In the last six months a total of eleven youths have received suspensions and twenty-nine more were placed on probation, numbers that represent a threefold increase since 2005.
Ramallah, December 1 – A Palestinian youth who regularly hurls rocks and other projectiles at Israeli security forces was suspended from further such activity for at least three months on suspicion that he has been using performance-enhancing drugs.
Muhammad Al-Attar, 17, has participated in a gang of violent protesters since his early teenage years, but regulators began eyeing him with suspicion last year after a sudden surge in the range of his rock- and Molotov-cocktail-throwing. The youth at first attributed his increased abilities to a regimen of lifting weights and continued adolescent muscle development, but a urine test last month found traces of a diuretic in his system, a substance often used to flush the body of indications that steroids have been taken.
Al-Attar has already faced a hearing and probation for earlier suspected violations. His first violation was penalized in March of this year, when he was placed on a ten-month probation. The current violation carries an automatic suspension, with no appeal. An investigation of January allegations was closed for lack of evidence.
Al-Attar’s fellow demonstrators remain divided over the allegations and suspension, with close friends and family protesting his innocence and accusing the monitoring committee of persecuting him. “Muhammad is a good boy, and patriotic,” said his mother Fatima. “There is no reason to persecute him this way, especially when we all suffer enough Israeli persecution, which is why we’re in this situation to begin with.”
Other members of the gang were less reflexive in their reactions. “There’s a lot of pressure to perform,” said Mustafa Hijazi, 18. “I know three or four guys who use steroids all the time. I have nothing against Muhammad – I don’t know him all that well anyway – but the charges don’t surprise me. I actually expected his sentence to be more severe, considering how rampant the problem of performance-enhancing drugs has become in the last few years.” He declined to name the other youths.
Hijazi described the perceived necessity of steroids in confronting Israeli soldiers and paramilitary Border Guards with ever-more-sophisticated riot-dispersal technology at their disposal. Increased muscle mass can help both in hitting the Israelis from a greater distance, making certain dispersal methods less effective, and by adding natural padding to insulate certain areas of the body from the impact of rubber bullets.
Jibril Fatuh, 17, a close friend of Al-Attar, dismissed Hijazi’s allegations and defended his friend. “Mustafa is jealous of Muhammad’s natural prowess with Molotov cocktails and slingshots,” he said. “I suggest Mustafa stop accusing other people of things he probably does all the time, and accuses others just to keep the focus off himself.”
The phenomenon of performance-enhancing drugs among Palestinian demonstrators has grown exponentially since the Second Intifada a decade ago. Beforehand, protesters either used them less frequently or, according to at least some experts, used them freely but remained undiscovered in an era when no testing was done. In fact the substances were only formally banned by the Palestinian Authority in 1997, and testing procedures were implemented more than three years later.
In the last six months a total of eleven youths have received suspensions and twenty-nine more were placed on probation, numbers that represent a threefold increase since 2005, the first year for which such statistics were kept. Overall, more than a hundred youths have received suspensions of one duration or another, with three youths being banned for life from formal participation in rock- and Molotov-cocktail-throwing events.
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