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Some scenes from a video filmed in the West Bank, released by the news agency Associated Press, show three unarmed Palestinian men who were suddenly hit by several shots, without having received any provocation: one of them was killed and the other two were wounded. The video does not show where the shots come from, but according to checks by Associated Pressconsidered very rigorous and reliable, it was one or more soldiers of the Israeli army who shot.
The clash occurred around 2 am on January 5th in Beit Rima, a city of 4,000 inhabitants about 60 kilometers north of Ramallah, and was filmed by the security cameras of a shop.
In the video we see about ten men standing in the middle of the street, and at a certain point one of them kneels down and touches something on the ground. Immediately afterwards another man, Nader Rimawi, is hit in the left leg by a gunshot and falls to the ground as everyone begins to run away. Two men approach Nader to help him and are also hit: they are Osaid Rimawi, who dies shortly after, and Mohammed Rimawi, who is injured and is taken to hospital. Nader was also taken to hospital and survived.
A later scene shows several Israeli army soldiers approaching Mohammed and Osaid, who were lying on the ground, then walking away about four minutes later without doing anything.
Israeli soldiers approach wounded Palestinians (UGC via AP)
The Israeli army told Associated Press that the soldiers opened fire because they thought the kneeling person had bent over to light a Molotov cocktail. The first shot, however, did not hit the kneeling person but Nader, who was standing. Nader said that in reality the person who bent over was trying to burn some pieces of paper and various objects found around, to keep warm.
Other residents of Beit Rima confirmed that the army was not provoked, and that the Palestinian men who were attacked did not intend to light any explosives. An army spokesman said other Palestinian people had already tried to light Molotov cocktails in Beit Rima that evening, but those involved said they had heard of no further clashes.
«My friends and I were near a roundabout when we heard someone say that Israeli soldiers were walking in the area. We stayed there, we didn’t know what to do and we had nothing with us,” Mohammad Rimawi said Associated Press. «Suddenly a sniper started shooting at my brother, wounding him. I ran to him to help him, but they shot me too.”
The funeral of Osaid Rimawi, in Beit Rima (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the radical Palestinian group Hamas last October, violence in the West Bank has also increased significantly. Ahmed Rimawi, Mohammad’s brother, said that soldiers often “enter cities and start shooting at civilians.” According to Palestinian authorities, around 340 people have been killed in the West Bank in the past three months.
The West Bank region is located between Israel, Jordan and the Dead Sea. Theoretically it is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and therefore by Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas. In reality, Israel exercises almost total power over the territory and in recent decades has occupied it with hundreds of colonies, settlements considered illegal by the vast majority of the international community.