If Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked me, I would have suggested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate suspicions of war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories starting from April 18, 2011, not June 13, 2014. Why? Because on April 19, 2011, a terrorist with a Jewish appearance shot Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee? His friends from the West Bank village of Burin hoped his unconventional name would attract widespread attention, so that the attack against him would not be buried – like almost 100 other documented cases since 2005 had been of Jewish terrorists attacking village residents.
His friends were mistaken. Lee’s name did not lead to earth-shattering headlines. I, too, am partly at fault. Twice I intended to write; twice, events of force majeure intervened and the reporting was postponed.
The most important thing: Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District let the investigation drift away, as is it customarily does. The file was passed back and forth from the police in Ariel to the Central District prosecutor’s office, and to the prosecution in the Samaria District – and then closed. Closed despite the file containing video footage of the incident that had been provided to the police, along with three eyewitnesses who identified the Israeli with the pistol from a lineup of digital pictures, and despite Bruce Lee’s serious injury.
Bruce Lee? Some 40 years ago, his elder brother really loved the actor from the martial arts movies, and asked his pregnant mother to name his soon-to-be-born brother after him.
After high school, Bruce Lee Eid thought about studying overseas, maybe law. “But then my brother, who returned to the West Bank with the Sulta [Palestinian Authority] in 1994, told me, ‘Join the Palestinian police. Serve your people. A state will be established and things will be okay.’ We are all Fatah, we are all for the PLO and peace, and we fought for independence. They convinced us that the way to independence is peace, and this is the peace of the brave.”
Truly brave
And Bruce Lee Eid is truly brave. Brave like the rest of his neighbors who built their homes in a section of northeast Burin. This is in Area B – in other words, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for providing building permits here, and the Israeli Civil Administration cannot prevent it from doing so. The neighborhood climbs up on a number of levels on the side of a mountain, below the peak, above which spreads out the unauthorized and illegal outpost of Givat Ronen, a descendant of the government-authorized but illegal settlement of Har Bracha.
