Rouzan Ashraf Abdul Qadir al-Najjar ( Rouzān 'Ashrāf 'Abd al-Qādir an-Najjār; 13 September 1997 – 1 June 2018) was a Palestinian nurse/paramedic who was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) while volunteering as a medic during the 2018 Gaza border protests. She was fatally hit by a bullet shot by an Israeli soldier as she tried to help evacuate the wounded near Israel's border fence with Gaza. The IDF first denied that she was targeted, while not ruling out that she may have been hit by indirect fire. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that al-Najjar was shot intentionally.
The eldest of six children born to Ashraf al-Najjar, she was a resident of Khuzaa, a village near the border with Israel.
The IDF released footage in which she purportedly admitted to participating in the protests as a human shield at the request of Hamas. The video was later found to be a clip from an interview with a Lebanese television station that had been edited by the IDF to take al-Najjar's comments out of context. In the unedited video, she didn't mention Hamas and called herself a "rescuing human shield to protect and save the wounded at the front lines", with everything following "human shield" trimmed out of the Israeli clip. The IDF was widely criticized for attempting posthumous character assassination by tampering with the video.
According to witness testimony, al-Najjar was shot after she and other medics, walking with their hands up and wearing white vests, approached the border fence in order to treat a wounded protester.
A UN investigation, the results of which were published late February 2019, concluded that Israel may have committed war crimes in its response to the Gaza protests, saying that dozens of children, two journalists and three paramedics, including al-Najjar, were killed by Israeli soldiers despite the fact that they were easily identifiable as such and did not pose any threat to the Israelis.
Early life
Najjar's father used to be employed in Israel in the scrap metal business until restrictions disallowed travel across the border. He then worked in the Strip as a motorbike mechanic but was unemployed at the time of her death. The family lived in an apartment supplied by relatives in Khuza'a, within eyeshot of Israeli soldiers stationed over the border. Their area had a concrete wall installed to shield local residents from Israeli fire.
She, one of a family of eight, grew up witnessing three wars, that of 2008-2009, then Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense when a teenager, aged 16, and shortly afterwards the 7 week 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict in which her neighbourhood was devastated. Too poor to afford a university education, she studied calligraphy and took on coursework in nursing.
Volunteering
Her formal training after volunteering was as a paramedic at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and she became an active member of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a non-governmental health organization. She wore the white coat of the medics and a medics vest with bandages, and was attending those wounded during protests at the border fence between Gaza and Israel during Ramadan. According to her mother, Najjar attended every Friday event from 7am and 8pm, and would return home spattered with the blood of those whom she had tended care to. Even before her death, she had become something of an icon within the Gaza Strip, with local media published many images of her online, including photos of her bandaging the head of a youth who had been wounded.
Al-Najjar already believed the Israeli army was targeting her months before her death. In April, she told Al Jazeera media that Israeli soldiers had shot directly at her multiple times in a warning not to tend to the wounded in the protests.
She was 21 years old at the time of her death. Najjar was a fixture at the Khan Younis camp and spoke about her role at the fence in an interview, relishing in the idea that a woman could brave the dangers. "In our society women are often judged," she said. "But society has to accept us. If they don't want to accept us by choice, they will be forced to accept us because we have more strength than any man. The strength that I showed the first day of the protests, I dare you to find it in anyone else."