73-year-old’s death highlights Israeli extrajudicial killings

HEBRON // The killing of a 73-year-old woman in the West Bank has raised fresh questions about disproportionate response by Israeli troops to alleged Palestinian attacks.

Tharwat Al Sharawi was shot dead in the driver’s seat of her car on Friday after pulling into a petrol station in Halhul, near Hebron, by Israeli security forces who said she attempted to run them over.

Her family said she was driving to her sister’s house for lunch and had no intention of ramming the soldiers, a claim backed by Palestinian medics who said she was driving through heavy rain at the time.

Al Sharawi is one of 74 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces since tensions escalated in mid-September. Israel has accused at least 45 of those killed of being involved in attacks or attempted attacks, most of them stabbings. The others were shot during clashes between stone-throwers and security forces. Eleven Israelis have been killed in the violence.

Thirty of the Palestinian deaths have been in Hebron, where hundreds of troops guard about 500 Jewish settlers in the Old City amid a Palestinian population of more than 200,000.

Human rights groups in Hebron have questioned the apparent Israeli policy of shooting to kill. Amnesty International has said it documented at least four “extrajudicial executions” in Hebron and East Jerusalem in which Palestinians were deliberately shot dead by Israeli forces when they posed no imminent threat to life.

Nine Palestinian youth were shot dead in Hebron in the past two weeks, including 23-year-old Islam Ibeidu, who was shot in the head multiple times at a checkpoint on Shuhada Street, near the Old City, on October 28.

As in the Al Sharawi case, and many others, the circumstances of Ibeidu’s death are disputed. The Israeli military says he tried to stab a soldier; Palestinian eyewitnesses say he was unarmed.

"I saw him cross the checkpoint and go through the metal detector, how could he have had a knife?" the owner of a local butcher shop, who identified himself only as Zaid, told The National.

Shuhada Street has long been a flashpoint of tension in occupied Hebron between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers who, under international law, live in the area illegally, protected by Israeli forces.

Zaid said he also witnessed the killing of 18-year-old Fadel Qawasmi on the street on October 17, one of the cases of “extrajudicial killings” cited by Amnesty.

“I saw two soldiers stopping a Palestinian youth near Beit Hadassah and turning him back towards the container checkpoint. A settler was standing next to the soldiers and he followed the Palestinian back towards where I was standing near the checkpoint,” he said.

“The settler was under 10 metres from him and he shot him in the back of the head and in the back. I went towards the shooting and I saw the army had run towards Qawasmi. The settler pointed the gun at me but the soldiers grabbed his arm, pulling it down.”

Zaid said the Israeli forces ordered him to leave the area and he returned to the other side of the checkpoint.

The Israeli military said Qawasmi was armed with a knife and was shot when he approached a settler with the intent to attack.

However, Zaid said Qawasmi could not have crossed through the checkpoint with a knife. “You can’t pass the checkpoint with a shekel, let alone a knife. I didn’t see anything in his hands, but I also didn’t see soldiers planting a knife.”

He was referring to footage posted on social media by another resident of the street that appeared to show an armed settler standing by Qawasmi’s body and soldiers placing an object near him, leading to claims that they had planted a knife at the scene.

The Israeli military denied the accusation. “Palestinian eyewitnesses along with a video, purport to claim that an IDF soldier placed a knife at the scene. However, the object handled by the soldiers was a communications device,” a spokeswoman said.

The settler was uninjured and was not arrested. Both Israeli police and the army have said there would be no investigation of the shooting.

Another video, released by Palestian media, showed Israeli forces shooting a Palestinian man in the head on October 28 as he lay on the ground near Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque after already being shot and injured.

Israeli forces said the man, identified as Mahdi Mohammed, 23, was shot after he attacked a soldier with a knife. The soldier was lightly wounded in the head.

On Saturday, Israeli forces blocked roads out of Hebron and raided Palestinian homes as they launched a manhunt for assailants behind the shootings a day earlier of two Jewish teenagers outside the mosque, which is known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae