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Photos:
Mohammad Ali Hasan an-Na’em, 27. Published by IMEMC News

Israelis using heavy machinery to collect the body of a Palestinian militant along the Israel-Gaza border on Sunday. Credit:Muthana Al-Najaar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israelis using heavy machinery to collect the body of a Palestinian militant along the Israel-Gaza border on Sunday. Credit:vMuthana Al-Najaar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Israeli Merkava battle tank and an earth mover along the Israel-Gaza border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, February 23, 2020 Credit: AFP Published by Haaretz
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by IMEMC News
February 23, 2020 12:24 PM

Update: The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, has reported that the slain Palestinian was one of its members.

The Brigades stated that the Palestinian has been identified as Mohammad Ali Hasan an-Na’em, 27, from Khan Younis.

The slain Palestinian was unarmed and wasn’t even in military attire when the soldiers attacked him, along with many residents, with their bulldozer, and live rounds.

Updated From Feb 23, 2020, at 10:58:
Israeli soldiers shot and killed, on Sunday morning, a young Palestinian man, and injured four, on Palestinian lands, in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli armored bulldozer was filmed repeatedly crushing the body of the slain Palestinian with its blade, then grabbing the corpse with the blade and swinging the body back and forth in the air.

The Israeli army claimed that its soldiers observed two Palestinians approaching the perimeter fence, before placing an explosive device.

It alleged that the soldiers then rushed to the scene and fired live ammunition at the two Palestinians, causing the explosive device to explode.

Israeli officials frequently make outrageous claims about Palestinians they kill, which are often proven later to be false.

Media sources in Gaza said several Palestinians tried to reach the two Palestinians to provide them with the needed medical care and move them to a hospital, but a military bulldozer sped towards them and drove over the corpse of the slain Palestinian, before scooping it using the bulldozer’s plow.

The second Palestinian was injured with a live round in his leg and was rushed to a hospital in Khan Younis after the Palestinians managed to evacuate him before the soldiers could reach him.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that two other Palestinians were shot and injured by Israeli army fire while attempting to help evacuate the wounded.

Israeli sources initially quoted the army claiming its soldiers killed two Palestinians in the incident.

Despite the military claims, a video from the scene shows the corpse of the young man on Palestinian land in an area quite a distance away from the fence.

The bulldozer was speeding towards the Palestinians to prevent them from retrieving the corpse of the slain young man.
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Video Shows Israeli Army Bulldozer Dragging Gazan's Body After Border Incident

IDF says two Palestinians were shot after attempting to set explosives near border fence ■ Islamic Jihad says man was militant in its Khan Yunis brigade

by Yaniv Kubovich and Jack Khoury for Haaretz
Feb 23, 2020 4:01 PM

Israeli soldiers opened fire at two Palestinians near the border in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday after it was suspected they were laying an explosive charge next to the fence, according to an Israeli army statement.

Gaza's health ministry said two wounded men were taken to Khan Yunis's European Hospital for treatment. One died, later identified by the Islamic Jihad organization as Muhammad Ali Anam, 27, a fighter in the Khan Yunis battalion of their Al Quds military wing.

A video taken by bystanders in Gaza and shared widely on social media shows an Israeli bulldozer, escorted by a tank, rushing Palestinians attempting to take away the wounded. Its mechanical arm eventually holds the apparently lifeless body of one of the men up by his clothing.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett later confirmed the bulldozer had been used to "collect" the bodies.

A later statement from the Israeli military said it had thwarted an attack carried out by "terrorists affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organizations."

skip - תיעוד גרירת הגופה בגבול רצועת עזה, הבוקר
#شاهد قوات الاحتلال تنكل بجثمان شهيد وتنقله بواسطة جرافة عسكرية بطريقة بشعة وتصيب أحد الشبان الذين حاولوا انتشاله شرقي بلدة عبسان الجديدة شرقي خانيونس جنوبي قطاع غزة pic.twitter.com/3oHmKLjVXE

— وكالة شهاب (@ShehabAgency) February 23, 2020
Attached to the statement was a video taken from an IDF observation post that shows two men laying a heavy object near the border fence. A caption accompanying the video reads: "Laying an explosive charge on the border fence, 23.02.2020."

"Israel intended to kill an unarmed young man, in front of the cameras of the whole world," Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said, while Islamic Jihad promised retaliation. The spokesman for Islamic Jihad's military wing said of the incident: "The enemy forces' infiltration into the territory of the Strip and savagely insulting one of our fighters constitutes blatant aggression, and Israel must bear responsibility for this aggression."

The NGO Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights urged the military advocate general to open a criminal investigation, saying the action seen in the video violates international agreements, which would define it as a war crime.

Two local photographers told Haaretz the confrontation happened inside Palestinian territory. Following the shooting, dozens of Palestinians gathered at the scene. Witnesses said the Israeli army fired at the lower bodies of those approaching the bulldozer.

skip - Tweet by a Palestinian journalist, reportedly showing the man injured by the IDF while allegedly putting a bomb near the Gaza border fence, February 23, 2020
صور وصول اصابة جديدة الآن الى مستشفى غزة الأوربي pic.twitter.com/wzHZZopiEz

— حسن اصليح | Hassan (@0598196013) February 23, 2020
Tweet by a Gaza journalist, reportedly showing the injured taken to the European Hospital

After the video grabbed the headlines in Israeli media, Defense Minister Bennett responded to the criticism on Twitter, expressing his fatigue with "the left's vicious criticism of the "inhumanity" of the use of a bulldozer to bring back the body of a terrorist who tried to murder (!) Israelis."

"Gentlemen, bleeding hearts: You are not humane! Hamas holds the bodies of Hadar and Oron," the Yamina leader added, referring to IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were killed in action during the 2014 Gaza war and whose remains are held in Gaza.

"I back the IDF that killed the terrorist and collected the body," he concluded, "this is how it should be done, and this is how it will be done."

Joint List Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman described the Israeli army's operation as follows: "They steal a body, abuse it with a bulldozer and still argue that the army is the most moral in the world. Since Bennett took office as defense minister, hording bodies to bargain with is Israel's declared policy." She described Bennett as "the minister of death and brutality."

Another Joint List lawmaker, Ofer Cassif, said: "Abducting a body is the nauseating, blood-thirsty act of vampirism. Here is what Netanyahu has to offer: "Siege, killing and abducting bodies. We need to put an end to their celebration of death."

Gazans issued increased permits

Last week, Israel boosted the number of work and trade permits for Gazans to 7,000, the highest number since Hamas came to power in 2007, and expanded its fishing grounds to the Gaza Strip by 15 nautical miles.

This came after a tit-for-tat between Gaza militants and the IDF following the release of the Trump peace plan threatened to convert a relative calm into a full-blown conflict.

Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett said then that Israel might launch a major military operation in Gaza in the near future. Netanyahu, speaking at a cabinet meeting, said he won’t accept “any aggression from Gaza.”

Israel's policy is to hold Hamas accountable for any violent actions carried out from the Gaza Strip – even if it comes from other movements, like Islamic Jihad.

The unprecedented ease on restrictions on the blockaded coastal enclave comes amid ongoing political deadlock in Israel, which some analysts believe Hamas is using to its advantage.

Earlier this month, Israel's intelligence chief Yossi Cohen reportedly visited Doha secretly to convince Qatar to continue its support for the strip, despite ongoing tensions.
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Israel Strikes Militants in Syria and Gaza After Clash Over Body at Border

By David M. Halbfinger
Feb 23, 2020

JERUSALEM — A macabre tug of war over the body of a Palestinian militant on the Gaza-Israel border, captured Sunday on video in broad daylight, prompted a barrage of rocket fire from Gaza met by retaliatory Israeli airstrikes late Sunday.

Israel’s use of heavy machinery to retrieve a militant’s body earlier in the day drew harsh criticism even within the country. But Israel’s hawkish defense minister, Naftali Bennett, defended the army’s seizure of the body as appropriate, suggesting it could be used as a bargaining chip to recover the remains of two Israeli soldiers who have been held in Gaza since 2014.

The day of tensions began around 6:30 a.m. when, Israel said, its soldiers spotted two militants from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group placing an explosive near the border east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Israel later released a surveillance video that it said showed the two men approaching the fence, and a photo of the explosive.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s armed wing has repeatedly tried to provoke violence between Israel and Gaza in recent months. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried mightily to maintain quiet before elections set for March 2.

According to a rival lawmaker, Avigdor Liberman, Mr. Netanyahu even sent the chief of the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, and a top general to Qatar to implore Qatari leaders to continue cash infusions to Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, to help keep the peace.

In the clash at the Gaza-Israel border early Sunday, Israeli forces fired an antitank weapon at the two militants. One was killed, the other wounded, Gaza officials said. Palestinian Islamic Jihad identified the dead man as Muhammad al-Naem, 27, a member of its military wing.

An Israeli military spokesman said the two militants had been on Israeli soil, despite the fact that they were on the Gaza side of the Israeli security barrier. The barrier itself lies slightly inside Palestinian territory. The militants were making at least their third attempt to plant explosives at the fence, the military said.

Soldiers had to be sure the dead man had not been wearing a suicide vest or carrying other explosives, the spokesman said, so Israel sent in heavy machinery to collect the man’s body.

But a crowd of Palestinian onlookers rushed forward to try to recover it, and rather than retreat, the front-end loader kept at its task. Israeli soldiers shot at the Palestinians, wounding at least one.

While other Palestinians carried off the injured man, the Israeli machine repeatedly scraped at the earth, trying to catch the dead man’s body in the teeth of its scoop. When it had done so and turned back toward Israel, its retreat covered by a tank, the body could be seen dangling.

The images prompted Palestinian Islamic Jihad to vow revenge, and just after 5:30 p.m., the first of several rocket barrages was fired into Israeli territory. Israel waited till after 10 p.m. before retaliating with airstrikes and quickly said it had hit a rocket-launching team.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Palestinian Islamic Jihad with airstrikes in Syria and the Gaza Strip.

The scene at the border drew harsh criticism even within Israel. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, sent a letter to the Israeli chief military advocate general demanding a criminal investigation. It called the rough handling of the body a war crime and a “blatant” violation of international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian law.

Yariv Oppenheimer, a former director of the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, called it “shameful and shocking,” adding, “All the atrocities and crimes we do will be in vain, boomerang.”

And Ofer Cassif, a Jewish lawmaker from the predominantly Arab Joint List, called the “abduction” of the body “an act of vampirism and of nauseating blood thirst.”

“This is what Netanyahu and Bennett have to offer: siege, killing and the abduction of bodies,” he wrote on Twitter. “We must put an end to their death festivities.’‘

Mr. Bennett, a right-wing lawmaker who was named defense minister in November, responded on Twitter that he was “tired of the hypocritical criticism of the left against the ‘inhumanity’ of using the bulldozer to bring us the body of a terrorist who tried to murder (!) Israelis.”

Rather, he said, it was the liberals who were inhumane.

“Hamas holds the bodies of Hadar and Oron,” he wrote referring to the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers, Lt. Hadar Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul, that Hamas has been holding. “I back up the army that killed the terrorists and collected the body. That is how it should be done. Against terrorists we will act with force.”

But Elior Levy, an Israeli reporter who covers Palestinian affairs, assailed what he called Mr. Bennett’s “glorification of grabbing a tattered body of a wretched terrorist.” Pointing to the rockets, he added: “What do you think, Minister of Defense? Was it worth it?”

Mr. Bennett declared on Nov. 27 that Israel would no longer release the bodies of slain assailants no matter which group they belonged to. Until that point, Israel had routinely withheld the remains only of slain Hamas militants because Hamas is holding the bodies of the two Israelis.

Hamas is also believed to be holding two Israeli citizens, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. Both went into Gaza as civilians of their own accord and have been held there incommunicado for years.

The border episode on Sunday came just two days after another scene involving an Israeli bulldozer elicited outrage.

On Friday, an Israeli bulldozer trying to suppress protests in Kafr Qaddum, west of the West Bank city of Nablus, shoved heavy slabs of stone at high speed down a crowded street, slamming one into a Palestinian ambulance and injuring at least one person.

Israel said the bulldozer had been clearing the stones from a roadblock set by protesters.

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Gaza City, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.