Allegations Arise That Israeli Soldiers Are Planting Knives on Palestinians

Amira Hass writes in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of incidents in which Israeli soldiers have reportedly killed unarmed Palestinians and possibly placed knives near them “after the fact”:

… So long as we don’t get that the occupation is one continuous terror attack, we won’t know how to end the attacks on Israelis. … Late last month, soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion killed two 22-year-olds at the Gilbert checkpoint in Tel Rumeida. International volunteers saw how Islam Obaido was killed on October 28. According to them, he was walking down the street toward the checkpoint. Two soldiers, standing at some distance from their colleagues at the checkpoint, stood in front of him. Obaido raised his hands. One or both of them shot two bursts of gunfire at him. An international volunteer said he wasn’t holding a knife, but Israel Defense Forces photographs showed a knife near the body. Obaido was shot from a meter away. Couldn’t the soldiers have just wounded him rather than killed him?

No volunteers actually saw the shooting of Hummam Is’aid on October 27, they just heard the shots. A volunteer looked out the window of her apartment and saw the body surrounded by soldiers and settlers. She didn’t see a knife. She moved away from the window for a second, and when she returned, there was a knife, she said.

Are soldiers planting knives after the fact, as the Palestinians believe? To the Israeli ear that sounds far-fetched, even an illegitimate question. But let’s ask: Have soldiers and policemen never lied to justify the unjustified arrest or shooting or killing of Palestinians? Israelis find it hard to believe that our soldiers and commanders could lie, until it’s proven otherwise by security cameras or still pictures of which the soldiers weren’t aware.

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Hass also questions why Palestinians found with knives are being shot and often killed rather than arrested.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata