The News Line: News
Saturday, 26 March 2016
PALESTINIAN KILLED AT POINT BLANK RANGE
VIDEO footage has emerged showing a Palestinian being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier at point-blank range despite lying motionless and severely injured after being shot to the ground.
A UN official yesterday condemned in the strongest terms the brutal ‘extrajudicial execution’ of the wounded Palestinian by an Israeli soldier that was captured on camera in Hebron on Thursday.
Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said: ‘This was a gruesome, immoral, and unjust act that can only fuel more violence and escalate an already volatile situation.’
He welcomed the condemnation of the execution by Israel’s Minister of Defence, Moshe Yaalon, and called on the Israeli authorities to ‘swiftly bring to justice’ the Israeli soldier responsible.
The UN official went on: ‘It is time to stop the negative spiral of violence and to begin positive steps towards ending the occupation and bringing long overdue peace and security to the people of Israel and Palestine.’
Israel has repeatedly been accused by rights groups, international leaders and Palestinian officials of enacting a policy of ‘extrajudicial executions’ against Palestinians since the Third Intifada (uprising) erupted across the occupied Palestinian territory last October.
However, the rare video footage of Thursday’s assassination captured by a member of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, brought a barrage of condemnations from the Israeli leadership and led Israel’s army to detain the soldier responsible and launch an ‘investigation’.
The Israeli state advocates a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy against ‘Palestinians who carry out attacks’. In this case, they have been forced to act against the soldier, only because this particular incident has been caught on camera. The incident took place in Hebron on Thursday near a military checkpoint.
The Israeli army claim that two 21-year-olds, Abed al-Sharif and Ramzi al-Qasrawi ‘stabbed an Israeli soldier’ near Hebron’s Old City military checkpoint. Israeli soldiers opened fired on the two young men. Ramzi al-Qasrawi was killed instantly.
Abed al-Sharif was hit by a bullet and fell to the ground.
He was lying on the ground for several minutes, moving his head slightly but posing no threat. The video footage then shows an Israeli soldier walking up to him, putting a gun to his head and shooting him point blank in the head, killing him outright. The soldier has since claimed he killed al-Sharif out of fear that the incapacitated man was going to ‘detonate a suicide bomb vest’.
Palestinian member of Knesset Ayman Odeh said: ‘Israel has become a place where public executions are carried out with the cheers of the crowd.’ Ayman Odeh called for Netanyahu to be tried with the soldier responsible for Thursday’s execution, alongside other Israeli officials responsible for incitement against Palestinians.
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