Tensions are once again mounting in the disputed West Bank, also known by its biblical name Judea and Samaria. Amid increasingly violent Palestinian riots along with reports that Hamas — a US-designated terror organization — is intensifying its efforts to recruit terrorists in the region, several Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces (see here, here, here and here).
The fact of the matter is that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers stationed in the West Bank protect the lives and property of both Israelis and Palestinians by, among others things, upholding law and order, thwarting terror attacks and de-escalating “protests.” In 2020, the IDF recorded 60 major Palestinian attacks on Israeli/Jewish targets in the West Bank. According to Israel Security Agency data, more than 400 other attacks were foiled.
Notwithstanding, the use of live fire by Israeli soldiers has often come under the scrutiny of human rights organizations and, in some cases, deservedly so. For example, video footage surfaced in July that seemingly showed an off-duty Israeli soldier indiscriminately shooting at Palestinians in the West Bank town of Urif. While sources within the IDF told HonestReporting that the soldier’s fire did not cause any deaths, an investigation into the occurrence has nevertheless been launched.
Israel’s strict rules of engagement are clear: Only when there is a genuine threat to life are soldiers allowed to open fire. Indeed, British Colonel Richard Kemp once described the IDF as the “most moral army in the history of warfare.” At the same time, the West Bank remains a contested and extremely turbulent area where Palestinians regularly engage in violence and terrorism. Within this unpredictable and often chaotic environment, soldiers are often forced to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure.
This perpetual instability prompted HonestReporting to take a closer look at the reasons why the IDF might use deadly force against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a general rule, deadly incidents involving Israel’s security forces fall into one of the following categories:
- A Palestinian was neutralized while carrying out a terror attack;
- A Palestinian was hit by crossfire during riots;
- A purported incident never happened, or the IDF was not involved;
- An IDF soldier breached the rules of engagement.
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1. The IDF Neutralized an Armed Terrorist
Palestinians are generally killed by Israeli troops while engaged in acts of violence or terrorism against Jewish civilians or soldiers. Unfortunately, recent examples abound. While large-scale attacks in the West Bank like the Second Intifada Hebron massacre are less common nowadays, lone-wolf attacks still occur on a frequent basis.
Take, for example, one of the many incidents at the Gush Etzion Junction in Judea. On May 2, 2021, a Palestinian woman clutching a knife approached a group of soldiers at the intersection and attempted to stab them. In video footage, four soldiers are seen trying to contain the situation, ordering her several times to back down. Nevertheless, the woman continued advancing towards the soldiers even as they fired warning shots in the air. Eventually, one of the soldiers was forced to shoot the terrorist — in accordance with protocol — and she was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Despite video evidence of the attempted terror attack, the headline of a Reuters article about the incident simply identified the perpetrator as a “Palestinian woman,” thereby giving no indication that she tried to harm or kill Israelis.
Related Reading: Media Fail to Identify Palestinian Terrorists in ‘West Bank Violence’ Reports
HonestReporting has documented countless instances of media outlets obscuring the terror-related backgrounds of Palestinian assailants. Other recent examples include Forensic Architecture accusing the IDF of “executing” a Palestinian who deliberately rammed his car into an IDF soldier; Associated Press describing an attacker as an “alleged” shooter despite video evidence of the gunman opening fire; and The New York Times saying that an Israeli soldier was killed “when he was struck in the head by a heavy rock” — effectively erasing the Palestinian terrorist that hurled it.
With respect to Gaza’s so-called Great March of Return, journalists have also turned a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism. Just last month, The Guardian misleadingly claimed that Israeli snipers in 2018 used deadly force “when protesters surged towards the border.” This account totally fails to document Palestinian violence during the course of the protests, despite the fact that there is ample video evidence of explosives, gunfire, grenades, and knives having being used.
2. The Victim Was Killed in Crossfire During Riots
Some Palestinians are injured or killed because they get caught in the crossfire when IDF troops attempt to quell violent riots in the West Bank and along the border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Between May and July 2021, Palestinians from the West Bank town of Beita caused mayhem as they burned tens and thousands of tires during violent riots. Moreover, some of them caused disturbances by flashing lasers at a nearby Jewish outpost, while blasting music over speakers. Video footage (see here, here and here) shows disturbing scenes of Palestinians marching towards the nearby Jewish community while calling to bomb it. In addition, they threw stones and explosives at Israeli security forces for countless nights on end.
Research by HonestReporting exposed that Palestinian terror groups were heavily involved in the Beita riots, with Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades admitting that its “fighters” were active.
Related Reading: Is the Palestinian Authority Secretly Financing Environmental Terrorism in West Bank?
This is nothing new: During the Great March of Return, Hamas terrorists embedded themselves among civilians, essentially using Gazans as human shields. For this reason, IDF troops generally first employ riot dispersal methods or open fire with less lethal forms of ammunition, including rubber bullets.
It is tragic that Palestinian terror groups’ lack of concern for the wellbeing of their own people sometimes leads to the loss of life or injuries to bystanders. The latter seems to have happened a few months ago to 14-year-old Izz al-Din Nadal Batasha, who lost an eye when a sponge-tipped bullet fired at rioters throwing stones struck him in the face while he was located inside a shop.
3. The Incident Never Happened – Or the IDF Wasn’t Involved
In some cases, deadly incidents reported by Palestinians simply never happened, or the IDF was not involved. Media all-too-often take Palestinian claims at face value without doing and due diligence.
HonestReporting has written extensively (see here, here and here) about the so-called “Jenin Massacre” in April 2002 — a libel that never happened. Yet, media initially suggested that Israeli troops killed at least 500 Palestinians during a counter-terror operation in the city. In reality, at most 14 Palestinian civilians were killed — compared to 23 IDF soldiers.
There are also plenty of examples from the Gaza Strip. Perhaps the most well-known instance of what some have dubbed “Pallywood” is the Mohammed Al-Dura affair, in which France 2 television aired heavily edited footage that seemingly implicated the IDF in the killing of the then-12-year old boy during the Second Intifada. After two decades of in-depth investigations and court cases, it is most probable that al-Dura was not killed by an Israeli bullet. An Israeli government committee even concluded that the boy might very well still be alive.
Related Reading: On This Day: Al-Dura and the Advent of Pallywood
More recently, in May 2018, several media outlets reported that an IDF tear gas canister killed eight-month-old Layla Ghandour during the violent riots on Israel-Gaza border. However, an anonymous Gazan doctor thereafter confirmed that the baby had suffered from a preexisting medical condition and concluded that this caused her death.
According to the hospital report, the infant had heart defects and experienced a “severe stop in blood circulation and respiration.” The hospital did not say if tear gas inhalation had contributed to her death but, rather tellingly, Hamas subsequently removed Gandhour’s name from a list of fatalities it had compiled. Meanwhile, her cousin later admitted that the terror group paid the Ghandour family 2,200 USD if they would blame Israel — but by that point, the false anti-Israel narrative had already spread like wildfire.
4. A Soldier Violated the Rules of Engagement
Finally, there have been cases in which Palestinians have been killed because IDF soldiers disregarded the rules.
The principle that life is sacred is a basic tenet of the IDF’s philosophical underpinnings. As Defense Minister Benny Gantz put it: “Our battle orders include the rules of engagement and the [Biblical] Ten Commandments. The computer code of the F-35 and the moral code of the prophets of Israel.” This concept is made explicit in Ruach Tzahal, the IDF’s Code of Ethics, one of the first things conscripts learn during basic training:
The soldier shall make use of his weaponry and power only for the fulfillment of the mission and solely to the extent required; he will maintain his humanity even in combat. The soldier shall not employ his weaponry and power in order to harm non-combatants or prisoners of war, and shall do all he can to avoid harming their lives, bodies, honor and property.”
Consequently, soldiers are expected to go to great lengths to protect civilians on both sides of the conflict. However, each year thousands of Israeli youths enlist in the IDF, many of them straight out of high school — and not every single one of them has proved capable of abiding by the army’s strict standards of conduct.
In this respect, the incident that likely received the most press coverage in recent memory was the manslaughter trial of Sgt. Elor Azaria. On March 24, 2016, Azaria shot and killed a Palestinian who had been injured and disarmed after attacking Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron. Footage published by B’Tselem shows the IDF medic fatally shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head while standing less than two meters (6.5 feet) away, despite the fact the Palestinian apparently no longer posed a threat.
While Azaria argued that al-Sharif still posed a danger when he fired the shot, a military court decided that Azaria violated the rules of engagement. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, a year of probation and demoted in rank. Prosecutors had sought a three to five-year sentence, but the military court pointed to “a number of mitigating circumstances that required consideration, including a complicated area where terrorists attempted to kill soldiers and even managed to injure one.”
Elor Azaria was not the first IDF soldier to be charged for killing a Palestinian, but he was the first to be convicted for manslaughter in 12 years. In most other instances, cases were settled through a plea agreement in order to avoid a trial, resulting in lighter sentences (see here and here).
The severity of the punishments — or, as some might perceive, the lack thereof — handed down to IDF soldiers who breach the rules of engagement remains a point of contention in Israeli society, often leading to heated debate. However, military leaders have in the past been crystal clear where they stand. During Azaria’s trial, then-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot stressed that the his job was “to ensure that [the existing] set of values is sustained – to preserve the strength and justness of the IDF.”
By contrast, when Palestinians commit violence against innocent Jews and Israelis, the Palestinian Authority actually rewards them with a “salary.” In fact, terrorists who shed the most blood receive higher monthly payments. As part of its “Pay-for-Slay” policy, Ramallah in 2020 disbursed at least NIS 600 million ($181 million) to jailed terrorists and to their families. PA President Mahmoud Abbas previously insisted that this despicable practice would take precedent over all other expenditures even if his government was left with just “one penny.”
Abbas is on record saying that his people regard “martyrs” as “stars in the sky of the Palestinian national struggle.”
Related Reading: Pay for Slay: Paying Off Terrorism
For some, the adage “Content is King” rings true. In reality, though, “Context is King.”
Because without context it is impossible to paint the full picture of a story.
As such, the next time one comes across a headline claiming, for example, “Palestinian killed by Israeli troops in West Bank,” it would be wise to view the title — and read the corresponding article — with reservation.
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Featured image: Gabriele Micalizzi
