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Photo:
Qussai Mahmoud Tamimi, 19. Published by IMEMC News

See video at IMEMC News Source link
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by IMEMC News
Oct 25, 2022

On Tuesday dawn, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian in Nabi Saleh village, north of Ramallah, in the central part of the occupied West Bank.

In a brief statement, the Palestinian Health Ministry said the soldiers killed a Palestinian after shooting him with live fire in the chest.

The Palestinian was killed during protests that erupted when many army jeeps invaded the village before the soldiers stormed and searched homes.

Medical sources said the slain Palestinian has been identified as Qussai Mahmoud Tamimi, 19, from Nabi Saleh.

Hundreds of Palestinians marched carrying his corpse and chanting for ongoing resistance until liberation and independence and denouncing the escalating Israeli crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.

First Published on: Oct 25, 2022, at 04:00
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A Young Palestinian Set a Tire on Fire During a Protest. Israeli Snipers Shot Him Dead

When the news broke that five Palestinians had been killed that evening by soldiers in Nablus, he went with some friends to protest near the army guard tower that looms over his village. He set a tire ablaze – and then snipers shot and killed Qusai Tamimi, 19, from a distance of dozens of meters

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz
Nov 12, 2022 2:09 am IST

The house nearest the army guard tower belongs to Mohammed Tamimi, an 83-year-old farmer who raises bees and chickens and also tends olive trees – all in his small yard. A sign on the iron gate offers “mountain honey” for sale. Tamimi urges us to look at the beehives that Israeli soldiers demolished over the years, the 1986 Subaru that they torched and the many tear-gas cartridges strewn among the olive trees. It’s not easy living in a house abutting a guard tower, which looms over a small Palestinian village that chose the path of nonviolent resistance and has persevered in it for 13 years.

Tamimi built his house in Nabi Saleh in 1965, before the Israeli occupation, and lives there with his 75-year-old wife. The Israel Defense Forces built the fortified tower 20 years ago, during the second intifada. Since then, the road leading northward out of the village has been blocked by soldiers stationed in the tower, tyrannizing the locals day and night by their sheer criminal presence.

We too are now being observed. Three soldiers are standing high in the tower, from which the red and white banner of the Paratroops flies proudly, and they’re watching us through binoculars. We’re about 70 meters away. Midway between us is the locked, iron gate that leads into the village – the gate used to be yellow, like most of the gates to Palestinian locales in the West Bank, now it’s blackened from fire.Nabi Saleh, an ancient village in the central West Bank, lies across from the settlement of Halamish – which was built on village land. The protest has never stopped here. Five Palestinian flags have been hoisted at the edge of the village, as if to defy the Halamish settlers, following an incident some weeks ago in which settlers entered the village and took down Palestinian flags. Halamish makes do with one Israeli flag.

Seven villagers have been killed here in demonstrations since 2009, the year in which Nabi Saleh’s protest campaign was launched in the wake of the theft by Halamish of more than half of its land.

Qusai Tamimi was the seventh person to be killed there, the last for the time being. All 550 residents of Nabi Saleh are members of the Tamimi clan and share that name. The most famous of them is Ahed Tamimi, the then-16-year-old girl who slapped an IDF officer in 2017, was convicted of criminal acts against soldiers, jailed for eight months and thus was transformed into a heroine. Qusai, who was 19, was a cousin; Ahed’s brother, Waed, was with him the last evening of his life and, from afar, saw the soldiers kill him.

Qusai completed his high school matriculation exams a year ago and decided to take some time off. He planned to study history at Bir Zeit University, adjacent to Ramallah, beginning this January. In the meantime, he worked for three months or so in a Ramallah restaurant and had devoted the last nine months to a new effort to help guard the village against settlers, whose violence and raids have intensified in recent months, both in Nabi Saleh and across the West Bank in general. In May, for example, settlers arrived at the home of Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, and removed the Palestinian flag he had hoisted there.

Qusai was a member of a volunteer force that mans the entrances to the village at night, warns of approaching settlers and tries to secure the area. He was one of five children of Mahmoud Tamimi, 57, the bereaved father, whose piercing blue eyes are characteristic of many of the local residents. Sahar, 44, is the mother who’s lost a son. Mahmoud is a retired employee of the Palestinian Authority. His brother, Bakher, was killed by the IDF in a demonstration in 1984. When we visit this week, Mahmoud is wearing a gray suit and a white shirt, his eyes are dry and he refrains from showing emotions, two weeks after his son’s killing. A photograph of Qusai hangs on a wall in his house and another is posted high up on the village’s water tower.

Monday, October 24, was like any other day in the village. Having taken part in the nighttime guarding shift, Qusai got up around noon, went to get a haircut and returned home. At 8 P.M., he headed for the local café where he hung out with friends as usual, playing pool and cards, and smoking a narghile.

At around midnight, reports started to come in on the social media about a massacre in Nablus. The IDF had raided the city that evening and had killed five members of the militant Lion’s Den group. Instantly the atmosphere in the café changed. Qusai and his friends decided it wasn’t right to while away their time with pool and card games while Palestinian blood was being shed in Nablus. The young people felt a need to do something, Qusai’s father tells us now.

“This sort of atmosphere motivates people to act,” he adds. “In the past, people would organize and every action was planned in advance. Now it’s a spontaneous decision by individuals who cannot remain silent.”

Apparently someone suggested that the group of youths head toward the army guard tower. Maybe to burn tires nearby, to throw stones from a distance or maybe just to shout – that was all they could do at this late night hour. Some five or six youths proceeded in the direction of Qusai’s house, in the center of the village; from there the plan was to go down to the tower, situated below the house.

Qusai and two others led the way. His brother, Maher, 25, who had been with him in the café, went home to put on shoes, intending to join the group with other friends, in Waed Tamimi’s car. In the meantime, Qusai and his two friends had reached a site dozens of meters away from the tower and had set three tires ablaze; a steel barrier separated them from the tower. By the time Waed, who’s also 25, pulled up in his car with some friends, the area was quiet, only the burning tires cast a red glow.

Iyad Hadad, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, investigated the events of that night and collected testimony from eyewitnesses. His report indicates that after the tires were set ablaze, the soldiers fired a few tear-gas grenades at Qusai’s group. It was 1:50 A.M., Waed was in his car; five young people and three burning tires were across the way. The eyewitnesses told Hadad that no one threw stones or incendiary devices. One member of the group picked up a tear-gas that had been hurled at them and threw it back in the direction of the tower. The canister fell short but since the wind was not blowing in the direction of the young protesters, they were not affected by the gas. They continued standing across from the tower, hiding behind a charred garbage dumpster.

At about 2 A.M., Maher sensed danger, Hadad tells us; he was fearful that the soldiers would come down from the tower and open fire at them. He rushed to hide behind Mohammed the beekeeper’s fence nearby and called to Qusai to join him. “It’s dangerous with the soldiers there,” he shouted. Just then, shots rang out. Hadad heard several versions of how many shots were fired – the elderly farmer heard four, others heard three, some people heard just one shot.

In any event, Qusai fell to the ground after one shot. His friends immediately carried him to Waed’s car and headed toward a small hospital in the town of Salfit, as he lay on their knees in the back seat. A Red Crescent ambulance they had called met up with them halfway and Qusai was transferred to it. In the car he had mumbled to his friends, “My feet are cold,” and had begun to wheeze, until he fell silent. The ambulance paramedics tried to revive him, but to no avail.

A bullet had entered Qusai’s body on the right side and exited on the left, slicing through his chest. Mahmoud, the grieving father, says he thinks the soldiers fired another three shots at his son, as he lay dying on the ground. But that apparently would not have changed anything; the first shot was lethal. An investigation being conducted by Palestinian prosecutors will determine how many bullets struck Qusai. Dr. Ahmed Amru, the physician who pronounced him dead in the Salfit hospital, told Hadad that no bullets remained in Qusai’s body but admitted it wasn’t clear how many had hit him.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated this week in response to a query from Haaretz: “During a violent disturbance that occurred on October 24 near the village of Nabi Saleh, within the purview of the Ephraim Territorial Brigade, those fomenting the disturbance threw stones and explosive devices at forces of the IDF and burned tires. In the wake of a report about the death of one of those involved in the disturbance, a Military Police investigation was launched to clarify the circumstances. Upon its conclusion, the findings will be transferred for examination by the military advocate general’s unit.”

“What’s important to know is that the soldiers shot him in order to kill him,” Mahmoud, tells us in Hebrew. “In Nabi Saleh we have long since reached the conclusion that the soldiers have received an order that in response to every protest, they must shoot to kill. If I look at all our people who have been killed in the past 13 months – Mustafa, Izz a-Din, 12-year-old Mohamed, Rushdi and the others – if I look at all those cases, it’s clear that there’s been a decision to silence Nabi Saleh and that the soldiers have been ordered to kill. To take over the village. To prevent [the villagers] from getting to their land and to kill everyone who tries to protest.

“A 19-year-old boy who is standing 70 meters from the soldiers and they shoot him – that is a sign that there is an explicit decision to murder him,” Mahmoud continues. “Qusai died with honor. To live with honor, or to die with honor. There is no other choice. I must tell you: If I believe that it is our right to live with honor, and if I see that the occupation is taking control of everything in our life, and if I wake up every morning and see how three soldiers are shutting in a whole village, and if I see that 80 percent of our water is going to the settlement, and if I see that from the start of the year, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed and in the past 10 days we have reached 20 killed, and this in a period when you have a ‘peace’ government, and if I see that 80 percent of the people of Israel voted for the religious right and the extreme right, and if I see that they are going to create a new South Africa here – if I am not going to live with honor, it is preferable to die with honor.

“The time is approaching when the Palestinian people will launch a war of liberation. It won’t take much more time. Now 5 percent are taking part in the resistance, they will become 20 percent and afterward even more. What will I tell my son who no longer sees his brother in their room?”

Mamoud adds: “The Israelis have to recognize all this, or they will pay dearly. There is no other alternative. My son died, apparently God thought his time had come. A boy who two weeks ago went to Beit El [to the Coordination and Liaison Directorate] to see if he could get a work permit for Israel and is told he’s been denied one, and comes home and asks me, ‘What did I do?’ A boy that never did anything and was never arrested.”

Mahmoud was sleeping when his son was shot. His wife woke up to the sound of the gunfire and opened the living room window, which overlooks the checkpoint and guard tower. Her son was lying there then, taking his last breaths.

About two weeks ago, when another group of people stood here, across from the soldiers, the troops didn’t hesitate to shoot and kill one of them after he dared to set a tire on fire to protest the events that same evening in Nablus. The elderly Tamimi and his wife woke up in fright, upon hearing the shots. He says he’s often jolted out of sleep by soldiers climbing on his roof, behaving as though the place was theirs.