Israeli Forces Execute Palestinian Civilian at Point-Blank Range in al-Far’ah Refugee Camp
Ref: 01/2017
In an extra-judicial execution crime, on Tuesday dawn, 10 January 2017, Israeli forces shot dead in cold blood a Palestinian civilian in al-Far’ah refugee camp, south of Tubas, in front of his mother. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) stresses that this crime was committed after the Israeli political and military leaders gave the Israeli soldiers the green light to shed the Palestinian blood and tolerated the soldiers for their crimes against Palestinian civilians.
According to PCHR’s investigations and the mother’s testimony, Fawziyah Mahmoud Khamis Salhi (67) said to PCHR’s fieldworker that at approximately 02:00 on the abovementioned day, Israeli forces moved into al-Far’ah refugee camp, south of Tubas. They surrounded the family house of Mohammed Subhi Ahmed Khamis Salhi (33) near an UNRWA School for Girls and the camp sports club, seemingly in order to arrest him. A number of Israeli soldiers jumped from the outer wall of the 1-storey house. Mohammed and his mother then heard noise in the corridor and went out of their bedroom. When his mother saw the soldiers, she stood between them and her son. An Israeli soldier then ordered her to sit on a plastic chair there, but when she refused, the soldier forcefully seated her. She then twice stood between the soldiers and her son. However in the third time she stood, the soldier forcefully pushed her and seated her on the chair. The soldier then pulled out a gun with a silencer and directly fired 5 bullets at Mohammed at point-blank range. As a result, the bullets penetrated his neck, chest, hand, armpit, pelvis and thigh from the left side of his body and killed him in front of his elderly mother. The mother said that she did not hear any sound of shooting, but saw sparkles coming from the gun. After that, her son swayed and fell on the ground. His body was put on a litter and then taken by an ambulance belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) to Tubas Turkish Governmental Hospital in Tubas, where medical sources announced him dead. It should be mentioned that the Mohammed previously served a 3-year sentence in the Israeli prisons.
PCHR strongly condemns this new crime, coinciding with the trial of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, who killed a Palestinian young man namely ‘Abdel Fattah al-Sharif (20) in Hebron on 24 March 2016 when the latter was wounded and immobilized and with calls from Israeli leaders, including Benyamin Netanyahu, to pardon the soldier if being convicted. As these calls encourage the Israeli soldiers to shed the Palestinian blood, PCHR hereby:
- Demands the United Nations to provide international protection for Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and ensure guarantees to protect civilians in the oPt;
- Calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to oblige Israel to apply the Geneva Conventions in the oPt in its capacity as a Member State to these conventions;
- Demands the states signing the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligations by exercising their Universal Jurisdiction to hold Israeli war criminals to account regardless of the criminals’ nationalities and the place where the crimes were committed and put an end to their impunity and
- Appeals the abovementioned states to extend their Jurisdiction to account war criminals regardless of their origins, not to be obedient to the Israeli pressure that aims to limit the states’ jurisdiction in order to keep the Israeli war criminals’ impunity.