Rights and Accountability 13 May 2020
Mourners carry the body of Zaid Fadil Qaisiya during his funeral at the Fawwar refugee camp southwest of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on 13 May.
APA imagesIsraeli forces killed a Palestinian child during a raid on Fawwar refugee camp southwest of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron early Wednesday.
Zaid Fadil Qaisiya, 17, was sitting on the roof of his family home when Israeli forces shot him in the head with live ammunition.
He died from his wounds shortly after.
Zaid’s younger brother said he was with him when he was shot.“We heard the sound of a stun grenade, so we went up to the roof to see what happened,” the brother said in a video circulated on Twitter.
“We went upstairs and saw the army. I was standing behind a water tank and he was next to me. I heard the sound of gunshots, I looked at him and he was lying on the ground.”When asked where Zaid was shot, his brother pointed under his eye.
Four other Palestinians in the camp were injured by live ammunition, according to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, as Israeli occupation forces fired live rounds into crowds of Palestinians.
Local media circulated pictures of Zaid following his death:
Thousands attended the boy’s funeral on Wednesday:Vowing vengeance
Zaid’s killing comes one day after an Israeli soldier died when a stone was dropped on his head during a dawn raid in the occupied West Bank town of Yabed, near Jenin.
Israeli leaders vowed vengeance in the wake of the soldier’s death, which typically amounts to the extrajudicial execution of an accused person, and collective punishment of their community and family, including arrests and revenge home demolitions.
Israel is delivering on its threats.
Israeli forces have closed off the town of Yabed for the second day, and arrested 11 members of the same family.
Israel arrested 22 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, and wounded six in Yabed overnight.
Anti-Palestinian vandalism
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers threatened more violence.
Walls were vandalized with Hebrew graffiti on Wednesday in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah.
Among the anti-Palestinian slogans were, “I do not sleep when blood has been spilled here,” and, “The lives of our soldiers come before the lives of the enemy.”
The graffiti also included the Star of David.
This kind of vandalism is often called a “price tag” – a term Israeli settlers and extremists use to describe sometimes lethal attacks on non-Jews and their property, especially Palestinians.
Editor’s note: This article originally reported Zaid Fadil Qaisiya’s age to have been 15, citing initial reports. Zaid was 17 years old when he was killed, Defense for International Palestine confirmed on Thursday.
Comments
Antisemitism
Permalink June Helm replied on
#antizionismisnotantisem BDS
Occupation
Permalink Gennaro Pasquale replied on
People denied their human rights have the right to resist.
Resistance
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
Resistance yes, violence no. It plays into the hands of Israel and the US. Israel is armed to take on the world, the Palestinians have no army. The US is the greatest military power the world has ever seen. Dropping a stone on a soldiers head may be tempting, but every act of Palestinian violence will be reported as terrorism. The debased language of the western media, for decades, has reported all Palestinian violence as terrorism but Israel violence as "peace-keeping or "security". Israelis are never terrorists, even when they blow up the King David Hotel or assassinate Folke Bernadotte. The Palestinians have to renounce violence absolutely. They can't prevail through it. Their position is feeble. It is for the rest of the world to bring their freedom. Those of us who enjoy democracy, imperfect and undermined by the media though it may be, have to win the struggle on behalf of the Palestinians; but we must be able to say, at every turn, that they will never use violence, not even stone-throwing. The myth of generic Arab terrorism, the racist slander that all Arabs are terrorists, serve the Israelis and the US well. They are relentlessly insinuated into the public mind in the US and Europe. When has stone-throwing brought advantage to the Palestinians? What military power can face down the US over the Middle East? This is not a counsel of despair, rather the recognition that we must remove the propaganda weapon by using non by peaceable means. Not only is this morally superior, it is tactically so. The Palestinians have no way to fight back; but we do. We can make Israel the international pariah it ought to be for its colonisation of Arab lands and its refusal to grant humanity to the Palestinians. We can make Israel the South Africa of the 21st century, and the more it uses force the more it confirms our arguments. But the precondition is that the Palestinians renounce all violence, hard though that may be. We must show ourselves worthy of their trust.