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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://english.palinfo.com/news/2019/9/26/Israel-s-excuses-for-shooting-unarmed-Palestinians-don-t-ring-true">https://english.palinfo.com/news/2019/9/26/Israel-s-excuses-for-shooting-unarmed-Palestinians-don-t-ring-true</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel’s excuses for shooting unarmed
Palestinians don’t ring true</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Hossam Shaker September
26, 2019<br>
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Images of Palestinians girls or women lying in the middle
of the road with blood seeping from their heads have
become “normal” since the autumn of 2015. Women, children
and men have all become victims to be added to the growing
body of statistics that the global media never stops to
consider when reporting on this most asymmetric of
conflicts. They are the victims of the field executions
committed by the Israeli occupation forces against
Palestinians — women, children and men — at the
humiliating and frequently fatal military checkpoints
imposed across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
<p>
The tragedy of these victims does not end with the
hastily-fired gunshots; the wounded and dying are left
to bleed while the soldiers sip their coffee and go
about their regular activities, after “neutralizing” the
alleged threat. Images and videos circulated on social
media demonstrate that Israeli soldiers and police
officers do little to try to arrest suspected criminals;
they shoot first and, maybe, ask questions later. It is
obvious from the evidence that they are too keen to pull
the trigger and shoot a target who could be as young as
their own children or as old as their mothers.</p>
<p>
It is even more of a tragedy that the victim is rarely
named until hours or even days later, placing major
psychological pressure on the community who have no real
idea if a relative or friend has been shot and killed.</p>
<p>
Last week, on 18 September to be precise, a Palestinian
woman called Nayfa Ali Ka’abna, aged 50, was shot and
killed by Israeli soldiers. She was named officially
four days after she was basically executed at the
Qalandiya checkpoint, north of Jerusalem. After she was
shot, she was left on the side of the road in a growing
pool of blood for some time. To understand what happened
to Nayfa, it is worth looking at the growing phenomenon
of field executions over the past four years.</p>
<p>
Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun was crossing through an Israeli
military checkpoint in Hebron on 22 September, 2015,
when she was shot. The Israeli narrative claimed that
the 18 year old did not comply with the order to stop
and therefore posed a danger to the soldiers. The young
woman was in her first year of university, and was known
in the local neighborhoods for her solidarity with
Palestinian families affected by settler harassment. She
had to cross the checkpoints repeatedly for this
purpose. On the day of the deadly attack, two soldiers
ordered her to stop and then fired at least 10 bullets
at her from their automatic rifles. Hadeel fell to the
ground after being hit by the first bullet, but the
soldiers continued to fire at her. Most of the bullets
hit her chest and upper body.</p>
<p>
The Israeli occupation army immediately claimed, as
usual, that the young woman had tried to attack the
soldiers with a knife, and that the heavily-armed
soldiers acted “according to protocol” as their lives
were in danger. Many pictures surfaced on social media
proving the Israeli claim to be false. The reality of
this heinous murder was documented by a passer-by; the
two soldiers opened fire on Hadeel from a distance of 4
meters and no knife was seen. The brutality of the
attack was escalated by the fact that she was left on
the ground for about half an hour after being shot.
Journalist Amira Hass reported the details of the crime
in Haaretz on 3 November, 2015, based on documented
facts which disprove the army’s narrative.</p>
<p>
Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun’s family took the case to court,
but the Israeli judicial system ensured that the army
and its soldiers were acquitted, as usually happens. The
family appealed, but the result was the same. The case
was closed in February 2019, with the soldiers acquitted
of all charges. This was no surprise; the so-called
Israeli “Defense” Forces’ story is normally accepted as
the truth without question.</p>
<p>
The world ignored the tragedy of Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun at
the time, giving the occupation authorities a tacit
green light to continue the field executions on the
pretext that the victims “pose a danger to the lives of
soldiers”. Killing Palestinians in this way has become a
recurring fact of life protected by carefully woven
justifications. However, the idea of a fruit knife held
by a schoolgirl, shining from afar, actually posing a
threat to the lives of a group of armed soldiers wearing
body armour just doesn’t ring true. Moreover, firing
numerous bullets at a girl, woman, man or boy and at a
part of the body where death is almost certain to result
suggests that Israeli soldiers have little or no regard
for Palestinian lives.</p>
<p>
The official Israeli version of field executions is
simply not credible. It is now a fact, though, that any
Palestinian going about their lawful business can expect
to be shot at random if they are on foot at a military
checkpoint. Make a wrong move or display any “unusual
behavior” — a very loosely-defined term — and they can
face a lethal volley of bullets.</p>
<p>
This poses an even bigger threat to those with hearing
or visual impairments, or those who do not understand
the gestures or orders yelled by soldiers and police
officers, not least due to the different language and
means of expression. Israel’s military checkpoints may
now be rooted deeply in Palestinian life, but they
remain a threat to those with mental health issues or
other communication difficulties. If someone has a
seizure or fit at one of these checkpoints, they could
pay for it with their life.</p>
<p>
Given the number of these incidents, the Palestinians
are convinced that the occupation authorities do not
hesitate to justify any field execution committed by
their security forces even before any investigation can
take place — if it takes place at all. The killers are
not above planting a knife next to the victims lying on
the ground to “prove” their dishonest narrative.</p>
<p>
Furthermore, even if a schoolgirl is holding a knife
with the intention of attacking the fully trained and
armed soldiers, why are they incapable of disarming her?
Shooting her when she is well beyond arms’ reach looks
like an extremely disproportionate response. As the list
of “knife-wielding attackers” shot dead grows longer,
how many of their intended victims were actually killed?
None whatsoever.</p>
<p>
What is certain in all of this, is that the Israeli
occupation forces are able to kill Palestinians at will,
and get away with it. The uncomfortable truth absent
from the propaganda pushed out by Israel and its
supporters is that the killers of dozens of indigenous
Palestinian men, women and children in field executions
across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in recent
years are actually members of an occupation army
violating international law; they don’t deserve our
sympathy. It is their victims who live — and die — under
military occupation and oppression and are deserving of
whatever we can do to help them.</p>
<p>
Field executions are one of the “sovereign
manifestations” that the Israeli occupation forces have
monopolized at their many checkpoints intended to
disrupt Palestinians in their daily lives. They impede
freedom of movement, cause humiliation and provide
opportunities for arrest and, as we have seen, murder.</p>
<p>
Such serious violations led a number of anti-occupation
Israelis to form a human rights group a few years ago to
monitor what the security forces are doing at the
checkpoints. It is called Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch,
but the Israeli government is busy cracking down on
groups like this one, claiming that they are “working
against the state” and discrediting them.</p>
<p>
Before we accept the Israeli excuses for the killing of
Palestinians at the checkpoints, we must acknowledge the
presence of occupation forces in the Palestinian
territories; and that the deployment of heavily-armed
troops to direct and disrupt everyday life poses a real
and present threat to ordinary Palestinians of all ages,
male and female alike.</p>
<p>
No reasonable human being, let alone a member of a
brutal occupation army and oppressive regime, can expect
people who are deprived of their liberty, independence
and control of their land and resources to pass around
flowers to the soldiers who spend their days
humiliating, torturing and killing them. The
Palestinians don’t need anyone to incite them to act
against the occupation forces; Israel’s policies and
practices in the occupied territories do that job
perfectly well without any need for any input from
anyone else. The dozens of children and young people
shot and killed by the occupation forces at checkpoints
were eyewitnesses to the murder, arbitrary arrests,
intimidation and humiliation of their families, friends
and fellow citizens.</p>
<p>
Ignoring the field executions that have taken place
encourages the Israeli occupation soldiers to carry on
shooting at will; we all appear to be immune to the
sight of a Palestinian lying in a pool of blood for no
apparent reason other than the ongoing Israeli
propaganda about “incitement” and “knife attacks”.
Nayfeh Ka’abna was the latest in a growing line of
victims like Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun whose blood was shed
and allowed to flow into the gutter so callously by
young men and women armed to the teeth with the latest
weapons and ammunition. These women were yet more
victims of Israel and its ongoing occupation that the
world does not care about.</p>
<p>
<em>- Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who
has extensively covered the topic of migration in
Europe and Middle East issues. His article appeared in
MEMO.</em></p>
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