Israelis killing Palestinians ‘in cold blood’ in occupied West Bank
Mourners gather around the body of Samer Romana, who was killed by an Israeli raid, during his funeral in Nablus on 12 May 2024
Mat Nashed reports in Al Jazeera on 13 May 2024:
On October 19, Sarah Mahamid watched helplessly from a window as Israeli security forces shot her younger brother. Taha, 15, had been playing with a friend outside their house in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The 19-year-old screamed as her brother fell to the ground. Their father, Ibrahim, ran out of the front door to get his son, but a sniper shot him too. “I remember hearing my father shout that Taha might be alive, … but I knew that Taha was martyred. I knew he was dead,” Sarah told Al Jazeera. Taha was killed instantly. Ibrahim fought for his life for five months in intensive care until he also died. Footage seen by Al Jazeera shows Taha and Ibrahim were both unarmed and posed no threat.
“My other brother ran after my father out the door to stop him. He saw that Taha was dead, and he saw my father get shot. “It seemed like steam or smoke was rising from my father’s body as the bullets hit him.”
Unlawful, random killings
Nearly 1,500 Palestinians have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the past 16 years – 98 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Each of them, like Taha and Ibrahim, has a story and loved ones who mourn them.
The frequency of the killings have spiked in recent years with Israel killing 509 Palestinians in 2023. That is more than double the number recorded by OCHA in any previous year. In the first three months of this year, 131 Palestinians were killed, a higher rate of killing than the previous year, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“Israel has a decades-long pattern of using lethal force against Palestinians, … but it seems that the Israeli government is taking even further steps in that regard,” said Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at HRW.
Israel says its operations in the West Bank are necessary for security reasons. It cites the same justification for its assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed 35,000 Palestinians in response to the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which killed 1,139 people.
The killings in the West Bank are carried out during home raids or during stops and harassment at Israeli checkpoints. Some Palestinian children have even been killed on their way to school, according to HRW.
“[The Israelis] are firing at people who don’t pose an imminent threat to life. They are also firing at people who are fleeing and at people who are injured and lying on the ground. Some of these trends have existed before, but it appears these incidents are happening more frequently,” Shakir told Al Jazeera.
Shoot to kill
Israeli officials have for years backed a shoot-to-kill policy regardless of whether the Palestinians being shot posed a threat.