Israeli forces Wednesday morning shot and injured a Palestinian man following an alleged attempted stabbing in the Old City of Hebron, according to security sources.
They confirmed that Israeli forces opened fire at the young man outside the Hebron’s flashpoint Ibrahimi Mosque, wounding him purportedly for attempting to stab a soldier.
Israeli media claimed the alleged attacker, 22, was hit and moderately wounded in the leg.
The circumstances surrounding the alleged stabbing attempt remain unclear and largely based on the Israeli version of events.
Israeli has been criticized for its reflexive use of lethal force and “extrajudicial killings” when Palestinian alleged attackers no longer pose an immediate threat. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that circumstances surrounding such killings over the past months remain disputed.
Video footage for similar alleged attacks appear to disapprove Israeli military claims, showing alleged Palestinian attackers did not even attempt to carry out any attacks. Some footage showed Israeli forces manipulating the crime scene following such killings.
Twenty two years ago, Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque and opened fire at Palestinian Muslim worshippers, killing 29. Four Palestinians were killed on the same day in the clashes that broke out around the Mosque in response to the massacre.
In the aftermath, the mosque, known to Jews as Tomb of the Patriarchs, was divided in two, with the larger part turned into a synagogue while heavy scrutiny was imposed on the Palestinians and areas closed completely to them, including an important market and the main street, Shuhada street.
The city of Hebron, which houses the Ibrahimi Mosque, is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 800 notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers who live in compounds heavily guarded by Israeli troops.
Israel has expelled the only international monitors protecting Hebron’s Palestinians from 800 heavily guarded settlers, one of whom committed the 1994 massacre that triggered their deployment.
Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 53-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.
Source: WAFA
