A Palestinian teenage boy was shot and killed on Monday by an Israeli security guard at a checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank.
According to Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), 15-year-old Mohammad Nidal Younis Mousa from Nablus was shot and killed by a private Israeli security guard in the early hours of Monday morning during an alleged car ramming attack.
Israeli defense officials claimed that Mousa, after reportedly getting in an argument with his father, took his father’s car and drove it to the Jabar military checkpoint near Tulkarem, where around 1:20 am he then allegedly “rammed it at high speed over a sidewalk and through concrete protective barriers at the inspection post at the checkpoint, striking the guard,” Haaretz reported.
According to Haaretz, the security guard who shot Mousa was the head guard on site. The injured guard was reportedly in “serious but stable condition, suffering injuries to his head, chest and limbs but was conscious.”
Meanwhile Mousa was taken to an Israeli medical center where he succumbed to his wounds hours later.
DCIP reported that shortly after Mousa left his house, his family began looking for him and reported that he was missing to Palestinian security forces. Around 4:00 am, Israeli forces raided the Mousa family home, “ransacking the house and interrogating Mohammad’s mother and six-year-old brother,” DCIP said.
It was only at around 7:30am — more than 7 hours after he left the house — that Mousa’s family was notified that he had been shot and was in critical condition. At around 10:00 am, the family was told that he succumbed to his wounds.
“Israeli forces routinely unlawfully kill Palestinian children with impunity, using excessive force and unjustified intentional lethal force,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP said in a statement.
“If a child is suspected of committing a criminal act, they should be apprehended in accordance with international standards and afforded due process of law.”
According to DCIP, Mousa is the 17th Palestinian minor to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year.
In Mousa’s case, however, the teen was killed by a private security guard, not an Israeli soldier or police officer. According to the Israeli research center Who Profits, at least 14 checkpoints in the West Bank, dozens of checkpoints in occupied East Jerusalem, and countless more settlement security posts are manned by private security firms.
“The private security guards employed by these companies have policing powers, bear arms and are entitled to use force in performing their duties. Unlike soldiers who are monitored by army investigators, there is no automatic internal review mechanism for incidents involving the use of force for security companies, according to news media reports,” the report said.
I hope people read the Who Profits pamphlet on security privatisation mentioned above – https://www.whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/old/private_security_companies_final_for_web.pdf – the Occupation provides lots of jobs.
“The privatization process of the checkpoints and the employment of private security guards, usually contractor workers who are not directly employed by the state, also enables the Israeli authorities to shirk their responsibility for activities taking place in the checkpoints. ”
Also check out Machsom Watch (“checkpoint watch):
https://machsomwatch.org/en
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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-freezing-settlement-plan-epitomizes-united-jerusalem-s-failures-1.10444886
“Freezing Settlement Plan Epitomizes United Jerusalem’s Failures”
“The construction of a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, now on hold, shows the twisted priorities of state planners, who are concerned less with serving residents than shifting Israel’s demographic balance” by Nir Hasson, Haaretz, Dec. 7/21
“The area around the Qalandiya Checkpoint in northern Jerusalem may well be the ugliest place in the city. It’s a jumble of huge concrete walls, observation towers, guard posts, fences, cameras & unbelievable amounts of trash piled up everywhere.
“The checkpoint & the nearby abandoned Atarot airport are in the heart of a Palestinian section of the city, surrounded by the neighborhoods of Beit Hanina, A-Ram, Kafr Aqab & Qalandiya. The airport is just 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles) from central Ramallah & more than twice that distance from central Jerusalem.
“But none of the above was mentioned Monday at a lengthy session of the regional planning and building committee, devoted to constructing a new Jewish neighborhood at the abandoned airport. The discussion, as is typical of such meetings, was saturated with architectural details – bicycle paths, green areas & transportation systems.
“Amid all these details, the big picture got lost – the construction of a large Jewish neighborhood on the other side of the Green Line, in territory that not one single country aside from Israel recognizes as sovereign Israeli territory.
“This meeting epitomized the planning failures of united Jerusalem since 1967. Decision makers don’t see the city as a place where planning & building should benefit local residents, but as a geopolitical chessboard where building is essential to create buffers between two Palestinian neighborhoods, preserve a Jewish majority or thwart diplomatic plans to divide the city. They also work to prevent the establishment of new Palestinian neighborhoods.
“The unsurprising result is an enormous, unmanageable city with huge gaps between its eastern & western parts.” (cont’d)
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“The unsurprising result is an enormous, unmanageable city with huge gaps between its eastern & western parts.
“Anyone seeking further proof of Israel’s blindness toward almost half the capital’s residents can find it in the decision made at the end of the meeting: to postpone approving the plan while an environmental impact study is done. Yet nobody ever thought of conducting a study or doing anything at all to address the area’s environmental hazards for the sake of its tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, most of whom are Israeli citizens or permanent residents.
“Officials from the environmental protection & health ministries were the ones who demanded the study. This may have been because both ministries are headed by members of the left-wing Meretz party.
“But another, no less reasonable possibility is that the Prime Minister’s Office worked behind the scenes to delay the plan to avoid setting off a diplomatic landmine with the Biden administration. Right now, Israel needs to save its diplomatic capital in Washington for more important issues.
“Nevertheless, the planning committee rejected a proposal by Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Freige to scrap the plan & instead consider reopening the airport as a joint Israeli-Palestinian venture. Freige spoke of the airport as a national strategic asset that also offers an opportunity with the Palestinians.
“The state’s planning institutions & planning documents observe a kind of behavioral code. For instance, it’s impossible to explicitly state which community a neighborhood is intended for: Arab or Jewish, ultra-Orthodox or secular. But one needn’t be a detective nor an architect to reasonably guess which community the plan is intended for, based on the documents & discussions.
“At Atarot, the answer is obvious. The planners, on orders from Jerusalem’s municipal planning committee, prepared an outline for low-rise construction, no more than nine stories, with balconies where people can build sukkahs. They earmarked lots for synagogues & mikvehs & even one for generators in case the community wants to disconnect from the electricity grid on Shabbat – a practice only found among the ultra-Orthodox.
“When some committee members pointed out that secular Jews also suffer from a housing shortage, Deputy Mayor Yaakov Halperin of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party replied,.. ‘the important thing is that it’s Jewish.'”
Palestinian fortunes have consistently deteriorated for a very long time. Random violence and rocks have not produced positive results. The First Intifada started 34 years ago today. Since then understanding and sympathy have increased but has not brought liberty. The opposite. Gifting the Israelis with the pretext of self-defense has been self-defeating. And has made headway with Congress much more difficult.