Palestinian protester shot dead in West Bank
An Israeli border police officer shot and killed a Palestinian man and seriously wounded a teenage boy Friday during a violent demonstration against Israel’s installation of a barrier in the West Bank.
The clash underscored the intensity of the conflict a day after President Obama, in a landmark address to the Muslim world, voiced sympathy with Palestinians for “the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation” but also admonished them to renounce violence in their struggle for an independent state.
Israel’s military said it was investigating the shooting in Nilin, near Ramallah. Villagers there have been protesting for nearly a year that an Israeli fence across their land has cut them off from about 600 acres of their olive groves. The villagers gather every Friday at the fence and are confronted by Israeli forces.
Israel’s Channel 1 television said a border officer opened fire after a small group of masked protesters among the crowd of 200 surrounded him and began hurling stones at close range.
Palestinian medical workers said Akel Srour, 28, was shot in the chest and died at a hospital in Ramallah. Mohammed Atiyeh, 14, struck in the spine, was listed in serious condition at the hospital, they said.
The Associated Press reported that witnesses said Srour was hit while trying to drag a wounded protester to safety.
Friday’s incident was the latest in a history of protests against the nearly 500-mile-long barrier, a series of concrete walls, patrol roads and trenches that separate Israel from West Bank territory it took control of in the 1967 Middle East War.
Israeli officials argue that finished sections of the barrier, under construction since 2002 and more than two-thirds complete, have cut down sharply the number of Palestinian suicide bombers entering the country from the West Bank.
Palestinians say Israel has used the barrier to draw new borders. The planned route would enclose about 8% of the West Bank’s land on the Israeli side. In Nilin’s case, the route was drawn to include nearby Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Three Palestinian villages, including one near Nilin, have successfully challenged the route in Israel’s Supreme Court.
Israeli troops and Palestinian villagers have clashed sporadically for years in villages along the barrier route. Nilin has become a focal point, drawing Israeli and foreign peace groups.
The death Friday was the second in a Nilin protest this year; in April, a man died after a tear gas canister struck him in the chest. In March, a demonstrator from Oakland, Tristan Anderson, suffered brain injuries when he was hit by a canister.
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said border police are authorized to use live ammunition in life-threatening situations. An Israeli military spokesman said the circumstances of the shooting remained unclear.
As in recent weeks, the Israeli police tried to take up rooftop positions in the village before the 1 p.m. protest to gain an advantage in crowd control. Ahed Khawja, a village resident, said protest organizers sent women and children to surround some of the taller buildings, thwarting the Israeli officers.
The protesters throwing rocks gathered quickly, Khawja said, and the skirmishes lasted more than an hour.
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Abukhater is a special correspondent.
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