Occupied East Jerusalem – A pizza box and a bullet hole. That was the only evidence left on al-Hardoub Street of the gruesome June 16 sniper attack on Uday Abu Juma’, 21, and Iyas Abu Mufreh, 12, in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of at-Tur, after authorities swept the scene the following day.
Just before midnight, cousins Uday and Iyas had gathered with family members outside their grandfather’s home in at-Tur. The Abu Juma’ extended family had come together to celebrate their grandmother’s return from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. A daughter in the family had also scored highly on the Palestinian national “tawjihi” exams.
Days before, Israeli authorities had placed roadblocks on the two main entrances into the neighbourhood, at the start of the 12-day conflict with Iran on June 13. But according to family members, that night, all was quiet in the neighbourhood.
Iyas and Uday were sitting near a car, eating pizza, when suddenly, they and their family members were fired on. Of 10 shots fired, two struck Iyas and Uday, and blood spilled over the pizza.
“Everyone was in shock,” recalled Nisreen Abu Mufreh, Iyas’s mother. “We didn’t know what was happening. Obviously, there weren’t any threats towards the military [from our street].”
Only when reviewing neighbours’ security camera footage of the street did they later realise that two Israeli snipers, positioned about 500 metres (550 yards) away on a rooftop, had opened fire on the family gathering without warning.
When the family tried to rush the two to the hospital, Israeli police stopped the ambulance, detaining Iyas’s father, Raed. The police accused Iyas and Uday of throwing Molotov cocktails and launching fireworks during the family gathering, and claimed that Israeli forces had opened fire in self-defence.
The boys were initially taken to Al Makassed Hospital in at-Tur. They were later transferred to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, West Jerusalem.
At the hospital in at-Tur, the family was again stopped by the police. “How could you shoot a kid like this?” a horrified Nisreen asked the police. The police responded that they didn’t know who shot the two boys, and even tried to claim that the shooting was the result of an “internal family dispute”, according to the family.
‘He may not walk again’
The injuries to Iyas and Uday were catastrophic. The bullet that hit Iyas – who is lucky to be alive, doctors say – struck just centimetres from his heart, leaving a huge open wound on his left shoulder and causing significant nerve and artery damage. Uday was shot in the stomach, with the bullet coming out through his back and damaging his nerves, arteries and spine.
Iyas’s family is terrified that the boy’s arm and hand will be permanently impaired, while Uday may not walk again.
Doctors at the hospital told the families that Uday and Iyas had been struck by “dumdum” bullets. These are designed to expand on impact to cause maximum damage, and are banned for use in war under international law. While East Jerusalem is not officially a war zone, it is under illegal Israeli occupation.
“What gives you the right to shoot a 12-year-old kid, sitting with his cousin, eating pizza? And to make it so that his cousin is not able to walk again in his life?” asked a distraught Amir Abu Mufreh, 21, outside Iyas’s patient room. Amir has spent every day and night in the hospital with his little brother.
Amir said his youngest brother was “a good kid” and “not a troublemaker”, and recalled how Iyas would help him sell corn on the street. “I am speechless. I don’t know what to say any more.”
The day after the attacks, Israeli police came to al-Hardoub Street and removed the bullets and bullet casings left behind at the scene, members of the local community said. They also took away broken glass from the car they were near, and cleaned away the blood left by the shootings. Only a single bullet hole on the car and the discarded pizza box remained. “They wiped the crime scene clean,” remarked Nisreen.
According to the family and their neighbours, police returned to the neighbourhood several times in the days that followed, surveying the situation. Curiously enough, they removed the concrete blocks placed at the neighbourhood’s entrances. These roadblocks had forced locals to take long detours and walk on foot to reach the nearby Augusta Victoria Hospital, another facility that caters mainly to local Palestinians.
“They claimed the roadblocks were [installed] to control the neighbourhood, considering the whole war situation,” said Nisreen. “So why remove them the day after [the shooting] and act like nothing happened?
“Their goal,” said Nisreen, “is to make chaos and leave.”
‘Al-Aqsa is under my full sovereignty, just like Tel Aviv’
The shooting of Uday Abu Juma’ and Iyas Abu Mufreh is one of the more violent cases among a number of crackdowns by Israeli authorities on East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents, during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June.
At the start of the conflict, Israeli police put up roadblocks in several neighbourhoods and residents described a rise in the number of nightly raids in neighbourhoods such as At-Tur, Issawiyeh, Kafr Aqab and Wadi al-Joz.
Mirroring police actions following the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas, at least two residents in occupied East Jerusalem were arrested over social media posts during the 12-day conflict.
Locals reported having their phones regularly searched by Israeli border police deployed to East Jerusalem, and two Palestinians were allegedly beaten for possessing content on their phones supportive of Iran’s retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, according to Rami Saleh, director of the Jerusalem branch of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC).
“The aggressive approach of police and soldiers in these [neighbourhood] entrances is much, much heavier than usual,” said Saleh.
As well as abruptly closing entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem for nearly everyone who did not reside there, the Israeli authorities forced most shopkeepers and street vendors to close their businesses in the Muslim and Christian Quarters, citing “the security situation”.
The Western Wall, a holy site for Jews, remained open. But for nearly a week, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Haram al-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, were closed off to Christian and Muslim worshippers. These rules were relaxed slightly for a couple of days, allowing only a limited number to pray. But access to Haram al-Sharif was completely blocked again to worshippers following the US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities early on June 22, until after Israel’s ceasefire with Iran.
In response, dozens of Palestinian men gathered for Friday afternoon prayers outside the walls of the Old City on June 20.
The closure of Haram Al-Sharif – an area containing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and under the sole custodianship of the Jordanian-operated Islamic Waqf – is in direct contravention of the arrangement between Israel and Jordan, following a series of attempts by the Israeli authorities and political figures to infringe on the Waqf’s sovereignty over the religiously and politically delicate site.
As a senior source from the Waqf told Al Jazeera: “The [Israeli] occupation closed Al-Aqsa Mosque to send a message to the Islamic world: ‘Al-Aqsa is under my full sovereignty, just like Tel Aviv.’”
Treated as a ‘collective threat’, not a ‘legitimate civilian population’
Alongside these restrictions and actions by the Israeli authorities in occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian movement in the West Bank was also severely curtailed during the war with Iran, with most Palestinian crossings into Jerusalem closed or restricted, along with many checkpoints in the besieged West Bank.
“The intensified restrictions, raids, arrests and religious site closures are justified under a security pretext but, in practice, these are political tools used to suppress Palestinian presence in public space and silence legitimate expression,” said the Israeli NGOs Ir Amim and Bimkom in a shared statement, calling these policies “unjustified collective punishment”.
“The Palestinian public in East Jerusalem is treated as a collective threat,” the statement continued, “not as a legitimate civilian population that is an integral part of the city’s fabric.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli police did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment regarding the shootings of Iyas Abu Mufreh and Uday Abu Juma’, as well as questions regarding the purpose and nature of the East Jerusalem restrictions and policies by Israeli authorities during the war with Iran.
With his likely paralysed cousin being treated on another floor of the hospital, Iyas Abu Mufreh remains in Hadassah Hospital, having already undergone a series of surgeries in dimming hopes that he will not be permanently impaired. He has struggled to eat, drink or sleep at the hospital, still traumatised by the shooting and wondering if he will ever be able to play pool – a passion of his – again, according to his family.
“I just want to go back home, to be able to play with my friends and to go back to school,” said Iyas from his hospital bed, surrounded by his family and friends. Screws were holding his arm in one piece as he nervously awaited his next surgery.
