Rights and Accountability 8 March 2022
Israeli forces killed three Palestinian youth in occupied Jerusalem this week.
Israeli police fatally shot Abdelrahman Jamal Qassem, 22, on Monday, after he reportedly stabbed two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Two officers were moderately injured by the stabbing, the Israeli police said.
The killing of Qassem was “the final result we expect in such event,” Israeli police commissioner Kobi Shabtai said, according to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz. The final result, he elaborated, was “a terrorist lying dead.”
That is effectively an admission the Israeli police shoot to kill in such cases – executing Palestinians extrajudicially.
A video shared on social media purporting to be from the incident shows an Israeli police officer shooting at Qassem as he is lying on the ground.
Killing teens
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian teens the previous day.
The Israeli army was raiding Abu Dis, a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, that afternoon when it claimed that two people threw Molotov cocktails at a military post.
Soldiers fired at 15-year-old Yamen Nafez Mahmoud Khanafseh, killing him. A second person fled the area.
“Israeli forces prevented Palestinian paramedics from treating Yamen, firing tear gas canisters at the ambulance as it approached the scene,” according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International-Palestine.
There had been no confrontations between the Israeli army and Palestinians at the time, DCIP said.Yamen is the third child killed by Israeli forces this year, all in the span of three weeks.
The Israeli military fatally shot a 13-year-old Palestinian boy last month. Israel claimed that its soldiers “identified three suspects who arrived at a location where Molotov cocktails were repeatedly thrown at Israeli vehicles recently.”
A lack of international outrage at Israel’s trigger-happy policy of executing children for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails is particularly telling at the moment. The mainstream media have glorified Ukrainian civilians who prepare Molotov cocktails for use in resisting the Russian invasion of their country.
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli police shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian they accused of stabbing and lightly injuring an officer in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, according to Haaretz.
The teen was identified as Karim Jamal al-Qawasmeh from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Tur.
Video footage shows al-Qawasmeh lying on the ground, surrounded by Israeli forces.
While his body is on the ground, apparently lifeless, an Israeli police officer approaches him and steps on him, moving him, presumably to confirm that he is dead.After the killing, Israeli forces raided al-Qawasmeh’s house and detained his brother and parents, but later released them.
Local media circulated pictures of al-Qawasmeh following his killing:
