Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces in West Bank

A Palestinian man was shot and killed on Monday during clashes with Israeli forces in the south of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and medics said.

Palestinian medical sources identified the man as 22-year-old Omar Al Badawi, who was hit in the chest with live fire before being taken to Ahali hospital in the nearby city of Hebron, where he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the incident at Al Arroub refugee camp.

The clashes came as Palestinians in the West Bank marked the 15th anniversary of the death of former president Yasser Arafat.

Medics also reported Israeli use of live fire in clashes at Fawwar, south of Hebron.

Hamas prohibited a Fatah event to mark the death of Arafat in the coastal Palestinian enclave.

Meanwhile, Palestinian president said he has “slapped” the US Administration in the face by rejecting President Donald Trump’s promised peace plan. In a speech on Monday, Mahmoud Abbas derisively referred to the US peace plan, known as the “Deal of the Century,” as the “Slap of the Century.”

“They tried to give us the slap of the century, but we slapped them in the face,” he said during a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of Arafat’s death.

Trump has not yet released the plan or said when it will be released. But Abbas has pre-emptively rejected it, accusing the White House of being unfairly biased towards Israel.

Earlier, a young Palestinian man who was shot in the back by Israeli forces in an incident caught on video last year said the footage shows just a small part of what was a horrifying day for him.

Speaking to reporters after the video emerged last week, Karam Qawasmi said he was run over by a military jeep, then beaten for several hours before troops released him, only to shoot him in the back with a painful sponge-tipped bullet as he walked away. He said Israeli investigators have never contacted him.

“I died several times that day,” he said in an interview at his home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “They tortured me in a way that I felt they are killing me. And when they shot me, I felt it’s my end. I closed my eyes and prayed.”

Palestinians often charge that Israeli security forces use excessive or unnecessary force against them.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast War and has kept it under military occupation for over 50 years. While the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in parts of the territory, Israel wields overall security control.

The incident occurred a year and a half ago, but only came to public attention last week, when Israel’s Channel 13 TV broadcast a leaked video of the shooting, allegedly carried out by a member of the Israeli paramilitary border police unit.

In the video, a woman is heard screaming at a young Palestinian man to “get out of here” as he slowly walks away with his hands in the air. A male voice tells him to lower his hands as the woman again shouts at him. Some 20 seconds later, a shot is heard as the man crumples to the ground, screaming in pain.

The shooter is not seen in the video, which appears to have been taken by a member of the security force.

Qawasmi, 22, said that he was the man in the video, saying his troubles began early on the morning of May 25, 2018.

He said he had recently completed his accounting studies at a technical college. With few jobs available in the West Bank, he set out from his home in Hebron to the West Bank town of Azayim, outside of Jerusalem, in hopes of finding work at a gas station.

After a meeting at the station, he was walking back towards a checkpoint when he says a military jeep pulled up and struck him, tossing him several meters. Border police officers jumped out of the vehicle and grabbed him, he said.

“They took me into the jeep. They handcuffed me and drove me to a nearby tunnel and started beating me up,” he said. “They twisted my arms, hit me with their hands, boots, and guns all over my body.”

He said he was carrying a small bag with work clothes, but Qawasmi, who does not speak much Hebrew, says he thinks the forces suspected he was armed with a knife.

Agencies