Palestinian’s death caught on video

Assailant stabbed Israeli officer in face before fatally shot

An Israeli activist gives a tour of the embattled West Bank city of Hebron on Friday.
(AP/Maya Alleruzzo)
An Israeli activist gives a tour of the embattled West Bank city of Hebron on Friday. (AP/Maya Alleruzzo)

JERUSALEM -- Israel's paramilitary border police said an officer killed a Palestinian assailant Friday in the occupied West Bank after they wrestled over a weapon.

Amateur video, widely shared on social media, captured the moments the officer fired the fatal shots, and the Palestinian dropped to the ground.

Friday's violence took place along a busy thoroughfare in the town of Hawara, south of the West Bank city of Nablus. Police said the assailant carried a knife and tried to break into an Israeli couple's car before the driver, who was a soldier on leave, shot and wounded him.

The assailant then moved toward border policemen patrolling nearby, stabbing one in the face, police said. The commander of the unit tried to arrest the assailant.

Amateur video shows the commander putting the Palestinian man in a chokehold as two other Palestinians try to pull him away from the officer, to no avail. The video shows the Palestinian man grabbing the officer's assault rifle, which then drops to the ground.

The officer pulls a pistol from a holster and fires four shots. The young man falls to the ground in the video and is later pronounced dead.

More than 140 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting this year. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting Israeli army incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

Friday's violence came against the backdrop of months of Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank, prompted by a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the spring that killed 19 people. A recent wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli targets killed an additional nine people.

Earlier Friday, dozens of Israeli peace activists toured Hebron, the West Bank's largest city, in a show of solidarity with Palestinians, amid chants of "shame, shame" from ultra-nationalist hecklers.

In coalition agreements, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already handed key authorities in the West Bank to ultra-nationalist faction leaders, including former fringe figure Itamar Ben-Gvir, known for his anti-Arab rhetoric.

At the same time, peace activists and pro-Palestinian rights groups have come under attack in recent years from right-wing politicians branding them traitors.

The immediate trigger for Friday's tour was an incident in Hebron in which a soldier pushed a man to the ground and punched him in the face after a tense standoff with a small group of peace activists. Another soldier is heard telling the activists: "Ben-Gvir is going to sort things out in this place. That's it, you guys have lost."

The soldier uttering the taunts was initially sentenced to 10 days in military jail, but the army then reduced the sentence to six days.

As incoming national security minister, Ben-Gvir will have control over the border police whose troops are often deployed alongside regular soldiers in the West Bank.

As about 200 peace activists arrived Friday in the center of Hebron, they were greeted by a group of protesters holding a banner reading: "The people of Israel demand: expel the anarchists from Hebron."

Friday's visit was part of the regular offerings of anti-occupation groups, but turnout was larger than usual because of the election results and last week's incident in Hebron, said Ori Givati, a spokesman for Breaking the Silence, one of the groups organizing the trip.

He said activists were worried -- but also determined to continue their work, including tours to West Bank hot spots like Hebron, where dozens of heavily guarded settlers live in a city of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinians were largely out of sight as the Israeli groups faced off.

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