A Palestinian was shot, beaten and tied to an Israeli army jeep. The army says he posed no threat

Pelican Press · June 26, 2024

A **** was shot, beaten and tied to an army jeep. The army says he posed no threat

JENIN, West Bank (AP) — When Mujahid Abadi stepped outside to see if ******** forces had entered his uncle’s neighborhood, he was shot in the arm and the foot. That was only the start of his ordeal. Hours later, beaten and bloodied, he found himself strapped to the searing hood of an ******** military jeep driving down a road.

The army initially said Abadi was a suspected militant, but later acknowledged he had not posed a threat to ******** forces and was caught in crossfire with militants.

Video showing the 24-year-old strapped to the jeep circulated on social media, sparking widespread condemnation, including from the ******* States. Many said it showed that ******** soldiers were using him as a human shield — a charge ******* has frequently leveled at ****** as it battles the group in Gaza.

The military said it was investigating the incident and that it did not reflect its values. But Palestinians saw it as yet another act of brutality in *******’s crackdown on the occupied West Bank, where ********* has surged since ******’ Oct. 7 ******* triggered the war in Gaza.

Abadi, speaking to The Associated Press from a hospital bed on Tuesday, said he stepped outside his uncle’s house in the volatile West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday after he heard a commotion.

“I went outside to see what was happening, and looked towards the neighbors’ houses, where I saw the army,” he said. “When I tried to return to the house, heavy and indiscriminate gunfire was suddenly directed at me. My cousin who was near me was also hit.”

After he was shot in the arm, he hid behind his family’s car. Then he was shot again, in the foot. Unable to move, he called his father and told him he was about to ****.

“I told him to try not to lose consciousness and to keep talking to me,” Raed Abadi said as he stood over his son’s hospital bed. “Suddenly, the call was disconnected.”

Raed later saw false reports on social media that a ************ had been ******* in the raid. “I collapsed, because I was 90% sure it was my son,” he said.

Abadi was not *****, but his suffering had just begun.

After a couple of hours, ******** soldiers found him. He says they struck his head and face and in the areas where he had been shot. Then they dragged him by his legs, lifted him by his hands and feet and threw him onto the hood of the military jeep.

“I screamed because of the heat,” he said. “Then, one of the soldiers started cursing at me and told me to be quiet.”

The military said its forces had tied Abadi to the hood of the jeep to transport him to paramedics.

But Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the ************ Red Crescent rescue service, said the army had sealed off the area and prevented paramedics from tending to the wounded for at least an hour.

In dashboard camera footage obtained by the AP, the jeep to which Abadi was tied drove past at least two ambulances. Abadi said he was lashed to the jeep for about half an hour before soldiers untied him and released him to paramedics.

In Washington, D.C., State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the video was “shocking.”

“Civilians should never be used as human shields. The IDF should swiftly investigate what happened and hold people accountable,” he said, referring to the ******** military.

******* has long accused ****** of using civilians as human shields because the militants operate in dense, residential neighborhoods in Gaza. It blames ****** for the high ****** toll in Gaza, where local health officials say over 37,000 Palestinians have been ******* since the start of the war, without specifying how many were civilians. The ****** ******* that ignited the war ******* some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.

In the West Bank, ******** forces have carried out near-nightly raids, often setting off gunbattles with militants, and over 550 Palestinians have been *******.

Rights groups say ******* itself has a long history of using Palestinians as human shields during military operations in both territories, which it captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want for their future state.

For decades, the military routinely ordered ************ civilians to remove suspicious objects from roads and to tell people to come out of their homes so the military could arrest them, a practice known as the “neighbor procedure,”