A piece of CCTV footage capturing an Israeli Border Police officer throwing a stun grenade into a car in the occupied West Bank has pushed Israeli police to open a formal investigation into his conduct. The footage emerged just as the same territory saw two further, separate incidents over the same weekend, in which a 16-year-old boy and a four-month-old baby both lost their lives, underlining how volatile life has become for Palestinians living under occupation.
Inside the CCTV clip
The footage shows the officer standing at the driver's side of the car and forcing the door shut, trapping the people inside even as smoke begins pouring out from the passenger side of the vehicle. Moments after the stun grenade detonates inside the cabin, the two passengers manage to scramble out through the opposite door, apparently trying to escape the smoke and the shock of the blast. As they duck down and take cover outside the vehicle, the officer then appears to raise his rifle and fire in their direction. Despite how frightening the sequence looks on camera, the Israeli rights organisation B'Tselem, which surfaced the recording, confirmed that everyone who had been inside the car survived the encounter.
Police concede a breach of procedure
Once the clip became public, Israeli police were forced to respond, telling Israeli media outlets that the officer involved had not acted in accordance with procedure when he threw the grenade and later fired his weapon. Police confirmed that the case has since been passed on to the department of internal police investigations, the internal body tasked with examining complaints and allegations of wrongdoing against serving officers. That referral effectively acknowledges that what the CCTV captured fell outside the rules governing how Border Police personnel are supposed to handle a stopped vehicle and its occupants, though it stops short of confirming what disciplinary or legal consequences, if any, the officer might eventually face.
A 16-year-old shot dead in Qalandia
The grenade incident was not the only flashpoint over the weekend. In a separate incident in Qalandia on Sunday, Israeli forces shot and killed a 16-year-old boy identified as Walid Abu Sneineh, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The same ministry said two other children were wounded in the same incident, both suffering gunshot injuries to their lower limbs. As of now, Israeli authorities have not issued any response to questions about what led to the shooting in Qalandia, so the exact circumstances behind the boy's death and the children's injuries remain unclear.
A baby denied passage through a village gate
Sunday also brought a third tragedy, this time involving a critically ill four-month-old baby named Ahmed Zaid. According to the head of the local UN human rights office, Ahmed died after Israeli troops refused to open a gate blocking the main entrance to his village to the west of Ramallah, a delay that kept him from reaching urgent medical treatment in time. Ajith Sunghay, who leads that UN office, said an ambulance had already been waiting on the far side of the gate outside the village of Deir Ammar specifically to carry Ahmed to hospital, only for the closed gate to keep it from reaching him. Sunghay described the infant's death as senseless and said it was emblematic of an occupying power continuing to show utter disregard for the humanity and rights of Palestinians living under occupation.
Israeli military gives a conflicting account
Confronted with Sunghay's account, the Israeli military offered a very different version of events to Israel's Haaretz newspaper. It said its troops allowed the baby and his family to pass without any delay to continue receiving medical treatment, directly contradicting the UN office's version, which blames the closed gate for the fatal delay. With both sides sticking to their own account and no independent verification available yet, it remains unclear exactly how long the family was held up at the gate or what role, if any, that delay played in the baby's death.
Together, the three incidents, the stun grenade thrown into a car, the fatal shooting of a teenager in Qalandia, and the death of an infant at a blocked village gate, all took place in the same West Bank territory over the course of a single weekend. While Israeli police have at least acknowledged a breach of procedure in the grenade case by referring it for internal investigation, the shooting in Qalandia and the baby's death at Deir Ammar remain contested, with Palestinian and UN accounts on one side and, in the case of the baby, a denial from the Israeli military on the other.
