Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian motorist and injure his wife

Selfie of a man

Osama Mansour

Israeli forces fatally shot a Palestinian man in his car and injured his wife early Tuesday.

Osama Mansour, 42, and his wife Sumaya Mansour, 35, were driving home near the occupied West Bank village of Bir Nabala northeast of Jerusalem when they were stopped by two army jeeps, his wife told local media.

Osama, a father of five, was from the nearby village of Biddu.

Sumaya said Israeli troops ordered them to stop the car and turn it off, so they did. She said a soldier then looked at them and told them they could leave.

As the couple turned the car back on and prepared to leave, “they all started spraying us with bullets,” Sumaya said, referring to Israeli forces.

“My husband fell in my lap and died.”

The Palestinian Authority’s ministry of health said Osama was shot in the head with a live bullet.

He arrived in critical condition at the Palestine Medical Complex in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where he was pronounced dead.

Sumaya was injured with a live bullet in the back and her condition was stable, according to the ministry.

Witnesses told Palestinian news agency WAFA that Israeli soldiers fired a stun grenade at the couple’s car after it stopped at a flying checkpoint near Bir Nabala.

They said that led to Osama driving away, after which Israeli forces opened fire at the car.

An Israeli army spokesperson said forces opened fire after the car sped towards them “in a manner that risked their lives,” according to Tel Aviv daily Haaretz.

Occupation forces had been raiding homes in the village of Bir Nabala earlier that night.

Media circulated footage said to be of the Mansours’ vehicle. It shows a silver car with bullet holes in the windscreen and blood and broken glass on the seats.

Local media said the Israeli army confiscated the car.
A video circulated on social media shows Osama’s mother sobbing over her son’s death and saying he was only driving home.

“He was going home. He wasn’t going to commit [any crimes]. He was going home from the doctor’s.”

The Palestinian Authority foreign ministry called Osama’s killing a “heinous field execution.”

“Occupation forces fired a barrage of bullets at their vehicle after allowing them to pass at the checkpoint,” the ministry added, saying this comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is thinking of “how to convince the international court of his soldiers’ morality.”

Salem Eid, the mayor of Biddu, said Palestinians may raise the killing of Osama at the International Criminal Court, according to Reuters.

The court announced the opening of a formal investigation into war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last month.

The vast majority of the Bir Nabala village lies in Area C – the 60 percent of the occupied West Bank that remains under full Israeli military control.

About 14 percent of the village lies in Area B, which is nominally under the governance of the Palestinian Authority.

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These murders around checkpoints continue with no consequences for the killers, no restitution for the survivors. The Israelis always allege the driver was attempting to run over a soldier. Footage when released reveals the car at the time of the shooting to be in a stationary position or in motion at a slow rate of speed. The other circumstances strongly indicate no aggressive intent by the driver. Indeed, who would try to ram a heavily armed military roadblock in a lightweight vehicle?

These intolerable atrocities must be presented to the ICC as additional cases in the investigation and long overdue prosecution of Israel's apartheid regime. Osama Mansour and all who die in like fashion cannot simply be forgotten. They deserve vindication, even from the grave.

Tamara Nassar

Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada.