Palestinian refugee Raed Zanoon thanks Australia after receiving surgery

PALESTINIAN refugee Raed Zanoon wants to say thank you...

Palestinian refugee Raed Zanoon came to Australia on May 17, 2013 by boat. In 2006 in Gaz

PALESTINIAN refugee Raed Zanoon wants to say thank you to Australia after receiving surgery to fix an eight-year-old bullet wound.

Mr Zanoon, 29, was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza City and for most of his life he has lived surrounded by death and fighting.

In 2006, he was sitting outside his home when a man Mr Zanoon described as a “Muslim terrorist” shot another man in the leg.

“I said, ‘Why you shoot him?’ to the man, and he shot me in the arm,” Mr Zanoon said. “The bullet went through my arm and killed my friend.

“I saw my friend dying and I wanted to help him but I had no feeling in my arm.”

Mr Zanoon went to a local hospital where, despite an X-ray showing his humerus was broken in several places, he was sent home by a doctor who said his arm was fine.

After two months, his arm was still swollen and painful so Mr Zanoon’s parents managed to get him to a private doctor where a metal plate was used to hold the bone together.

But his arm remained weak and painful and whenever it ached he had nightmares about the man who shot him.

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For seven years, Mr Zanoon lived with the pain and the fear until he couldn’t take it any more.

“I felt like any time I’ll be killed because there is no peace in my country,” he said.

So Mr Zanoon left his family to travel to Cairo, Qatar and then Indonesia by plane before getting on a boat with about 150 other asylum seekers in the hope of making it to Australia.

“I spent six days on the ocean, no water, no food, but better to die in the ocean than for terrorist to kill me,” he said.

“When the Australian (Navy) found us, I felt peace. I smiled because they came in quiet – no fighting, no guns.

“They gave us food, they gave us water, they gave the babies milk and they put up umbrellas to shade us.”

Mr Zanoon spent five weeks on Christmas Island before being transferred to Australia.

“I was really sick because of my arm but the doctors looked after me and they gave me pills for my nightmares,” he said.

Mr Zanoon was transferred to Darwin in May last year where the Red Cross worked with the government to get him an operation to fix his arm.

Last Wednesday he went in for surgery to remove the metal plate from his arm and to fix what could be fixed. Mr Zanoon wasn’t too sure what was done but he was happy someone had done something.

“To the government, the Red Cross and the doctors, thank you so very much for looking after me,” he said.

“I’m sorry I came by boat but if I had peace, safety and freedom in my country I wouldn’t have come.

“I’ve lost my family and life isn’t easy, but I love living here because it is a safe country.”