A photo from Hebron shared around the world this week shows an Israeli soldier and a young Palestinian woman. She is covered in a niqab, looking at the soldier pointing his rifle at her. The photo was taken on Sept. 22 by a volunteer with the Youth Against Settlements group. Moments later, Hadil Hashlamoun, 18, was shot in her abdomen and critically wounded. She was taken to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, where she was pronounced dead.
A preliminary Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigation found that the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint separating the area under Palestinian control from the one under IDF control called on the woman to stop after the metal detector she went through at the roadblock went off. When she kept walking, the soldiers fired at the ground to stop her. After she tried to stab a soldier with a knife she was carrying, he shot her. The IDF spokesman even provided a photo of the knife she was allegedly carrying.
Issa Amro, one of the founders of Youth Against Settlements, told Al-Monitor that volunteers who took pictures of the young woman at the roadblock are sure she was not a terrorist and did not intend to stab a soldier at the roadblock. According to him, the soldier and the Palestinian woman were kept apart by a metal barrier that is at least 1.5 meters (5 feet) high, which would not have enabled her to stab him, and she certainly could not have done so when he had his weapon pointed at her.
Amro said that the volunteers also documented the report of Fawaz Abu-Aysheh, a resident of the Hebron neighborhood of Tel Roumedia. He told them that he tried to mediate between the soldier at the roadblock and the young woman. "Abu-Aysheh told us that he asked to interpret the words of the young woman, who had not understood the orders [shouted in Hebrew] by the soldier. When she turned to leave the checkpoint, the soldier there opened fire at her. Even after she fell in a pool of her own blood, he kept shooting until other soldiers shouted at him, ‘What are you doing?’ and moved him from the post.”
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
