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By Emma Tucker, CNN
7 minute read
Updated 1:42 AM EST, Sun December 3, 2023
Hisham Awartani, one of the three Palestinian college students who was shot while walking in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, is paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet became lodged in his spine, his mother said.
Awartani’s family has launched a GoFundMe fundraiser to help the 20-year-old junior at Brown University, who is scheduled to be released from the hospital next week and then go on to receive rehabilitation care, said his mother, Elizabeth Price, in a statement to CNN.
“We believe that Hisham will meet this challenge with the same determination I’ve witnessed this week,” she said. “The fund will help cover costs associated with his rehabilitation, air travel of his family and expenses related to the adaptive needs of his new reality.”
Awartani and his two longtime friends from the Israeli-occupied West Bank – Kinnan Abdalhamid of Haverford College and Tahseen Ali Ahmad of Trinity College – were out for a walk on Saturday in Burlington, chatting as they often did in English and Arabic, when they were shot, according to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad. Two of the men were also wearing traditional Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs at the time of the attack, he said.
In addition to Awartani’s life-altering spinal injury, the two other men were shot in the upper torso and lower extremities and hospitalized in the ICU, according to police. One of the victims was released from the hospital Monday, a source close to the victims’ families told CNN.
Abdalhamid’s parents said in a statement Tuesday evening they are “extremely relieved” he was released from the hospital but “know that this tragedy will shape the rest of our lives.”
“Kinnan told us that he was afraid to leave the hospital,” they said. “Our child may be physically well enough to be out of the hospital, but he is still shaken from this horrific attack.”
Categories: Islamophobia
Almost 400,000 Palestinians have lost jobs due to war, report says
Many have little or no income after the closure of crossings into Israel and restrictions on workers, according ILO
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank have lost their jobs or had their salaries frozen after the Israeli authorities cancelled their work permits and imposed severe restrictions on crossings after the 7 October attacks.
Approximately 182,000 Gaza residents who work in Israel and the settlements had their employment terminated, initial estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggest, while about 24% of employment in the West Bank has also been lost – equivalent to 208,000 jobs – as a result of the Israel-Hamas war.
According to the ILO, a further 160,000 workers from the West Bank have either lost their jobs in Israel and the settlements, at least temporarily, or are at risk of losing them “as a result of restrictions imposed on Palestinians’ access to the Israeli labour market and the closures of crossings from the West Bank into Israel and the settlements”.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/03/almost-400000-palestinians-have-lost-jobs-due-to-war-report-says