HAWARA, West Bank (AP) – A makeshift sidewalk memorial with a Palestinian flag and a mourning notice paid tribute Saturday to a 22-year-old Palestinian man whose death at the hands of an Israeli border police officer (four pistol shots at close range) was captured in a widely shared amateur video.
A day after the shooting in the occupied West Bank city of Hawara, Palestinians rejected claims by Israeli police that Ammar Adili was shot in self-defense after he attacked Israelis, including a border policeman, and resisted arrest.
They said the officer killed Adili without justification and that Israeli security forces prevented Palestinian medics from trying to save the seriously injured man as he lay on the sidewalk of a busy road.
The 38-second video begins with a scuffle between the border police officer and three Palestinians, including Adili, on the sidewalk as traffic passes. The official takes Adili away with a choke hold and they trade blows after Adili breaks free. He tries to grab the officer’s assault rifle, which falls to the ground behind the officer, out of Adili’s immediate reach. The officer then draws his gun and fires four shots as an unarmed Adili falls to the ground.
In the immediate aftermath of Friday’s deadly shooting, police alleged that Adili had carried a knife and tried to attack two Israelis in a car, then tried to enter the blocked vehicle with a rock. He said the driver shot and wounded Adili, who then charged at a group of border guards, stabbing one in the face, police said. The Border Patrol agent tried to detain Adili, who resisted and tried to grab the agent’s gun, police said. The officer who shot him was not injured.
Hawara Mayor Moein Dmeidy and others cited second-hand accounts Saturday that an altercation had broken out between Adili and an Israeli motorcyclist after a car crash, but Associated Press reporters could not find witnesses to the events leading up to the shooting.
Dmeidy said the officer had no justification for killing Adili after he had already overpowered him. Adili was “killed in cold blood,” said the mayor, who arrived at the scene moments after the shooting. In a second video, Adili is seen moving and rolling on the ground after being shot, and it is unclear when he died.
Dmeidy said a Palestinian ambulance arrived minutes after the shooting, but security forces prevented medics from administering aid. Dmeidy said Israel has not handed over Adili’s body for burial.
Tor Wennesland, the UN special envoy to the Middle East peace process, wrote on Twitter that he was “horrified” by the shooting and sent “heartfelt condolences to his grieving family”. He called for a thorough investigation and said those responsible must be held accountable.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Emmanuel Nahshon, accused the envoy of misrepresenting the reality.
“This incident is a terrorist attack, in which an Israeli police officer was stabbed in the face and another police officer’s life was threatened and he consequently shot his assailant,” Nahshon wrote on Twitter.
On Saturday, shops on Hawara’s main road were closed in protest over the shooting.
A makeshift memorial marked the spot where Adili died, consisting of a Palestinian flag on a short pole and a death sign propped up against it. The poster, with a photo of Adili, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party mourns his son “who was killed at the hands of the Zionist occupation.”
The video of Adili’s final moments was a rare documentation of one of the increasingly common violent incidents involving Israeli and Palestinian security forces, including the attackers.
Meanwhile, Israeli jets struck several sites linked to Hamas in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, hours after Palestinian militants fired a missile into southern Israel in a move apparently linked to rising tensions in the West Bank busy, Israel said.
The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted a weapons workshop and an underground tunnel belonging to Hamas, the militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007. The military said more projectiles over the border while warplanes attacked positions in Gaza.
Rising Israeli-Palestinian tensions have made 2022 the deadliest year in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the long-running conflict since 2006. Further escalation is likely as the far-right government and religious in Israel’s history is about to be installed in the coming weeks, with the return to power of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
More than 140 Palestinians have died this year in Israeli-Palestinian fighting. The Israeli military says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But young stone-throwers protesting Israeli army incursions and others not involved in clashes have also been killed.
Friday’s deadly shooting came amid months of Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank, sparked by a series of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the spring that killed 19 people. The military says the raids are aimed at dismantling militant networks and thwarting future attacks, but Palestinians say they will entrench Israel’s open occupation, now in its 56th year. A recent wave of Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets killed nine more.
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Akram reported from Hamilton, Ontario.