West News Wire: Palestinian human rights organizations claim that since December, an unprecedented number of Palestinians have been killed as a result of the Israeli army changing its fire orders against Palestinians.
Following the formation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Israeli government, the action was taken.
The rights organizations asserted that the shooting victims had not endangered the lives of Israeli soldiers.
Since the year’s commencement, 15 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. The most recent was Hamdi Abu Dayyeh, a 40-year-old Palestinian policeman, who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers on Tuesday in the southern West Bank village of Halhul, which is located north of Hebron.
Armed forces killed Ahmed Kahla, 45, of Silwad, east of Ramallah, at the start of the week.
Qusai Kahla, his eldest son, who was present when the troops opened fire, claimed that they had been traveling to work when their car was halted at an Israeli checkpoint in the morning. The vehicle’s roof was struck by a stun grenade launched by the soldiers, who then attacked them with pepper spray.
A fistfight between Kahla’s father and some Israeli soldiers was seen on camera; one of the soldiers then shot Kahla’s father dead in broad daylight.
Similarly, Ammar Mufleh, 23, was shot by the Israeli army in Hawara, close to Nablus, in late December.
Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights director Ammar Dweik as saying: These guidelines are being regularly updated to make it easier to shoot at Palestinians, and the aim is to give legal protection to Israeli soldiers and cover up their crimes in the field against the Palestinians.”
He claimed that after the last modification to the shooting instructions was made in December, “we have seen a spike in killings and field executions.”
A soldier who killed a Palestinian in the village of Al-Dhahiriya, south of Hebron, was recently hailed by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“We witness Israeli politicians calling for the killing of Palestinians. The main idea behind the new guidelines is that the soldier is now allowed to shoot and use fatal force at the least hint of suspicion,” Dweik continued.
Unless they are Americans, victims of Israeli shooting policy are not paid, even if they were accidentally hit. The Israeli army paid out compensation to the family of an American casualty in the fall of last year as a result of pressure from the US.
Through their documentation and dissemination of the executions, Palestinian rights groups attempt to sway the public opinion of the world community and put pressure on Israel to end the abuses.
“We, as human rights organizations, are continuously monitoring this issue, and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry has submitted a case on the subject of summary executions to the International Criminal Court,” said Dweik. It demonstrates that what is taking place is not just a random occurrence but a policy of extrajudicial killings with dubious justifications.
The Israeli army killed 170 Palestinians in the West Bank and six in Israel in 2022, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The fire orders were the same as before, a senior Israeli security official told news reporters, but how they were carried out was different.
He emphasized that the directives stated that if a soldier felt that their life was in danger, they were permitted to shoot in a progressive fashion first in the air, then toward the legs, then the belly.
“This is possible when there is a distance between them and the attacker and enough time,” the official said. “However, if they are taken by surprise by an attack, they can only shoot to neutralize the attacker, and that may mean killing them.” The official also said it was prohibited to shoot after the threat had been eliminated.
When Israeli soldiers and Palestinians engage in armed combat, he claimed that “the best-equipped, the most trained, and the most efficient in employing weapons prevail. As a result, you can clearly observe that the deceased always support the Palestinian armed men rather than the military. Since they were slain in an armed conflict, the picture appears fragmentary and as though they died unexpectedly.
He continued by saying that according to the orders, if an army force came under fire, it was required to continue battling the enemy until it was subdued.
We conduct a campaign of arrests every night throughout the West Bank’s settlements, towns, and villages; during the majority of these operations, the Palestinians shoot at us. Naturally, the inexperienced gunmen who fire at our forces are the ones our expert snipers target, the man continued.
According to a second Israeli military analyst, the shooting regulations and directives of the Israel Defense Forces were held in the utmost secret and were not even shared with the Americans.
Separately, after Israeli officials denied Jordan’s ambassador to Palestine, Ghassan Al-Majali, entry to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jordan summoned the Israeli envoy to the Foreign Ministry’s Amman headquarters.
Al-Majali was asked by Israeli authorities at the Lions Gate to get permission before visiting, but he refused.
According to a ministry spokesman, the Israeli ambassador received a strident letter of protest that should be delivered right away to his administration.
