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Omaha World-Herald · 3 January 1996

CP-1996-009

Disabled Palestinians Sue Israelis for Injuries

Associated Press, Jerusalem

Disabled Palestinians Sue Israelis for Injuries — Omaha World-Herald, 3 January 1996
Omaha World-Herald · 3 January 1996

Transcribed from the clipping

“Jerusalem (AP) — Ali Fanoun was leaving his West Bank mosque after dawn prayers when Israeli troops opened fire at Palestinian rioters. A bullet smashed his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Six years later, he’s suing Israel for $1.7 million. ‘I didn’t do anything to deserve this,’ said Fanoun, a computer science student who was 14 at the time and insists he was never involved in clashes with the Israeli army. More than 1,000 Palestinians disabled during the 1987-93 uprising against Israeli rule have filed suit since Israel and the PLO signed a peace treaty two years ago… According to the newspaper Haaretz, pending claims against Israel’s government total about $180 million… But Prime Minister Shimon Peres says he won’t consider paying compensation unless the Palestinians pay damages to the hundreds of Israelis also hurt during the uprising. ‘If it is mutual, I am prepared to consider compensation. If not, each side must bear its own costs.’ Most Palestinians object to the idea of equal blame. ‘Fighting occupiers is legitimate in international law. But the Israelis violated the international law because they did not have a legitimate right to kill or injure people,’ said Mohammed Ayyoub, a Palestinian lawyer… According to Israeli army figures, a total of 1,067 Palestinians were killed by Israelis and 17,987 were injured between the start of the uprising on Dec. 9, 1987, and Nov. 2, 1994. During the same period, 52 Israeli soldiers were killed and 5,037 injured in Palestinian attacks, while 62 Israeli civilians were killed and 2,100 injured.”

Photograph caption

GOING TO COURT: Ali Fanoun motions for his father to bring him a wheelchair at the home they share in the West Bank village of Nahaleen. He is suing Israel for $1.7 million after soldiers shot him six years ago.

Context added by this archive

Where the disabled came from, counted by the army that made them: 17,987 Palestinians injured in six years. More than a thousand of them sued, and the prime minister answered that he would pay only if the Palestinians paid for injured Israelis too. The San Francisco Examiner ran the same story the same day and carried what happened next.

Cite this item

"Disabled Palestinians Sue Israelis for Injuries," Omaha World-Herald, 3 January 1996. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1996-009. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1996-009

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1996-009.

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