12-year-old wounded in Jisr az-Zarqa gunfire: ‘I hope I’m the last kid to get shot’

A 12-year-old boy who was shot and seriously wounded in Jisr az-Zarqa regained consciousness on Saturday and expressed hope that the violence would come to an end.

“I just don’t know why they shot me, I didn’t do anything. I hope I’ll be the last kid to be shot,” Wahed Jurban told the Ynet news site.

Jurban’s condition has since been upgraded to moderate, and he said he hoped to be back home in a number of days.

However, he also expressed fear at rising violence in the town, referring to 14-year-old Walid Shahab, who died earlier this month days after he was hit by a stray bullet as he went to buy pizza.

“I don’t want my fate to be like that of my friend who was murdered,” Jurban said.

Jurban’s mother Kadra spoke to Kan news and described the moments immediately after the Friday shooting.

“I heard a noise and saw my son on the floor — I went crazy,” she said.

She told Ynet that she “first blames the parents for violence and crime in Arab society,” but added that the government also bears responsibility.

“They don’t make plans to eradicate crime. I also fear for my life — how is it possible that we are sitting in the yard and people shoot at us? That they hurt my child and my brother?” she said.

Early investigations indicated a masked man entered the yard and shot the boy and his 25-year-old uncle, before fleeing the scene.

Hours after the pair was attacked, armed men opened fire at a residential building in the town.

According to Hebrew-language media reports, the men were carrying out an apparent revenge attack.

Police were called to the scene and a man was shot dead by police in an exchange of fire.

Police said they responded to the scene and several suspects shot at officers, who felt their lives were in danger and returned fire.

According to reports, 19-year-old Zahi Jurban died of his injuries shortly after the gunfight.

A second man in his 20s was moderately wounded in the incident. Media reports said the two were brothers and that they were cousins of the injured Wahed Jurban.

Police bolstered their presence in the area in the wake of the shootings.

Jisr az-Zarqa, on the Mediterranean coastline south of Haifa, is one of Israel’s poorest and most densely populated communities.

It is largely separated from the wealthy neighboring communities of Caesarea and Ma’agan Michael and hemmed in by a highway and the sea, preventing its growing population from expanding outward and isolating residents.

The town has been wracked by violence in recent months.

Earlier this month, 14-year-old Walid Shahab was hit by a stray bullet outside a pizzeria in the town and died of his wounds days later.

The shooting was also suspected to have been a revenge attempt for the killing of another teenager. Police arrested a 16-year-old suspected of that attack.

Mahmoud Nasser, a community organizer in the struggle against violence in Arab communities, called on the government to take further action after Friday’s shootings.

“Children in Arab society can’t even go into the backyard of their own homes. After a child was killed on his way to buy pizza, no one did anything and the situation continued as it was,” Nasser said.

“The Israeli government needs to implement a comprehensive plan for treating the issue of crime in Arab society. Arab lives matter. Our blood is not in vain.”

Arab communities have seen a surge in violence in recent years amid a rise in organized crime and the proliferation of illegal weapons.

According to the Abraham Initiatives, which tracks violence in the Arab community, at least 95 Arabs have been killed in homicides in Israel since the beginning of the year, with 91 of them holding Israeli citizenship.

The majority of the victims were killed in shootings.