Wheelchair bound coffee drinker killed

Yaacoub was first wounded at the age of 14 during the first uprising in 1987, when he joined a group of boys throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. The soldiers shot him in the leg, his brother said. As an activist for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, Yaacoub was jailed by Israel for 10 months in 1991, Adel said.

In 1992, during another clash between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, he was shot three times in the back, badly wounded and left paralysed from the waist down, his brother said. After he recovered, Yaacoub, now confined to a wheelchair, left Fatah and got a job at a natural medicine store in nearby Ramallah. When he saved up enough money, he bought a special taxi he could drive with hand controls and began plying the streets.

Fourth time unlucky