings visited him at his aunt and uncle’s place every two or three days. His friends gradually stopped coming.

“It was the most miserable period of my life,” he told Amer Aruri, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. “I wasn’t allowed to play outside and children didn’t come to play with me in the house. My aunt’s husband is old, and children moving around in the house bothered him. I spent the time sleeping or watching television with my aunt. The neighbors’ children bought me cakes when my aunt asked them to.

“I missed my family and I cried at night without anyone hearing me – I didn’t want to bother my aunt and her elderly husband,” he continued, according to the testimony recorded by Aruri. “The hardest thing for me was when people came to visit my aunt. Older people came whom I didn’t know, and I had to sit with them. I’m a kid and I wanted to play. It was boring and exhausting.”

In the meantime, his trial ended. On September 30, 2016, Majed was sentenced to three months in prison for throwing stones, on top of his lengthy house arrest. His lawyer decided to appeal to the Jerusalem District Court, and in the meantime Majed’s house arrest ended and he returned home. His life seemed to be returning slowly to that of a young adolescent.

But not for long. Last November 27, while his appeal was still pending, the police carried out another nighttime raid on his parents’ home and again grabbed him from his bed. Again, he was suspected of stone throwing and again, he was taken in for interrogation. The police arrested other children and youths that night in Isawiyah as part of a larger operation. This time Majed was taken to the police station on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem, and interrogated for two hours with his hands bound.

He was shown photographs of stone throwers and asked to identify them; the police also tried to get him to admit that he was one of the masked figures in the photos. Majed admitted nothing and was held in police custody for 19 days, after which he was transferred to Megiddo Prison, in the north of Israel, to be held until the conclusion of the proceedings against him. For a week, his parents didn’t even know that he had been moved; afterward they were permitted to visit him in jail once every two weeks. His trial continued. Every trip from Megiddo Prison to the courthouse in Jerusalem was a nightmare for him that lasted for hours.

In the case of the State of Israel vs. Majed Mustafa, in Jerusalem Juvenile Court, Majed was accused of “offenses involving disturbances and interference with a policeman in the line of duty, under aggravated circumstances.”

Police officer Avichai Shlomo Efrati presented photographs to the court in which it was claimed that Majed could be seen throwing stones. The prosecutor, law clerk Rotem Navon-Pascha, maintained that Majed also threw a Molotov cocktail, but Judge Shimon Leybo said that, according to the documentation he had, “I saw no specific indication of Molotov cocktails in the police statement.” It was agreed that what was seen in the picture was an empty glass bottle. Majed admitted nothing.

A discussion ensued about whether it was possible that two youths had worn the same red, white and black Adidas jacket – which is what the stone thrower in Officer Efrati’s photo was wearing. An identical jacket was seized in Majed’s home and presented to the court as evidence by the prosecution.

“There is no room for doubt regarding the issue of the danger here,” stated prosecutor Navon-Pascha.

Judge Leybo opined that, “The minor in the picture has the identical facial features to the defendant, and the defendant also says that he resembles him.” The judge added, “It’s true that this is a young defendant, but the defendant did not learn his lesson, and while a proceeding against him was still pending, he carried out the act attributed to him.”

Majed was convicted again of throwing stones and sentenced to a jail term of six months plus one day, minus time already served (which by then amounted to four months), and to a fine of 3,600 shekels ($1,020).

Majed was released from prison on May 8 this year. The appeal of his first conviction was still pending at the time, and the decision was announced a few weeks later: The appeal had been rejected. The earlier three-month sentence was reapproved, and due to start on November 1.

Majed did not return to school. His parents prevented him from leaving home, fearing he would get into trouble again. He couldn’t go look for work, either. His grandfather died on October 1, and the housed filled up with people paying their condolences.

On October 16, his father, Nayef, 52, sent Majed to buy coffee at the grocery store up the street. Shortly afterward, Nayef relates, distraught children arrived at the house and reported that Majed had been wounded by police gunfire. There were no disturbances taking place in the neighborhood when he went out, Majed tells us now, adding that he did not even notice the policemen.

After he was shot, he says, he saw a few policemen in gray, probably from the force’s Special Patrol Unit, standing behind him. They did not arrest him. He says he hadn’t thrown any stones.

Three youths carried the wounded teenager until a passing car stopped and took him to the local Maccabi HMO clinic. From there Majed was taken to Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. Due to the seriousness of his condition, his parents requested that he be transferred to an Israeli hospital. Majed was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, where he underwent surgery for removal of his spleen. He was released a week later.

During his hospitalization, police came twice to interrogate Majed, but after seeing his condition they questioned his father instead, again about his son’s stone throwing. Nayef told them that if there had been confrontations going on at the time in the street he would not have allowed his son to leave the house, not even to go to the grocery store.

Asked for comment on the case, the Israel Police spokeswoman for the Jerusalem District told Haaretz: “The suspect took part in a violent disturbance, and not for the first time, during which stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at police officers over a period of hours in the village of Isawiyah. The police dispersed dozens of masked individuals who were rioting at the scene, using means for dispersing such disturbances. At the conclusion of the violent demonstration, the rioters fled to the village and to a local school. A policeman was wounded during the disturbances, and required medical treatment.

“It was only the following day that the police received a report about the suspect, who was taken independently for medical treatment.

“The Israel Police take a grave view of every violent riot that threatens the safety and security of our forces and of the citizens of Israel. We will continue to act with determination and with zero tolerance against every individual who throws a stone or a Molotov cocktail, and seeks by those means to harm police officers or civilians.”

In the wake of Majed’s injuries, his lawyer asked the court to delay the implementation of his prison sentence, and the court acceded to the request. Majed is now due to reenter prison on January 1, 2018, to serve another three-month term. He won’t yet be 17, but will already have endured ordeals, interrogations, injury and arrests. His parents are very concerned that his prison term will be detrimental to his health. The immune system of people who have had their spleen removed is typically weakened and vulnerable: Majed will likely be susceptible to infections his whole life.

Majed’s father is extremely worried about his approaching incarceration.
“What future does he have?” asked his father, before we left.