The Washington Post released a report on Friday which uncovered Israeli occupation forces deliberately slaying Palestinian civilians, including minors, in the guise of “secret missions.”
For many years, nighttime raids and arrests featured heavily in the lives of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank. However, since the rise to power of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, there has been a notable uptick in daytime raids conducted in crowded areas such as Jenin.
The Washington Post compiled 15 videos related to the violent Israeli raid in Jenin on March 16, causing the deaths of four Palestinians – Nidal Khazem, Yousef Shreim, Omar Awadin, and Louay Al-Saghir. Internal video recordings from local stores near the incident were obtained to reenact the attack, and nine eyewitnesses were surveyed with four more providing testimonies to construct the event using three-dimensional imaging.
A number of experts informed the American newspaper that the Israeli intrusion into Jenin on March 16 transgressed the worldwide illegality on extrajudicial executions.
This violation is made worse because the ones that the Israeli occupation deemed to be armed did not pose a danger to the Israeli forces during the assassination, coupled with the presence of numerous innocent people in the area.
According to Philip Alston, the former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, after analyzing the evidence given by The Washington Post, it is possible to conclude with certainty that the incident constituted extrajudicial executions.
Alston stated that the situation was further exacerbated by the use of deadly shots even after the two Palestinians had been neutralized.
Michael Lynk, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said these particular killings were “profoundly unlawful” under international standards. He added that the unlawfulness was “heightened by the apparent choice to conduct these targeted killings in a busy civilian market.”
Lynk observed that neither of the two young men who were the focus of the raid showed any signs of posing a danger at that moment in time, not even any sort of imminent danger, and they likely could have been detained.
Michael Sfard, a human rights lawyer who has previously challenged the legality of Israel’s assassinations in Israel’s Supreme Court, described the Jenin raid as extremely typical of how Israel conducts its lethal-force operations.
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