The Beitunia killings refers to the consecutive killings of two Palestinian teenagers which took place on the occasion of the annual Nakba Day protests on May 15, 2014, near the Israeli Ofer Prison outside Beitunia in the occupied West Bank. Israel described the protest as a riot in which a crowd refused to disperse, and initially denied responsibility, saying the cause of the deaths was unknown, the deaths were faked, that video clips of the killings either failed to capture the violence of the scene shortly before or might have been manipulated, that soldiers had been provoked, and that only rubber bullets had been fired.Jodi Rudoren, "Video Renews Questions on Death of Young Palestinians", The New York Times, 20 May 2014.Jonathan Cook, , The National, Abu Dhabi, 23 June 2014.
Six months later, 21-year-old Ben Deri, an Israel Border Police officer, was arrested and charged with shooting one of the two killed Palestinians, 17-year-old Nadim Nawarah (or Nadeem Nuwarah)Aviel Magenzi, "Israel names Border Police officer accused of killing Palestinian protester", Ynet, 14 December 2014. after forensic evidence showed one of the lethal bullets came from his gun.Chaim Levinson, "Forensics: Bullet that killed Palestinian teen came from Border Policeman's gun", Haaretz, 19 November 2014. Deri was convicted for causing death by negligence and sentenced to nine months in jail, after he pleaded guilty and admitted accidental use of live ammunition.
Background Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day in remembrance of the forced displacement when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in 500 villages in Palestine in 1948, as Israeli soldiers fought to establish their state. The occasion is often celebrated from the Galilee to Gaza, with protest rallies, the waving of black mourning flags, the flourishing of keys to lost Palestinian homes, the sounding of sirens at midday, and marches to the sites of destroyed homes and villages. For Israel's Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu the purpose of such Palestinian commemoration is to ‘mark the tragedy of the establishment of the State of Israel, the state of the Jewish people.’
The event on May 15, 2014, the 64th anniversary of the catastrophe,Melanie Lidman, Oren Kessler, Yaakov Katz, Yaakov Lapin, "Three Border Police, one IDF soldier, 270 Palestinians lightly injured; Fayyad says no compromise on right of return", The Jerusalem Post, 15 May 2014. was also marked by solidarity demonstrations for Palestinians in administrative detention who, from 24 April, were conducting a hunger-strike, in protest against what Palestinian sources stated was Israeli backtracking on an agreement, made after an earlier strike, to restrict the practice of administrative detention only to exceptional cases. In the past, such days of remembrance have at times turned violent: in 2011 Israeli troops responded to an attempt by thousands of protesters to breach Israel's northern frontiers by opening fire that killed 10 people and injuring hundreds. Israel has been accused by Amnesty International of being 'trigger-happy' in adopting excessive force on such occasions; 27 fatalities from Israel shooting at stone-throwing demonstrations were registered in the preceding year, 2013."Trigger-Happy: Israel's use of excessive force in the West Bank", Amnesty International, 27 February 2014. On the occasion of the 2014 commemorations, clashes, described as relatively low-level, broke out between Israeli forces and demonstrating Palestinians in Ni'lin, Bethlehem, the Al-Isawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem. In two areas, at the Qalandia crossing near Ramallah, and in Beitunia, violence was more marked. Overall 270 Palestinians, one Israeli soldier and 3 border policemen were injured.
15 May 2014 Ofer Prison demonstration At Beitunia, 150 Palestinians attended the commemoration,Dalia Hatuqa and Gregg Carlstrom, "Palestinians mark 'Nakba' day amid violence", Al Jazeera/Jews for Justice for Palestinians, 15 May 2014. which took place outside Ofer Prison, where more than 100 Palestinians had been on a hunger strike for weeks to protest their detention, and demonstrators were protesting the Israeli practice detaining people on suspicion for upwards of six months, without charges being laid, and no access to courts, under secret evidence.Amira Hass, "Palestinians react with indifference to murder of teens", Haaretz, 2 July 2014. The Palestinians, among them the two boys later killed, threw rocks and Israeli police employed riot dispersal measures.Peter Beaumont, "Video footage indicates killed Palestinian youths posed no threat", The Guardian, 20 May 2014. Israeli sources reported the demonstration turned violent at times, while Palestinian sources say it began peacefully, but turned violent when the demonstrators were shot at by live fire to disperse stone-throwers. In addition to stone-throwing, burning tires were rolled towards Israeli security forces, and Israeli sources stated that five Molotov cocktails were thrown at policemen and a police bomb squad had destroyed an explosive device. Police responding by shooting tear gas canisters, stun grenadesTom Rayner, "Palestinian Youth 'Killed by Live Fire", Sky News, 12 June 2014. and the firing of rubber bullets.
Four Palestinian protestors were shot at the Beitunia demonstration, on the same patch of asphalt. They were Nadim Nuwara (17); Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh Salameh (Abu Thaher; 17); Muhammad al-'Azza (15), and a fourth man (aged 23), who remains unidentified. The shootings took place in a sequence of three separate incidents. The first was Muhammad al-'Azzah, 15, who was shot and wounded in the chest at around 12:20 p.m. The first fatality that day was Nuwara, who was shot some 15 meters from where al-'Azzah had been hit. He was shot through the chest at 13:45. Salameh was also fatally shot in the same location at 14:58. He was pronounced dead on arrival by doctors, having been shot in the back.
Human Rights Watch examined a high-speed photo sequence taken by photojournalist Samer Nazzal just after the killing, and stated that one projectile, seemingly a rubber bullet, appeared to come from the direction of the position of the Israeli forces and struck a Palestinian paramedic, wearing a bright orange vest, who helped carry Nuwara off.
Video footage as well as first-hand accounts, including those of journalists reporting on the protest, indicated that the teenagers who had been killed were unarmed and posed no apparent nor imminent threat and that the shots occurred during a period of calm. Affidavits were collected by Al-Haq from eyewitness and one of the victims. According to the testimony of Muhammad Abdallah 'Azza, he left school with friends to participate in the demonstration at 10:30 that day, and on arriving in Beitunia joined some 60 demonstrators outside the jail precincts. Israeli troops were located in two distinct areas: 8 soldiers were positioned roughly 50 yards away behind a 1-metre high wall that overlooked the street, and a number of protesters threw stones, ineffectively, their way. The soldiers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Another group of soldiers stood further off, in Ofer's prison yard behind cement blocks, some150-200 metres away. While watching, behind the stone-throwers, he says he saw a soldier who seemed to be aiming a rifle their way, and then heard live fire, as he was struck in the chest and thrown backwards. Surgeons reported that a bullet hit his left rib, which deflected the shot from his heart, pierced his lungs, and exited through his back."Evidence of Wilful Killing at Al-Nakba Day Protest", Al-Haq, 24 May 2014.
According to Muhannad Jihad Rabi' (23), he and his friends, including some foreign activists, joined the demonstration at around 12:15 PM and witnessed clashes in which several protests were injured. Towards the end of the clashes, he threw himself on the ground on hearing life fire and noted one Palestinian (Muhammad Salama), who had fallen on the ground, with a hole in his chest. According to the Ramallah journalist Samer Hisham Nazzal (28), who works for Raya News and who arrived on the scene at 1:30, one could hear both rubber bullets and live fire at the time. At 1:40 pm, when stones were no longer being thrown, he heard live fire, and at one point, saw a youth (Nuwara), dressed in black, his face covered by a keffiyeh, holding a schoolbag, fall to the ground. A paramedic who rushed to assist the boy was shot in the head by a rubber-coated bullet. Nazzal (28), a photojournalist, told Human Rights Watch that he arrived at the scene at around 1:30 p.m. after the clashes had begun. He later heard Israeli forces fire both rubber bullets and live ammunition. Witnesses to the incident stated that the sound of live fire, quite distinct from the sound of the type of rubber bullets used by the Israeli Defense Forces, was audible at the time. According to a Palestinian photographer present at the time, this distinction has been confirmed repeatedly by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights monitors, as well as people who have witnessed demonstrations of this type.
IDF rules of engagement and statements The Israeli military (IDF) regulations on the use of open-fire in effect at the time in the West Bank, permit opening fire only to prevent a mortal danger to the soldiers or civilians. Border police and soldiers said they had received an explicit order to that effect from Central Command headquarters, forbidding the use of live rounds unless their lives were at risk.Avi Issacharoff, "An itchy IDF trigger finger or a 'Pallywood' movie?", The Times of Israel, 23 May 2014. After the killings, police said they had adhered to orders and used only rubber bullets. It was further affirmed by the IDF that no live fire was used and that it remained to be determined what was the cause of the result.Ivan Watson, "West Bank Teens Shot", CNN News, 22 May 2014. According to Israel spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, Israeli troops were breaking up a “disturbance” and did not use live fire.Mairav Zonszein, "Footage shows Israeli army's killing of two Palestinian teens", +972 Magazine, 20 May 2014. Libby Weiss, another IDF spokesperson, said the soldiers had used ‘nonviolent means to try and disperse the crowd”, which had ignored police orders.Jodi Rudoren, "Palestinians Killed in Clashes With Israeli Forces", The New York Times, 15 May 2014.
A few days later a statement from Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon conflicted with these earlier versions that the IDF had used non-violent means. The minister instead said 'Israeli troops who allegedly shot dead two Palestinian teenagers during Nakba Day protests in the West Bank last Thursday acted “as appropriate” given that “they were in a situation where their lives were in danger.”' Times of Israel staff, "Ya’alon says troops in Nakba Day killings were in danger, acted as needed", The Times of Israel, 20 May 2014. Refuting this latest Israeli version that the border police had following IDF regulations, 21 gigabytes of video, both from four CCTV cameras and footage taken by a CNN crew, showed that the two teenagers had been unarmed and were posing no threat at the time of their deaths. The minister admitted that he had not viewed the videos but that these could be a fabrication, a claim that was taken up by some in the Israeli media.Noam Sheizaf, "Beitunia killings and the media's incredibly high bar for Palestinian stories", +972 Magazine, 21 May 2014.