Video shows Israeli forces shooting Palestinians dead moments after surrender

Original article by Julian Borger in Jerusalem

Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.

The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement admitting two men were shot during a joint IDF operation with the Israeli border police around Jenin. It said the shooting “is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies”.

The militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed the two dead men were fighters in its armed wing, al-Quds Brigades.

The footage, which has circulated widely within Israeli and Arab media, shows Israeli soldiers surrounding what appears to be a storage facility in an urban area.

The troops use a mechanical digger to breach the garage-style door, after which two men crawl out of the building under the damaged door and give themselves up on their hands and knees, holding up their shirts to show they are unarmed.

Uniformed men, identified in Israeli media as officers of Israel’s border police, then approach them. One officer, who is not wearing a helmet and is bald-headed and bearded, appears to take charge. He kicks the men while they are on the ground and then can be seen ordering the detainees back into the building under the damaged door.

A few seconds later, as the two victims are crawling away from their captors and have reached the threshold of the building, the five border police officers visible at the scene raise their assault rifles, and the two detainees slump to the ground.

“We’re appalled by the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in yet another apparent summary execution,” said the UN human rights office spokesperson, Jeremy Laurence.

“The execution documented today is the result of an accelerated process of dehumanisation of Palestinians and the complete abandonment of their lives by the Israeli regime,” said Yuli Novak, the executive director of the B’Tselem human rights group. “In Israel, there is no mechanism that acts to stop the killing of Palestinians or is capable of prosecuting those responsible.”

Al-Quds Brigades named the two dead men as Youssef Asasa, 37, and Mahmoud Abdallah, 26, and said they were a field commander and fighter respectively in its Jenin brigade.

Even in conflict, the execution of unarmed prisoners is a war crime

Israeli media reports said the border police unit involved in the killings was a special forces group known as Yamas. It is known for its covert and undercover operations, which like its membership are normally cloaked in official secrecy.

Israeli soldiers and police are rarely held accountable for the killings of Palestinians despite hundreds of allegations. B’Tselem stopped cooperating with the military review process in 2016, declaring it a “whitewash”.

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What sets the killings in Jenin on Thursday apart is the starkness of the video evidence. The IDF statement on the incident said it happened during an IDF and border police operation in the Jenin area, where “the forces operated to apprehend wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces”.

“The wanted individuals were affiliated with a terror network in the area of Jenin,” the statement said. “The forces entered the area, enclosed the structure in which the suspects were located, and initiated a surrender procedure that lasted several hours.”

“Following the use of engineering tools on the structure, the two suspects exited,” it added. “Following their exit, fire was directed toward the suspects.”

The statement added: “The incident is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.”

However, Ben-Gvir issued his own statement saying he “provides full backing to border police members and IDF fighters who shot at wanted terrorists who came out of a building in Jenin”.

The minister, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organisation, said: “The fighters acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die.”

Additional reporting by Quique Kierszenbaum