Two videos from the West Bank showing Israeli troops shooting a 17-year-old boy and security forces repeatedly running over the body of a man they had shot have added to concerns about the Israeli military’s rules of engagement.
The shooting of 17-year-old Osaid Rimawi in the early hours of last Friday is shown in footage from a security camera in a local shop that was obtained by the Associated Press news agency. The video also shows two earlier rounds of gunfire that injured two unarmed men. Rimawi was killed when he tried to rush to their aid.
The only weapons visible in the footage are guns held by Israeli soldiers. Soldiers gathered round the dead and injured bodies; one prodded Rimawi with his foot, then drove away. They did not make any arrests.
The Israeli military said troops in Beit Rima had opened fire on suspects who had thrown explosives and firebombs, AP reported. Local residents said the killings were unprovoked, and no one had thrown explosives.
The Israeli military has repeatedly been accused of using deadly violence without provocation. Most of the victims have been Palestinians, but they include three Israeli hostages, who were killed after they escaped Hamas captivity in December. They were bare-chested, waving white flags and at least one was shouting in Hebrew.
Earlier this week, footage from Gaza emerged that appeared to show a sniper killing a woman as she led a column of civilians trying to reach a safe zone in November. She was waving a white flag and walking beside a young child.
In the wake of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, most international focus has been on the war in Gaza, where the death toll has climbed to more than 23,000 and most of the population is displaced and starving.
But violence against Palestinians – by both Israeli military and settlers – has also risen sharply in the West Bank, with 326 killed, a quarter of them children. Israelis have also injured nearly 600 children.
“Violence has reached unprecedented levels [in the West Bank],” said the Unicef spokesman Jonathan Crick. “Eighty-five Palestinian children have been killed in the past 12 weeks – more than double the number of children killed in all of 2022 – amid increased military and law enforcement operations.”
“Unicef is extremely concerned about the right of children in the West Bank … to safety and protection, and their inherent right to life.”
The second West Bank video comes from a security camera in the city of Tulkarm, where Israel’s border police said on Monday they had killed three gunmen in a raid to arrest a militant.
The footage shows Israeli security forces shooting at young men, at least one of them armed, as they rush out of a house, Reuters reported. An Israeli military vehicle approaches two men who had been hit in the street and drives over one, stopping on the man’s legs.
Footage apparently recorded later shows a vehicle backing over the body and then manoeuvring over it twice more.
It is not clear if the man is dead or alive the first time he is run over. Israel has previously been accused of desecrating the bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza.
The Israeli border police said the security vehicle had come to extricate Israeli forces under heavy fire, and ran over the body unintentionally, Reuters reported. The incident is under review, the military added.
The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs said the incident reflected a “culture of hatred and extremism”.
