Amira Hass : Were All Palestinians Killed in Hebron Recently Really a Threat to Soldiers?
There
are two versions to the recent spate of killings at Hebron checkpoints:
IDF says Palestinians attacked them with knives and were shot, while
Palestinians…
haaretz.com
The gallows humor that has made the rounds in
Hebron in recent weeks has given birth to a new style of joke. For
example, “The Israel Defense Forces showed the media knives [that were
allegedly found in the hands of Palestinians] that were made in Germany,
but here we only have knives made in China.” The jokes means:
1. The IDF is planting evidence, and the proof is that Hebron is flooded with Chinese goods, not German;
2. Whoever really wants to kill a soldier in Hebron should use a German knife.
This
black humor was born from the following statistics: Out of 70
Palestinians suspected of carrying out stabbing or car-ramming terror
attacks between October 3 and November 9, either in the West Bank or
Israel, the security forces killed 43. Twenty-four of them were
residents of the Hebron district, including 18 who lived in the city
itself. Nine were killed near military checkpoints that sever the heart
of Palestinian Hebron from the rest of its neighborhoods. A defense
source told Haaretz there have been at least 10 other incidents,
unreported, in which people were arrested carrying knives at checkpoints
in Hebron during the same period.
The Palestinians do not
believe the standard Israeli version that the soldiers’ lives were in
danger and therefore they had to kill the person. In some cases, they
question whether the Palestinians even tried to attack the soldiers.
Israeli media reports about
the killings are uniform: A terrorist / male or female / attempted
stabbing / terrorist killed. / Soldier / male or female / lightly
wounded. Or no casualties among our forces.
Haaretz independently
examined six of the cases. Three cases were detailed in Amnesty
International reports. On November 5, Haaretz asked the IDF
Spokesperson’s Unit and the Border Police spokesperson to comment on
eight deaths (here we will discuss only five of them). After six days,
Haaretz received a short and generic response, unrelated to our specific
questions.
There are security cameras
beside every checkpoint and settlement complex. Palestinians are
convinced that the IDF permits only the publication of those videos that
support its story, and refuses to release footage that proves the
opposite. Haaretz’s request to the IDF to see the security camera
footage was not answered.
The black humor in Hebron also
spawned another joke: Those passing through the checkpoints to the Old
City should say the Surat al-Fatiḥah (the opening chapter of the Koran).
In other words – prepare for death.
Dania Ershied, 17, passed
through the Hebron mosque checkpoint on October 25 at about 1:30 P.M.
The checkpoint cuts off the way from the old market to the mosque
square/Tomb of the Patriarchs. It was a Sunday. The normal afternoon
lesson for Dania’s English course had been canceled, her parents later
learned. She had no cell phone, and her house is without an Internet
connection: That was how her father tried to protect her and maintain
her innocence. In their simple apartment (which they rent from his
father), her parents showed me the childlike pictures she drew and the
handicrafts she loved to do.
Instead of the English lesson,
Ershied walked down the street to the checkpoint. A few Border Police
officers were in the hut; others were outside it. The checkpoint itself
consists of a revolving iron gate, with a metal detector gate and
another revolving iron gate beyond that. A small table stands between
the hut and the gate, and a large table stands outside the second
revolving gate. There are also movable separation barriers that can be
positioned as needed.
The Israeli media reports were
more or less the same. For example, a Haredi news website quotes a
police spokesman saying: “The Palestinian woman aroused the suspicions
of Border Police officers. She was asked to identify herself but
suddenly pulled out a knife and drew near the soldiers while shouting at
them. The soldiers fired precisely and she was neutralized. There were
no injuries to our forces.”
In a video published on the
NRG website, in which Ershied’s body is seen lying on the ground behind
the overturned large table, a person says, breathing hard: “A terrorist
tried to stab soldiers. Thank God she was shot and killed.”
A Palestinian witness who
entered through the checkpoint gates after Ershied told Haaretz that the
17-year-old passed through the metal detector gate and the two
revolving gates, and was then asked to hand over her bag. The police
officer put the bag on the table and shouted at her, “Where’s the knife?
Where’s the knife?”
The witness said Ershied
looked scared, raised her hands and shouted, “I don’t have a knife, I
don’t have a knife!” A police officer fired a warning shot that scared
her even more. She jumped back (placing her out of sight of the witness,
who at this point was ushered away by the police) and continued to
shout that she didn’t have a knife. But one policeman or maybe more shot
and killed her.
In the Amnesty International
report, which contains a similar testimony, it was noted that in the
pictures released afterward, a knife was seen alongside the body. A
defense source told Haaretz that Ershied had “suddenly pulled out a
knife and moved closer to the soldiers. At this stage, it does not
matter how old the person is – after all, yesterday we saw kids, 11 and
13 years old [the light-rail stabbing attack in Jerusalem on November
10]. When you look at a [young woman] such as Dania, she comes with a
knife to the checkpoint. They call on her to stop. She moves closer to
the soldiers and they shoot her.” The defense source did not address the
witness’ statement.
Mahdi al-Muhtaseb, 24, worked
in two sweet-pastry bakeries. On the evening of October 29, he had plans
to meet the young woman who was intended to be his fiancée. In the
preceding days, he bought a large amount of nutritional supplements to
complement his workouts at the gym. “Such a person is not thinking of
suicide, nor about prison,” his mourning father and brother told Haaretz
a week ago, at their home in Hebron’s Al-Kassara neighborhood. On the
morning of October 29, he walked, as per usual, to his second job in the
Al-Dik neighborhood – to a relatively new bakery called Tito. His home,
the route, the bakery – all are in the H2 area under full Israeli
control, although his home and the bakery are outside the area where the
settlers live. On the way, he had to pass through the Al-Salaymeh
checkpoint.
Something happened at the
checkpoint: Perhaps a fight broke out between a soldier from the Kfir
Brigade and Muhtaseb. His family and neighbors assume the soldier
taunted the young Palestinian, as often happens at the checkpoints, and
that Muhtaseb retaliated. The soldier was wounded in the head. A
neighbor said he noticed a soldier bleeding from his face. Muhtaseb
started to run away. The owner of a nearby store saw him running and
then heard heavy gunfire; shots also hit a car and the road. The store
owner rushed to close his doors and go up onto the roof. In those few
minutes, as video footage shows, Muhtaseb lay injured on the ground. Two
Border Police officers were just five feet away from him, aiming their
rifles. Muhtaseb moved a bit and raised his torso, and then one of the
officers shot and killed him. The store owner, who had already reached
the roof and knows Hebrew, heard one of the soldiers shouting, “No one
take him and don’t touch him.”
Haaretz asked the defense
source why the soldiers killed Muhtaseb, who was already lying injured
on the ground. “You must get into the soldiers’ heads and understand
their perspective,” the source said. “A Palestinian comes and stabs a
soldier in the head and flees [to a neighborhood where there are no Jews
or soldiers – A.H.]. We don’t know if he has an explosive device on him
or a weapon. The soldier asks [him] not to move. At some stage he tries
to get up – and the soldier shoots again. That is what is expected of
the soldier. Because maybe the terrorist was a suicide bomber with an
explosive device, or takes out a gun and shoots him. You never know,” he
adds.
When told that Muhtaseb could
have used the gun from the start, had he had one, the defense source
responded, “Do you remember the case of Charlie Shlush? [A Border Police
officer who, in October 1990, shot and wounded a Palestinian who had
knifed to death two Israelis in Jerusalem. When Shlush went to arrest
him, the Palestinian pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed Shlush in
the chest.] You must remember, this is not a sterile [crime] scene.
There are a lot of scenarios that, because of the terrorist threat, can
still cause harm to the troops. They receive instructions, and those are
the instructions,” he said.
The last person to see cousins
Bassam and Hussam Jabari – 15 and 18, respectively – alive was a
Palestinian who lives near the Rajabi house, where a new settlement
complex was established last year (Beit Hashalom, the House of Peace).
This witness said that on their way home, at about 8 P.M. on October 20,
the young men passed through the military checkpoint and the metal
detector gate behind the Rajabi house and neared the intersection, near
the road that leads from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
The witness told Haaretz that
the two cousins got frightened when a large group of settlers marched
down the road, demonstrating over the killing of a Kiryat Arba resident
in a car-ramming attack. He invited the boys to come into his house, but
a soldier appeared suddenly and called for them to come to him. After
that, all three went out of view because they were walking on the path
behind the Rajbi house. A short time later, he heard a burst of gunfire.
Pictures on Israeli websites show Hussam lying bleeding with a knife in
his hand and Bassam sitting on the ground, a narrow and long object in
his left hand. The Palestinian witness wonders how, if they had knives,
the metal detector didn’t beep when they went through the checkpoint.
This question prompts the
Palestinian conclusion that the knives, or what appear to be knives,
were planted on them. Such claims have been made in other cases, too,
including Sa’ad Al-Atrash, who was shot to death by a soldier at the Abu
Arish checkpoint on October 26. The Amnesty International report
described the killing as a particularly egregious example of excessive
use of lethal force.
The report is based on a
witness who saw what happened from the balcony of her house. She said
Atrash came close to the soldiers and one of them asked to see his
identity card. As soon as he put his hand into his pocket to retrieve
the identity card, she said, another soldier who was standing behind him
shot him on his right side. The witness said the soldier fired six or
seven times, and Atrash lay on the ground bleeding for about 40 minutes
without receiving medical aid. She also said she saw soldiers bring a
knife and place it in the dying man’s hand.
The NRG website reported that
day, “A Palestinian terrorist came close to an IDF force in the position
located next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, at the entrance
to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. He tried to stab one of the soldiers
there, but was shot and killed. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office said an
attempt was made to stab a soldier next to the Jewish community of
Hebron. An IDF force fired in order to remove the threat. There were no
Israeli casualties.”
Spokesmen for the IDF and
Border Police issued a generic response to Haaretz: “With regard to the
planting of knives at the scene of the incident, this is a false claim;
no knives were planted by IDF soldiers or Border Police forces. Any
attempt to distort the situation is unacceptable.”
The witnesses in the four
cases in question point to a regular pattern after the shootings:
Soldiers and settlers crowd around the person (whether seriously wounded
or dead), photographing him from every angle. The soldiers strip him of
his clothes. Medical care is not provided in order to try and save
lives. The body is removed after 30 to 40 minutes.
The IDF spokesman and Border
Police added: “In all the examples cited, the distance between the
soldiers and terrorists was short and the soldiers felt an immediate
life-threatening danger. Consequently, they opened fire to remove the
threat, in accordance with the rules of engagement.
“The events in question, as
well as the claims about the manner in which the shooting was conducted,
were investigated and the conclusions were passed onto forces in the
field and for the examination of the military prosecutor’s office. IDF
medical forces in the West Bank provide medical care to the residents of
the region, Jews and Palestinians alike. In operational incidents, a
quick check is made by the force to rule out the threat of an explosive
device, and then medical care is provided immediately. In places where
this did not happen, the procedure has been refined.”
Amira Hass
Haaretz Correspondent
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