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Israelis assassinate Palestinian Al-Na'neesh in Tulkarem, Israeli Human Rights Groups Urge Probe of Killings
29/10/2003
Palestine Media Center – PMC
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) undercover units extra-judicially assassinated Ibrahim A’ref al-Na’neesh, 25, on Tuesday in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem and injured Ma’ath Fuad al-Habal, 17, as two Israeli human rights groups appealed to the Supreme Court to compel the IOF to investigate all incidents where Palestinian civilians are killed by the Israeli military, a spokesman for one of the groups said.
Israeli undercover commandos killed an anti-Israeli-occupation activist linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement outside a West Bank refugee camp on Tuesday, witnesses and the IOF said.
Witnesses said al-Na’neesh of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group within Fatah, was shot dead at the entrance to Tulkarem refugee camp by IOF troops who drove up to him in an unmarked car.
An IOF spokesman claimed the troops tried to arrest al-Na’neesh but opened fire when he and a second gunman shot at them.
Israeli forces have captured and killed scores of Palestinian activists spearheading a three-year-old Palestinian uprising against the 36-year-old Israeli occupation.
Witnesses said the Israeli shooting was unprovoked and that a second man was wounded. The spokesman said IOF troops shot at a second gunman at the scene who got away.
Israeli human rights groups on Tuesday appealed to the Supreme Court to compel the IOF to investigate all incidents where Palestinian civilians are killed by the occupying army, a spokesman for one of the groups said Tuesday.
The petitioners, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and B’tselem, charged that the killing of civilians is rarely investigated and almost never leads to charges, said Yoav Leff, an ACRI spokesman.
B’tselem in a statement in September said that from a technical point of view, all Palestinians are considered civilians because they don’t have an army of their own.
In the three years of the Palestinian uprising, at least 2,527 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, and the IOF have acknowledged that at least 200 were civilian noncombatants. However, Palestinians and human rights groups place the number much higher.
During the same period, 892 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly army conscripts off duty and thus considered civilians by the Israeli media.
Currently, Leff says, the Israeli military investigates only if an internal inquiry by the unit responsible for the killings recommends further procedures.
According to Leff, military police have investigated only 55 shooting incidents since the start of the latest round of violence in September 2000.
"This gives the wrong message to the soldiers, it tells them it is all right to be light on the trigger," Leff said.
"This is a conflict of interest. These units are investigating themselves," Leff said.
The IOF had no immediate comment on the petition.
Meanwhile, IOF detained at least 13 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip overnight and demolished the house of Ziad Abdul Ghafour in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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