In Sebastia, Palestinians fear ‘Judaisation’ amid rising Israeli violence
On March 6, Ayman Shaer found himself lying on the ground in the ancient square of Sebastia, bleeding and in unbearable pain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“The soldiers were shooting people next to the ruins, and one of the bullets hit my leg as I ran,” the 27-year-old said.
“It entered my thigh. … The whole bone was destroyed. I thought I was dead.
“The pain was indescribable.”
He lay near the remains of Sebastia’s Hellenistic acropolis, the “butterfly bullet” Israeli soldiers had shot him with expanding in his leg as it is designed to do.
“I saw death,” Ayman’s father, Raed Shaer, 53, said as he recalled his son’s shooting, which happened a few hundred metres (a few hundred yards) from the family home in Sebastia in the northern occupied West Bank.
“I tried to save Ayman from the soldiers, but they started hitting me with their weapons,” he continued. “One put his rifle on his [Ayman’s] brother Shawqi’s knee and threatened to shoot him. They said they were going to detain us while another soldier put a gun to my neck.”
“They shot a lot of bullets in the air to scare us, so we would leave Ayman with them.
“But I told them they would have to kill me first.”
The Israeli soldiers, he said, then blocked an ambulance from reaching Ayman for several hours. Raed said if it was not for what he describes as his son’s strong physical condition, he would have died of blood loss.
Ayman lay immobilised on a hospital bed in the family’s modest living room as his father spoke, his parents and siblings moving around him, their activity a stark contrast to his stillness.
The construction worker was recently told he may never walk again. He underwent four surgical procedures to save his life and what was left of his leg – and is waiting for further treatment in a last attempt to prevent permanent disability.
“I just want to be back as I was,” he said.
Raed told Al Jazeera violence in the village has intensified since October 7 when Israel launched its war on Gaza after Hamas-led attacks on Israel. ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx ndx
He said the Israeli military now enters Sebastia, home to the West Bank’s largest open archaeological site, almost every day.
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