Rights and Accountability 1 February 2021
Israeli forces transport the body of Muhammad Hussein Amro after he was fatally shot at the Gush Etzion junction near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem on 31 January.
APA imagesIsraeli forces fatally shot a Palestinian man on Sunday following an alleged stabbing attack.
The Israeli army claimed that Muhammad Hussein Amro, aproached soldiers at the Gush Etzion junction wielding a makeshift weapon of knives attached to a stick.
The junction lies outside the Gush Etzion settlement bloc near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem.
“I saw the suspect walking on the road, and he quickly moved toward me and some civilians there, and when I saw that he pulled out a knife, I shot and neutralized him,” the soldier who fired at Amro said, according to Tel Aviv daily Haaretz.
In surveillance footage said to be of the incident, Amro does not appear to pose an immediate danger to anyone around him when he is shot.
Amro is seen walking towards a checkpoint manned by two Israeli soldiers and a third person, who may be a civilian. Barricades separate Amro from all three.Even if Amro was wielding a knife, there was still a significant distance and barricades between him and the soldier who shot him.
No Israeli soldiers were injured during the incident, as in many previous cases in which an alleged Palestinian attacker was killed.
Amro was from Halhoul, a village near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. He was married and had three children, his brother told the Palestine Today news channel.
Amro’s family told Palestine Today that he had special needs and was in poor health. His brother added that Amro was not nationalistic and had no friends.
Palestine Today said Israel was withholding Amro’s body.
His death brings to three the number of Palestinians fatally shot by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, including a child.
What is certain is that Israeli occupation forces operate a trigger-happy policy with utter disregard for Palestinian lives.
“Well-armed, heavily defended security personnel use lethal fire not as a last resort (if it is at all necessary), but as the go-to response, even when a knife attack could clearly be averted with less injurious means,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem previously stated in relation to a similar incident in September 2019.
“This trigger-happy policy, which is encouraged by government ministers, members of [the] Knesset and senior defense and law-enforcement officials, is still in place after dozens of people have been killed.”
This is further encouraged by a chronic culture of impunity enjoyed by Israeli occupation forces.
The likelihood of a complaint lodged by a Palestinian leading to an indictment of an Israeli soldier is 0.7 percent, according to Israeli legal advocacy group Yesh Din.
Comments
Heroes
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
The heroes of the IDF yet again, shooting a sick man with special needs.