PRESS RELEASE

Released @ 10.00 hours GMT 4th July 1997

Palestinian boy dies in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli occupation forces employment of excessive force

On 3rd July Ibrahim Tawfiq Abu Ratima, 14 years old, and who is deaf and dumb, died in Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, as a direct result of a head wound he received when an Israeli soldier shot him on 22nd June.

Investigations by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and eye-witness testimony, reveal that at around 16.30 hours local time on 22nd June, Abu Ratima was walking near the Morag Settlement in Gaza Strip. Although he was walking in an unrestricted area, Israeli soldiers began to shout orders to him to come to them. As he was deaf and dumb he could not hear their calls. An Israeli soldier then fired one bullet and Abu Ratima sustained a bullet in the head. The fact that only one bullet was fired and that this was a direct shot to head, suggests that the Israeli soldiers employed sharp-shooting or sniper tactics, and a shoot to kill policy. It is also significant that at the time of the shooting, there were no clashes occurring and the situation was calm.

Palestinians were participating in a peaceful sit-in close-by (in demonstration against attempts by Israeli Settlers of Morag Settlement to seize nearby Palestinian land). Some of the demonstrators carried Abu Ratima to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, from where he was immediately transferred to Shifa Hospital in order to receive intensive care treatment. He did not regain consciousness until his death on 3rd July.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has recorded many occasions on which Israeli armed forces have used excessive and illegal force against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and concludes therefrom that this is a policy of the Israeli occupation authorities. Israel is a Party to the 1949 IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which endows civilians in occupied territory with the status of protected persons against whom the use of excessive military force is prohibited. Israel’s employment of a shoot to kill policy in regard to unarmed Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a violation of the Convention and defined in Article 147 therein as a grave breach.