Israels executions of Palestinian teens must

end, Amnesty says

Palestinian medics carry an injured protester during confrontations with occupation forces outside the
Israeli settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, 27 October.
Shadi HatemAPA images

Ali Abunimah-28 October 2015

Israel is carrying out summary executions of Palestinians, Amnesty International has
confirmed.
Sometimes it lets injured Palestinians bleed to death.
The human rights group says it has documented in depth at least four incidents in which
Palestinians were deliberately shot dead by Israeli forces when they posed no imminent threat
to life, in what appear to have been extrajudicial executions.

Amnestys condemnation of what it called a clear pattern of such summary killings came as
the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this month rose to at least 61.
Ten Israelis have died in the same period.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian who they claimed had attempted to stab
one their soldiers at a checkpoint near the Tel Rumeida settlement in the occupied West Bank
city of Hebron.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said one of its members in Hebron saw the man
being shot when he was two meters away from Israeli soldiers.
I am 100 percent sure he was unarmed, the witness said. I saw the two soldiers creeping
slowly along the road outside our apartment window with their guns cocked, so I looked down
the street to see why. I saw an unarmed man walking normally towards the soldiers and
suddenly they shot.
Wattan TV named the victim as 23-year-old Islam Rafiq Ebeido from Hebron.
ISM posted the testimony, along with a photo of the man lying dead, on its website.

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On Tuesday, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians. Hammam Said, 23, was killed near
Tel Rumeida. Earlier in the day two Palestinians were shot and killed near the Gush Etzion
settlement bloc south of Bethlehem after allegedly stabbing a soldier.

They were identified as Shaban Abu Shkeidem, 17, and Shadi Nabil Abd al-Muti Dweik, 22,
both from Hebron.
Amnestys report says that recent killings in similar circumstances have amounted to
extrajudicial executions.
Teens executed

Saad al-Atrash in an image circulated on social media.

Amnesty calls the killing of 19-year-old Saad Muhammad Yousif al-Atrash in the Old City of
Hebron on 26 October an especially egregious case.
Israel claimed the youth had attempted to stab a soldier, but according to Amnesty, an
eyewitness watching the events unfold from her balcony said he had posed no threat when he
was shot.
One of the soldiers had asked him for ID, and as he reached into his pocket to grab his card
another soldier standing behind him shot him on his right side, the witness told Amnesty.
Al-Atrash was shot six or seven times and then left to bleed for about 40 minutes. The witness
also said she saw Israeli forces planting a knife in al-Atrashs hand.

Shot with hands up

The day before, Israeli occupation forces shot dead 17-year-old Dania Jihad Hussein Irsheid
very close to where al-Atrash was killed.
Shortly before, she had passed through a checkpoint equipped with a metal detector and two
revolving gates, between which Israeli forces frequently lock people they deem suspicious,
Amnesty states.
At a second checkpoint in front of Hebrons Ibrahimi Mosque she was called for a second
inspection by more than five border police officers, who began searching her bag and yelling
at her to show her knife, the report adds. Warning shots were fired at her feet, prompting
her to step back and raise her hands in the air.
The high schooler was shouting that she did not have a knife and still had her arms raised
when the Israeli gunmen shot her multiple times.
A photo shows a knife lying near the body, Amnesty states, but notes that even if Irsheid had
a knife in her possession, eyewitness accounts indicate she was not posing a threat to Israeli
forces when she was shot, and her killing is therefore absolutely unjustified.
This account of Irsheids killing matches an investigation published this week by the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
Amnesty also examined the extrajudicial murders of 19-year-old Fadi Alloun in occupied East
Jerusalem on 4 October and of 18-year-old Hadil Hashlamoun at a checkpoint in Hebron on
22 September.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights investigated the extrajudicial execution, caught on
video last Friday, of 17-year-old Ahmad Muhammed Said Kamil at the al-Jalameh checkpoint
in the north of the West Bank.
Murder by denial of care

Palestinian medical services frequently report that Israeli forces deny them access to injured
Palestinians.
Amnesty also found that In some cases, the person shot was left bleeding to death on the
ground and was not given prompt medical assistance, in violation of the prohibition of torture
and other ill-treatment.

Several human rights groups recently condemned incitement by Israeli leaders that soldiers
and civilians should kill Palestinians merely suspected of being about to engage in an attack.
Wilful denial of medical care appears to be another method of carrying out these instructions.

Grave breaches
In principle, Amnesty defends Israels use of force against a Palestinian population it has held
under military occupation for decades.
The human rights group has only urged Israel to end what it deems as excessive force and
unlawful killings.
Amnesty has failed to clearly recognize that all Israeli violence serves to entrench and prolong
an illegal system of apartheid and colonization that has no legitimacy whatsoever.
But the groups Middle East director Philip Luther nonetheless concedes that heavily armed
soldiers and police wearing body armor facing a possible knife attack have a duty to use
proportionate and graduated force and attempt to arrest suspects before resorting to the use
of lethal force.
Luther also notes that Israels investigation systems have long served to perpetuate impunity
for unlawful killings of Palestinians by Israeli military and police forces.
These murders, he adds, are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, over which all
states can exercise universal jurisdiction.
In other words, the Israelis responsible could face prosecution in any country ready to enforce
the rule of law without bowing to bullying by Israel and its backers.
Raed Salah jailed

On Wednesday, an Israeli soldier appeared in a Haifa court on charges of stabbing himself

with a knife and telling police he had been attacked by a Palestinian.
Meanwhile, an Israeli court rejected an appeal by Raed Salah, an influential leader among
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who heads the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement.
Salah was sentenced to 11 months in prison for supposedly inciting violence in a 2007 speech.

Sheikh Raed Salah outside a Jerusalem court on 27 October.

Mahfouz Abu TurkAPA images

Salah said that the courts ruling was no surprise in light of Israels recent decision to
legitimize summary executions of Palestinians. He added that prison is the cheapest price
we can pay for the sake of Jerusalem.
Ahmad Tibi, a member of the Israeli parliament for the Joint Arab List, said the court had
been influenced by the impassioned public atmosphere.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently threatened to outlaw the Islamic
Movement, on the pretext that it is behind the recent wave of violence.
Tibi has accused the government of seeking to transfer responsibility for the current violence
to other parties, including the Islamic Movement.
Land seized, hospital raided

Israel is continuing its brutal crackdown and mass arrests of Palestinians across the occupied
West Bank. On Tuesday alone, Red Crescent officials told Maan News Agency, 143 were
injured during confrontations with Israeli occupation forces, at least 22 with live ammunition.

For the second day in a row, Wednesday, Israeli forces raided a hospital in occupied East
Jerusalem and searched through patient files.

A Palestinian protester holds a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during clashes near the boundary
between Israel and the central Gaza Strip on 27 October.
Yasser QudihAPA images

Israeli occupation forces seized private land from six Palestinian villages near the West Bank
city of Nablus, a measure a Palestinian Authority official said was done to please extremist
settlers.
Occupation forces also fired at Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip, near the boundary
fence east of al-Bureij refugee camp, moderately injuring one person.
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