Palestinians inspect the site where Israeli forces killed Ahmad Nasser Jarrar in Yamoun village in the northern occupied West Bank on 6 February. [Ayman Ameen APA]
By Maureen Clare , The Electronic Intifada, 3 March 2018
Israeli occupation forces sought to kill, rather than apprehend, Ahmad Nasser Jarrar, a Palestinian suspected in the January shooting death of a settler, according to an investigation by the rights group Al-Haq.
Israel waged a weeks-long campaign of “brutal reprisals” following the 9 January killing of Raziel Shevach in the northern occupied West Bank.
Two Palestinians who Israel says were involved in the 9 January shooting – Ahmad Ismail Jarrar and his cousin Ahmad Nasser Jarrar – were killed by Israeli soldiers on 17 January and 6 February, respectively. Israel continues to hold their bodies.
Another Palestinian, Ahmad Samir Abu Ubeid, was killed by soldiers during confrontations that erupted when Israeli occupation forces raided a village in search of Ahmad Nasser Jarrar on 3 February.
“Israel orchestrated a series of attacks against the extended family members of the Jarrar family and the broader communities of Jenin and Nablus,” Al-Haq stated.
The rights group documented acts of collective punishment including “widespread movement restrictions, punitive house demolitions, attacks using police dogs, arrests, indiscriminate killings and the retention of the bodies of the deceased.”
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem has also documented what it calls “reprehensible actions” by soldiers during the month that followed the slaying of the Israeli settler, such as “demolishing a home with inhabitants still inside” and strip searching three women and setting dogs on three other residents.
Israel employed the “pressure cooker technique” – in which construction machinery is used as a weapon, along with firearms and explosives, to compel wanted Palestinians to surrender themselves from a building in which they are hiding – during its 17 January raid in Wadi Burqin. Ahmad Ismail Jarrar was killed during that operation.
Four homes belonging to the extended Jarrar family were demolished in the raid, displacing 17 individuals from four families, including three children, according to Al-Haq.
“The houses were demolished without allowing time to remove any contents,” Al-Haq stated.
Dog attack
Both Al-Haq and B’Tselem detail the terror inflicted on Palestinian residents during another large-scale military operation in the Jenin area on 3 February.
Occupation forces “stormed” the town of Burqin “with two military bulldozers and a military jeep” and surrounded the residence of three Palestinian families, including three young children aged between 6 months and 7 years.
“[Israeli occupation forces] fired shells and bullets into the building, partially destroying it,” Al-Haq stated. Soldiers “destroyed much of the contents of the apartments,” as well as three livestock enclosures outside, and arrested two men living in the building.
That same day, soldiers raided the home of Mabrouk and Inas Jarrar, also in Burqin.
The couple were woken up with “a loud bang – apparently when the forces blew up the front door to their building – and the sound of stun grenades,” according to B’Tselem.
Mabrouk and Inas gathered Mabrouk’s two children from his previous marriage, aged 3 and 9, into their bed. Soon soldiers “blew up the door to the second floor, where they live.”
At that point an Israeli military dog “sank his teeth into [Mabrouk’s] left shoulder and knocked him to the ground.”
Inas tried to free her husband from the dog’s grip, unsuccessfully. “The children hid behind the bed, screaming and crying,” B’Tselem stated.
Mabrouk Jarrar in Rafidiya Hospital, Nablus, on 14 February. (Abdulkarim Sadi/B’Tselem)
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