facility:hawara checkpoint

  • Settlers ’executed’ a Palestinian, and the Israeli army covered it up, rights group reports - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-settlers-executed-a-palestinian-and-idf-covered-it-up-human-rights

    Abed al-Muneim Abdel Fattah. Explained repeatedly to investigators that his son had no family or other problems and was never active in any group. Credit : Alex Levac

    It’s a very busy traffic circle on Highway 60, the major route in the West Bank, between the Hawara checkpoint and the Tapuah settlement intersection, not far from Nablus. As you drive toward the spot, which the Palestinians call Beita Circle and the settlers call Beitot Circle, garbage is piled up along the roadside. This is the industrial zone of the town of Hawara, where there is no industry other than garages and workers’ restaurants that look out onto the highway.

    On April 3, three men, all of them on the way to work, arrived at the traffic circle separately. Only two of them left the site alive. The third was shot to death. The B’Tselem Israeli human rights organization asserted this week that the shooting was an execution and that the Israel Defense Forces destroyed evidence and whitewashed the findings.

    It all happened in a flash. A little before 8:30 A.M., Mohammed Abdel Fattah arrived at the circle. He was 23 years old, married and the father of 7-month-old daughter, on the way from his apartment in his uncle’s house in the village of Beita to his job at the uncle’s brick factory in the village of Jama’in. He had apparently been traveling in a shared taxi. Eyewitnesses saw him standing by the side of the road and smoking two cigarettes, one after the other. What was going on in his mind? What was he planning? What made him act? We are unlikely to know.

    He then crossed the road, to the west. He stood on the shoulder, within touching distance of the vehicles proceeding from north to south, a few meters from the circle, where traffic has to slow down. The road was very busy at that time of the morning. He threw two or three stones, not very big ones, at passing cars, hitting no one.

    Even a visit to the home of Mohammed’s family did not provide an explanation for why he threw the stones. He was not a teenager and had never been arrested. He was married with a child, had a steady job and was on the way to work. A few days earlier he’d been to Israel for the first time in his life; together with his wife he visited Jerusalem and they later ate fish at a restaurant in Jaffa. Perhaps that trip holds the key to what drove the young married father to throw stones or try to stab a settler that morning.

    One of the cars he’d thrown a stone at stopped. It was a white Renault with a blue poster of the Union of Right-Wing Parties displayed in the rear window. The driver was Yehoshua Sherman, from the settlement of Elon Moreh, who was working as a field director for the Union of Right-Wing Parties during the election campaign, which had then entered its final week. A blurry video clip from a security camera shows Sherman’s car, which had been traveling from north to south, stopping. Fifteen seconds later, Sherman gets out of the car and apparently shoots Mohammed Abdel Fattah, who’s seen kneeling behind the vehicle. We don’t know what happened in those 15 seconds – the car blocks the view.

    In the meantime a truck with Israeli plates also stops and the driver gets out. B’Tselem field researchers Salma a-Deb’i and Abdulkarim Sadi cite witnesses as saying that they heard two shots. They think Sherman fired them before leaving his car. Abdel Fattah apparently tried to seek refuge behind a dumpster, which this week was still there, overflowing with refuse, at the edge of the road. A second video clip shows him lying on the road on his stomach, and being turned over onto his back by soldiers trying to ascertain if he was carrying explosives.

    According to the testimonies B’Tselem took from four people, who all saw similar things, the two drivers fired a number of shots from close range even after Abdel Fattah lay wounded on the ground. B’Tselem also claims the Israel Defense Forces deleted footage from security cameras in the area of the shooting of the wounded man. Israeli media reported that “a Palestinian terrorist was shot and subdued by two drivers after trying to stab a father and his daughter near Hawara, south of Nablus.”

    From the B’Tselem report, on its website: “At that point, Abdel Fattah was crouching among the dumpsters. Sherman approached him and fired several more shots at him. A truck driving along the road also stopped, and the driver got out. He came over to stand next to Sherman, and the two men fired several more shots at Abdel Fattah, who was lying wounded on the ground… Abdel Fattah succumbed to his wounds a short while later, at Beilinson Hospital in Israel.”

    One of the shots hit Khaled Hawajba, a young man who works in a nearby store, in the abdomen. He was treated in Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus and discharged a few days later.

    Minutes after the shooting by the two settlers, military jeeps arrived at the scene. The soldiers used stun grenades to disperse the crowd that had begun to gather at the site. According to B’Tselem, immediately afterward a group of about eight soldiers entered two of the nearby businesses to check their security cameras. They dismantled a digital video recorder in one of the stores and left. About 20 minutes later, the soldiers returned to the store, reinstalled the DVR and watched the footage.

    “Two soldiers filmed the screen with their mobile phones. They then erased the footage from the DVR and left,” the B’Tselem report states.

    In one of the clips that was uploaded to social networks in Israel, the photographer can be heard saying in Hebrew: “The terrorist tried to jump onto the Jew’s car and stab him. Our heroic soldiers eliminated him, may his name be blotted out. There are no casualties.”

    After the incident, Sherman told Srugim, a website that calls itself “the home site of the religious sector”: “At Beitot junction a terrorist with a knife jumped on the car and tried to open the door. I got out and as the terrorist tried to go around the car in my direction I subdued him with gunfire with the aid of another resident of a nearby settlement who was driving behind me.”

    The media reported that Sherman’s daughter was in the back seat; the allegation was that Abdel Fattah tried to open the car door and stab her. In the clip B’Tselem attached to its report, her father is seen moving relatively coolly toward the young man who is hiding behind the car. What happened there?

    The human rights group is convinced, on the basis of the accounts it collected, that the shooting continued from close range as the wounded man lay on the ground. Moreover, B’Tselem believes that the two drivers shot Abdel Fattah with no justification, after he had moved away from the car and was kneeling behind the dumpster. According to the organization, the security forces who arrived at the scene made no attempt to arrest the two settlers, quickly dispersed the Palestinians and then proceeded to go to the stores and delete the documentation of the event “to ensure that the truth never comes to light and the shooters would not face any charges or be held accountable in any way.”

    It was reported this week that the Samaria Regional Council has decided to award citations to the two settler-shooters.

    The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit this week sent Haaretz this response: “On April 3, 2019 there was an attempted stabbing attack at the Beitot junction, which is [within the purview of] the Samaria Division of the IDF Central Command. The terrorist was shot by citizens and subdued after he threw stones at Israeli cars and then approached one of the cars in order to perpetrate a stabbing attack in the area. At the site of the incident a knife used by the terrorist was found. We would like to point out that the cameras that were dismantled by the security forces as part of their investigation of the incident were returned to their owners. The incident is under investigation.”

    Khirbet Qeis. A small village below the town of Salfit, in the central West Bank, where Abdel Fattah’s parents live. His father, Abed al-Muneim Abdel Fattah, 50, is a night watchman in Ramallah, who has five other children in addition to Mohammed. The house is well kept. Mohammed, the eldest, completed high school, but “regrettably,” his father says, he did not pursue his studies and went to work. In October 2017, he married his cousin, Rada Awadala, from the village of Ein Ariq, near Ramallah, and their daughter Jawan was born last fall. They visited every second Friday, rotating weekends between Rada’s parents in Ein Ariq and Mohammed’s in Khirbet Qeis.

    On the last Friday of Mohammed’s life they were at the home of his in-laws. The next day, when he and Rada went on an organized tour to Jerusalem and Jaffa, they left Jawan with her maternal grandparents. When they got back, Rada went to her parents’ home to collect the baby and stayed there for a few days. Mohammed remained alone in their apartment in Beita, close to his place of work.

    Mohammed’s father was on the job in Ramallah the day his son died. A relative called to inform him that Mohammed had been wounded. Shortly afterward, a Shin Bet security service agent called and ordered him to come to the IDF base at Hawara, Abed tells us now. The agent informed him that his son had tried to stab a soldier and afterward corrected himself to say that his son had thrown stones. The father replied that it was unimaginable for his son to have done that.

    Abed was asked in his interrogation whether Mohammed had been active in any sort of movement, whether anyone had tried to persuade him to throw stones or carry out a stabbing attack, whether he suffered from mental problems or problems at home or at work, or whether perhaps he’d quarreled with his wife. The father replied that his son had no family or other problems and was never active in any group. The interrogator repeated the questions twice, then a third time.

    At this point Abed still didn’t yet know that his son was dead. The Shin Bet agent said he’d been wounded and taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. He recommended that Abed get in touch with the Palestinian District Coordination and Liaison Office to arrange an entry permit to visit his son in Israel. Finally the agent said to the father, “From now on, you and your children are under surveillance. Dir balak [Watch your step]. Take this as a warning, as a red light. Anyone who lifts his head – we’ll cut it off.”

    Abed was at the base in Hawara for nearly three hours. By the time he got home, almost the whole village had gathered next to his house, and he understood that his son was dead. The social networks said he had been killed by settlers.

    Why was he throwing stones, we asked. Abed: “I don’t believe he did anything like that. He was on the way to work. But even if he did, sometimes the settlers provoke people who are standing on the road, spit at them or curse them or try to run them over. Even if he threw stones, by then he wasn’t endangering anyone. After all, the law says that it’s forbidden to shoot someone who is lying on the ground. Arrest him. But why did you kill him?”

    Israel has not yet returned Mohammed Abdel Fattah’s body; all the family’s efforts to claim it have been rebuffed. His grave has already been dug in the village’s small cemetery. There’s a mound of earth there now, but the grave is empty.

    https://seenthis.net/messages/771991

  • Palestinian succumbs to gunshot wounds inflicted 3 months ago by Israeli forces
    Feb. 10, 2017 5:33 P.M. (Updated : Feb. 10, 2017 5:34 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=775403

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) – A Palestinian held in Israeli custody succumbed to his wounds on Friday after being shot by Israeli forces in Nov. for allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack.

    Issa Qaraqe, the head of the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, told Ma’an that 24-year-old Muhammad al-Jallad (also reported as Muhammad Amr) died in Israeli custody while at the Beilinson Hospital in the city of Petah Tikva in central Israel.

    Al-Jallad was shot by Israeli forces on Nov. 9, 2016 at the Huwwara military checkpoint in the southern part of the occupied West Bank district of Nablus, Qaraqe said.

    Israeli authorities claimed that al-Jallad had attempted to stab an Israeli soldier with a screwdriver before Israeli forces opened live fire on him.

    According to Qaraqe, Israeli forces took al-Jallad into custody at the time and transported him to Beilinson hospital for treatment.

    Qaraqe added that al-Jallad had also suffered from lymphoma.

    Nov. 9, 2016 9:40 A.M. (Updated : Nov. 10, 2016 10:25 A.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773882

    (...) Abdullah Abu Salim, 43, a merchant from Huwwara, told Ma’an at the scene that he and two of his friends, “saw [Amr] attempting to cross the road in Huwwara before being shot at by an Israeli soldier who then took out a knife and threw it next to the youth.”(...)

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Palestinian Dies After Being Shot by Israeli Troops on His Way to His Last Chemo Session

      No one bothered to keep the young Palestinian’s family informed.
      Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 17, 2017 9:52 AM
      read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.772183

      Mohammed-Aamar Jalad’s father, Thabath. - photo Alec Levac

      On his way to what was supposed to his final chemotherapy session, last November, he boarded the wrong shared taxi. Discovering his mistake, he got off and ran across the highway to catch a taxi going in the opposite direction. Israel Defense Forces soldiers who may have thought he was going to attack them, shot him, seriously wounding him. For the next three months, he was bedridden in Beilinson Hospital, in Petah Tikva, most of the time in the intensive care unit. Throughout that entire period, no one in the IDF thought of updating his parents and family about the condition of their loved one. His mother was the only one allowed who was supposed to be allowed to visit him, but even though she came a few times, on all but one occasion, she was not permitted to enter his room.

      Just as his condition seemed to be improving, he died, apparently last week. No one thought to inform the family about his death, or the circumstances surrounding it. Israel has not yet returned the body.

      In his native town of Tul Karm, in the northwestern part of the West Bank, no one believes that Mohammed-Aamar Jalad tried to attack soldiers on the way to his last chemo session. His father is the city’s legendary driving instructor – 45 years behind the wheel – and his grandfather was the first local resident to serve in the Israel Police. A photo of the grandfather in uniform hangs on a wall of Mohammed’s family’s house.

      This, then, was the life and death of the 25-year-old student, who dreamed of living in the United States, and who in 2010 won a U.S. green card through the lottery – but had fulfillment of his dream delayed by cancer, and terminated by Israeli soldiers.

      When we visited last weekend, women paying their condolences were going up and down the stairs leading to the elegant home in Tul Karm, which is shrouded in mourning. Mohammed’s sister, Samar, the dean of the nursing school at Ramallah’s Community College, and her father, Thabath, the driving teacher, greet us.

      It’s a very restrained, dignified home. The family is apolitical, we’re told by Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher for B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization.

      Mohammed was the youngest son; his two brothers live in the Persian Gulf region. A year ago, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. At that time, he’d completed two years of accountancy studies at Al-Quds Open University and had signed up for additional studies at the Ramallah college. His illness forced him to put his academic aspirations on hold. He was treated at An-Najah National University Hospital in Nablus, in biweekly intravenous chemotherapy sessions. The disease was in recession and he felt good.

      Wednesday, November 9, 2016, was set as the date for the final treatment. Samar called him that morning to ask if he was going to the hospital, and he replied that he was. At 7:30 A.M., his father took him to the Tul Karm central bus station, leaving him at the stand of shared-taxis heading to Nablus. The taxis for Ramallah were parked across the way, and Mohammed accidentally boarded one of them. He only realized his mistake next to the turnoff to the settlement of Yitzhar. The driver suggested that he get off at Hawara Junction, next to the checkpoint of that name, where he would be able to pick up the taxi to Nablus.

      Mohammed took his advice; after getting out of the vehicle, he had to cross the highway. He did so on the run. On the other side was an IDF jeep and a few soldiers, who were guarding the busy junction. The soldiers apparently thought that he was out to attack them.

      Mohammed was shot as he reached the middle of the road – one bullet to the stomach. He collapsed, bleeding. Just then, a Palestinian ambulance happened by, taking a patient from Jenin to the Allenby Bridge. The driver, Osama Nazal, wanted to assist him, but the soldiers and police who had arrived in the meantime kept him from evacuating the injured man. More forces arrived, along with an Israeli ambulance, which took Mohammed to Beilinson Hospital. Nazal later told Mohammed’s parents that their son was still fully conscious at that time.

      Some time later, the father got a call from Palestinian Preventive Security, asking him to come to the organization’s offices. Thabath waited until he’d finished the driving lesson he was giving before going. He says he thought he’d been summoned because his son had been involved in a quarrel with another passenger. He never imagined the news that awaited him. As he was sitting there, hearing only that his son had been hurt – he got a call asking him to come to the office of the Shin Bet security service at the Sha’ar Ephraim checkpoint, near Tul Karm.

      Thabath was met there by Agent “Karim,” whom he describes as being very polite when questioning him about his son. However, Karim, too, declined to tell him anything about Mohammed’s condition, or even whether he was alive or dead. In the meantime, one of Thabath’s friends told him that his son had been taken to Beilinson. Thabath drove home to get his wife, and the two set out for Sha’ar Ephraim in the hope that they would be allowed to pass through the checkpoint – as they should have been, because they are both over 55 – and get quickly to Beilinson. But they were stopped and peremptorily sent back without an explanation.

      From that moment, the family was plunged into three months of torment and mental abuse, during which the darkness of uncertainty about their son’s condition hung over their lives, and they swung back and forth between despair and hope. Never were they successful in receiving authoritative information. They knew Mohammed was in ICU in serious condition, in an induced coma and hooked up to a ventilator; at some point, the family, which they received informaton from their lawyer and from sympathetic medical staff, heard that his condition had improved. They sent information about his bout with lymphoma to the hospital and hoped for the best.

      Over those three months, Mohammed’s father was continually denied entry to Israel to visit his son. His wife, Maisir, was issued a permit on four occasions, but on three of them, after making the trip, she was blocked from entering Mohammed’s room by the soldier-warders guarding it. Once, they let her see him from the door for an instant; once they let her in for about two minutes, to caress him. His condition improved from one visit to the next. The doctors and nurses told Maisir he had regained consciousness and had been taken off the ventilator.

      A few days before his death, he was moved from ICU to the surgical ward. Throughout the period, he continued to be remanded in custody by an Israeli military court.

      For her part, Maisir went to visit for the last time on January 23. Again she was denied entry to his room, and only allowed to talk to the medical personnel. Dr. Kamal Natour, from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a voluntary organization made up of former Israeli detainees, visited Mohammed at the time and reported to the family. They understood that he was getting better and had begun to eat. Then a few days went by without any news. Maisir had a sense of foreboding. She says now that throughout the three months, she barely slept for worry about her son, but last week she became even more worried.

      Last Friday, Maisir decided to call one of the physicians from the ICU, Dr. Jihad Bishara, whom she had met. Her daughter helped her find his number online, after she recognized a photo of him. He told her Mohammed had been transferred out of his unit; he’d been off that day, but he promised to look into the situation and get back to her. Maisir insisted on calling him again. She was very unsettled about her son’s condition, despite the recent optimistic reports.

      “Do you believe in God?” Dr. Bishara asked her when she called him again. “Your son is dead.”

      The doctor then called the family back shortly afterward, this time to inform them officially in the name of the hospital that Mohammed had died. But to this day, they don’t know when their son died and above all, the cause of death.

      This week, we asked the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit five questions:

      1. Why was Mohammed Jalad shot by the soldiers?

      2. Why was his family not allowed to visit him in the hospital?

      3. Why did his parents not receive an authoritative report about his condition?

      4. Why didn’t the IDF bother to inform them of his death and the reasons for his death?

      5. Why hasn’t his body been returned?

      The IDF Spokespersons Unit responded with the following statement: “On November 9, 2016, Mohammed-Amar Jalad carried out a knifing attack on soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint, using a knife sharpener. The force responded with fire, wounding the terrorist, who was evacuated to Beilinson Hospital for treatment.”

      Together with the mourning and grief, the family living in this sedate home in Tul Karm is reeling under a cloud of helplessness and lack of information. What did their loved one die of? Why was he arrested? What must they do to get possession of the body? Time and again they asked, and time and again their questions hung suspended in the air, unanswered.

    • Israel to return body of Palestinian who succumbed to injuries a week earlier
      Feb. 16, 2017 4:30 P.M. (Updated: Feb. 16, 2017 9:36 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775506

      TULKAREM (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities will return the body of slain Palestinian Muhammad al-Jallad at 3 p.m. on Friday at the Enav checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tulkarem, according to the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs.

      Al-Jallad — also known as Muhammad Amr — died on Feb. 10 in Israel’s Beilinson Hospital from injuries he sustained after Israeli forces shot him in the chest on Nov. 9, 2016 at the Huwwara checkpoint south of Nablus following an alleged stabbing attempt.

  • The Face of Collateral Damage: Palestinian Student Killed by Israeli Forces - Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Dec 25, 2015 7:00 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.693675

    After Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed Samah Abdallah , the Israeli media did not even bother to mention that the 18-year-old was shot in the head while she was riding, along with other family members, in her father’s car.

    Samah Abdallah was a beautician and cosmetology student from a little-known Palestinian village, who was shot to death either on purpose or by accident – but most assuredly without any legitimate reason. Five or six bullets were fired at the car, fired by a soldier from a fortified watchtower nearby; one hit her directly in the head. Samah sustained mortal injuries, and died a few weeks later in an Israeli hospital.

    It all began on November 23, with a concerned and anxious father: Abed Abdallah, 42, worked in construction in Israel until recently. He did not want his daughter to use public transportation to get home from the Nablus school where she was studying with her younger sister Hanin, 17. Samah had been thinking of enrolling in university next year, in order to get a teaching degree.

    It has been an extremely tense few months on the roads of the West Bank, for Palestinian residents too, and Abed decided to pick up his two daughters that day, lest they run into trouble on the way home. He does this every so often, primarily when tensions run high.

    The family lives in one of the tiniest of villages – a hilly, remote place called Amoriya, with breathtaking scenery, southeast of Salfit and the settlement of Ariel.

    That morning, Samah and Hanin set out at 7:30 for school in a shared taxi. At noon, Abed left Amoriya together with his wife, Hala, and their son Ahmed, 15, to pick them up. The drive went without mishap, and took less than half an hour. The daughters got into the back seat, with Samah in the middle; their parents were in front.

    After passing the Hawara checkpoint, which was not manned at the time by IDF soldiers, they approached a bus stop. Abed noticed a teenage boy and a few soldiers there; he says now that he was certain the boy was a Jew. Worried that stones would be thrown at the car, Abed continued to drive and had gone a few meters when he heard gunfire.

    No one had ordered him to stop. In the rearview mirror, Abed saw the boy fall to the ground, bleeding profusely. He says he did not see a knife or any other weapon in the boy’s hands. Subsequently, it developed that the youth, Alaa al-Hashash, 16, from the nearby Balata refugee camp, had been shot dead by one of the soldiers at the bus stop. The death of Hashash was reported by the Israeli media in a single sentence, “Another attempted terrorist attack was thwarted today near the Hawara checkpoint.” That same day, there were two other such attempts at other sites, so perhaps the killing of the teenager was of no special interest.

    Soon after Abed saw the youth collapse, a hail of bullets hit his car. Abed shouted to his wife and children to get down, but the rear seat was crowded and Samah was unable to crouch low enough. The bullets came from the rear, fired by soldiers standing near the bus stop, but also from the front – from an army watchtower. The lethal bullet was fired by a soldier in the tower, penetrating the windshield and hitting Samah in the middle of her forehead before exiting through the back of her neck. Her face was covered in blood.

    “Father – there’s blood!” yelled Ahmed. Abed thought it was his son who had been hit. Getting out of the car, he discovered that his daughter had been shot. The terrified family pulled Samah out and lay her on the road. Abed says now that he was certain she was already dead. A Palestinian ambulance quickly arrived, and evacuated her to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus.

    The Abdallah family’s car. Alex Levac

    “Why did you do that?” Ahmed says he screamed at the soldiers who began to approach. “The soldier told me: You had a knife. I told him: There’s no knife. He said: There is. I said: There isn’t. I said: Where’s the officer? He said: There is no officer.”

    Abed says that a few minutes later, the same soldier admitted about the shots fired at Samah that, “It was a mistake.”

    Samah was rushed to Rafidia. When her parents arrived, they were informed that she was in critical condition. A few hours later, it was decided to transfer her to an Israeli hospital. After initial admission to to Schneider Children’s Medical Center, she was transferred to the neurosurgery department at nearby Beilinson Hospital.

    In her report, Dr. Gili Kadmon, a specialist in pediatric intensive care, wrote: “Patient was shot yesterday in the Nablus area, at a range of 10-20 meters. Entry hole in the frontal lobe and exit hole in the occipitoparietal lobe. Extensive cranial injury. Upon admission, patient was unconscious and artificially ventilated; opens her eyes at moments of pain and coughs in response to suction …”

    Samah’s mother accompanied her to the hospital in Israel and didn’t leave her for a moment. Abed joined them the following day, once he received an entry permit. Samah was hospitalized for over three weeks, during which she underwent two operations. Last Wednesday, she passed away, her parents at her bedside. She never reopened her eyes.

    Asked for comment by Haaretz, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit released the following statement: “During the incident, in which a terrorist was running while brandishing a knife toward civilians standing at a bus stop, IDF forces opened fire to neutralize the threat and protect the civilians. From the shooting, injuries were apparently incurred by passengers in the car behind the terrorist. The IDF regrets any injury to uninvolved bystanders and acts to avoid this as much as possible. The incident has been investigated and the results are being examined by the military prosecutor’s office.”

    Note the evasive wording: “From the shooting, injuries were apparently incurred by passengers in the car behind the terrorist.” As if the dying Samah had not been transferred to Israel for medical care with the army’s approval, as if there was any doubt she was killed by IDF soldiers.

    Abed says that the soldiers didn’t only kill Samah: “They killed our entire family. The soldiers didn’t have to shoot. Why did they shoot? They also could have shot Alaa al-Hashash in his legs, without killing him. Salah happened to be there, without having done anything. Nothing justifies this shooting. She died for no reason.”

    ANo government or army official thought to telephone the family following Samah’s death. Now Abed is preparing to submit a claim for compensation from Israel. For that purpose, he approached attorney Ghaslan Mahajna from Umm al-Fahm.

    Posted on the outskirts of her village are photos of Samah, who was buried in the little cemetery across from the family’s home. Mourners are served the customary dates and bitter coffee.

    Parked outside is the rundown Opal Ascona. Pictures of Abed’s daughter are taped to the windows, and a single memorial poster has been placed in the middle of the backseat, the exact place where Samah Abdallah was sitting before being shot to death.

    Gideon Levy
    Haaretz Correspondent

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • After Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed Samah Abdallah , the Israeli media did not even bother to mention that the 18-year-old was shot in the head while she was riding, along with other family members, in her father’s car.

      “Why did you do that?” Ahmed says he screamed at the soldiers who began to approach. “The soldier told me: You had a knife. I told him: There’s no knife. He said: There is. I said: There isn’t. I said: Where’s the officer? He said: There is no officer.”

      Abed says that a few minutes later, the same soldier admitted about the shots fired at Samah that, “It was a mistake.”