Israel kills another Palestinian in the West Bank, after bloodiest year in a decade

Over the weekend, Israeli forces killed 19-year-old Palestinian, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar. Thousands attended the young man’s funeral Sunday in Burin, a village near Nablus.

Al-Najjar was shot dead after a group of Palestinian youths threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli settler vehicles driving on the Israeli-controlled bypass road between Kedumim and Yitzhar colonies.

Burin, like other villages in the area, suffers greatly at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers. Occupation authorities targeted the village with new land confiscation orders just last year.

The killing of al-Najjar came just days after a UN document revealed that 2014 saw the highest number of Palestinian injuries in a decade in the West Bank, as the Israeli military brutally suppressed protests – often with live ammunition.

According to UN OCHA’s monthly ‘Humanitarian Monitor’ report for last December, Israeli forces killed 56 Palestinians in the West Bank over the course of the year, and injured another 5,868. Disturbingly, 12 of the Palestinians killed and 1,188 of those injured were children.

The report notes: “The number of injuries is the highest since 2005, when OCHA began recording conflict-related casualties, while the number of fatalities is the highest since 2007.”

Confrontations between almost exclusively unarmed Palestinian civilians and Israeli occupation forces peaked during July and August, in response to the murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammad Abu Khdeir in East Jerusalem and Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

The UN agency notes that at least two-thirds of Palestinian fatalities occurred in clashes with Israeli forces prompted either by protests or Israeli army attacks and arrest raids.

Israeli soldiers routinely fired tear gas canisters, rubber-coated metal bullets, and live ammunition. Live ammunition accounted for almost all fatalities, and nearly 19% of Palestinian injuries – a figure up from 4% in 2013. The use of rubber-coated metal bullets accounted for 45% of all injuries.

Palestinians, meanwhile, confronted occupation forces almost always with stone-throwing, and in a “minority of cases”, with Molotov cocktails, fireworks and explosive devices.

The OCHA report includes the story of Mohammad Jawabreh, a 21-year-old Palestinian shot and killed by an Israeli soldier in al-Arub refugee camp near Hebron. The details were provided by UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, following an investigation.

Jawabreh was killed on 11 November 2014, in the context of a demonstration held to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. In initial clashes with Israeli forces, Jawabreh was hit in the leg with a rubber-coated metal bullet, and he returned home with a friend.

As the pair observed the clashes from a window on the second floor of his house, “an Israeli soldier positioned on an adjacent roof ordered the two to leave the window”, and fired a tear gas canister in their direction.

The two left the window, and returned later with a relative to watch the clashes “while drinking tea”. A few minutes later, Jawabreh was “shot with live ammunition on the left side of his back.” Although rushed to hospital, he was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Whether confronting heavily armed occupation soldiers, or sitting at home drinking tea, Palestinians in the West Bank are killed by the same army that bombs families to death in their houses in Gaza.

Both Jawabreh and al-Najjar were young Palestinians shot dead by Israeli soldiers who, day in and day out, maintain a half century-long military regime that steals land, upholds racist laws, and brutally suppresses any resistance. It’s the most moral apartheid-enforcing army in the world.

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