Ramallah: The Israeli regime has been implicated in 19 extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in the past six months, according to a report released by the PLO-affiliated Abdullah Al Hourani Centre for Studies and Documentation.
The centre says that Israeli soldiers justified these murders under the pretext of self-defence. They claim the Palestinians were knife-wielding assailants trying to attack them.
The centre said the 19 documented cases prove that the soldiers killed the Palestinians after they had already been subdued.
Since October, escalating violence in the Palestinian territories and 1948 areas claimed the lives of 209 Palestinians, including 47 children and 33 Israelis.
According to the report, 23 Palestinians were killed in March, including five children and two women. In the same month, 380 Palestinians were wounded, including 45 children.
Israeli occupation forces also arrested 647 Palestinians including 128 minors and 16 women.
The arrests put the total number of Palestinians behind bars to 4,767.
The Palestinian National Authority has come under increased scrutiny for failing to expose ongoing Israeli crimes despite provided proofs and testimonies.
“The Palestinians must practise true political activism and request an international advisory opinion regarding the Israeli extrajudicial executions,” Ala’a Al Rimawi, a Palestinian expert on Israeli affairs, told Gulf News.A video was published in March, showing an Israeli soldier shooting a subdued Palestinian at point-black range in the head. Another video showed the soldier receiving hearty congratulations, complete with handshakes and pats on the arm by the far-right activist Baruch Marzel, the leader of the radical Kach movement.
In a new video of the killing of Abdul Fattah Al Sharif, the Israeli soldier, Elor Azraya, is seen smiling alongside Marzel while the body of Al Sharif was being removed from the scene.
