Two newly disclosed videos of last week’s fatal shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers near the West Bank city of Hebron appears to show that the car in which the boy was riding was backing up at the time of the shots. The footage seemingly contradicts the Israeli army spokesman’s account, which claims the troops shot at the car’s tires after the driver of the car failed to heed the soldiers’ order to stop.
The videos of the killing of Mohammed al-Alami were made public by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Thirteen shots are heard on one of the videos, which were filmed near at a makeshift cemetery serving the Hebron-area town of Beit Ummar. The footage shows that when the boy’s father, who was driving the car, approached the soldiers, he then immediately backed up. Three soldiers are seen running toward the car. Several shots are then heard.
The newly released footage is consistent with an account of the incident that Ashraf al-Alami, the boy’s uncle, who is the brother of the driver of the car, gave to Haaretz, claiming that the driver and his three children who were in the car with him, decided to backtrack after encountering a roadblock at the entrance to Beit Ummar. Then, the uncle claimed, about 13 shots were fired at the car, one of which hit Mohammed al-Alami in the chest.
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The timing of the two videos, which were filmed from different vantage points, was synchronized by B’Tselem, which is involved with human rights issues in the territories. In both videos, the car can be seen backing up. The exact times noted on the two videos are an hour apart because one of them is not set to daylight saving time.
Mohammed al-Alami
The Israeli army spokesman’s office issued a statement following the July 28 incident in which it said that Israeli soldiers spotted a number of suspects getting out of a car near the army position at the entrance to Beit Ummar and that the suspects were then seen digging in the ground before then getting back into the car.
“The [army] force approached to examine the area and identified two bags, one of which contained the body of a newborn baby. A short time later, the forces spotted a car traveling near the site and believed that it was the same car in which the suspects had been riding.”
The army said that the soldiers then followed the procedure required to arrest a suspect, including calling to the suspect and firing in the air. “After the vehicle did not stop, one of the soldiers shot at the tires of the car in an effort to stop it. The claim that the Palestinian boy was killed as a result of the weapons fire is being investigated,” the army said, as is the incident as a whole.
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A 20-year-old man was also killed in clashes between the army and Palestinians at Mohammed al-Alami’s funeral last Thursday. Eleven other Palestinians were injured in the clashes.
The army’s open-fire regulations in effect since 2016 permit weapons fire to be directed at a motor vehicle in the West Bank only in life-threatening circumstances (such as a ramming attack carried out by a motorist) or following an attack on an Israeli soldier (such as shooting at soldiers from inside a car).
There are also three circumstances in which soldiers are permitted to fire at a vehicle’s tires: when it has driven through a checkpoint; when there is a “concrete warning” related to it; or when someone suspected of a serious crime is spotted fleeing in the vehicle. Neither the Israeli army account of the incident nor the Palestinians’ version include grounds that appear to justify opening fire on the vehicle in which Mohammed al-Alami was riding when he was fatally shot.
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