Jerusalem: ‘She is 12 years old, yet they have shot her’

MSF’s Medical Coordinator Dr Natalie Thurtle shares her experiences of treating injured Palestinians in Jerusalem.

On May 10, after the Israeli police attacked and injured hundreds of Palestinians, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, MSF) started offering clinical support to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Jerusalem. My MSF colleagues and I worked alongside the PRCS at the organisation’s trauma stabilisation point in Wadi al-Joz to assess and stabilise the wounded. One of the first patients I saw that day was 12-year-old Aliya*. She cried as we edged her jeans off as gently as possible to examine her. She had a dark bruise as large as a grown man’s fist on her upper thigh. However, it was not a fist that caused her injury – it was a rubber bullet. Aliya was shot as she walked near her home with her mother. I asked her weight in order to calculate the correct dose of pain relief to give her. She told me that she weighs just 28kgs – and yet she was shot. She could not walk, so we worried that she may have a fracture on her femur. We transferred her to hospital for an x-ray. Meanwhile, my MSF colleague Andy was suturing a 14-year-old boy named Walid. Walid was shot in the face with a rubber bullet. The wound was less than a centimetre away from his left eye. It was blind luck that allowed him to keep his eye. Another boy treated by our PRCS colleagues earlier in the evening had lost one of his eyes due to a similar injury. As I watched Andy and Rajah, one of our PRCS colleagues, expertly repair Walid’s young face, I couldn’t help but think of that other boy who was not as lucky as him. I wondered whether the people who turned their guns on these children ever considered what impact losing an eye would have on a 14-year-old.