5
The B’Tselem team immediately contacted
the IDF Spokesperson’s office and the Civil
Administration’s Humanitarian Hotline
demanding that the matter be dealt with
right away, while the soldiers were still at
the checkpoint. As they were talking with the
officials, three army vehicles passed by, but the
soldiers refused to stop and provide first-aid.
The B’Tselem team summoned an ambulance,
which took the man to the hospital.
About an hour and a half later, B’Tselem was
told by an official from the Humanitarian
Hotline that the soldiers claimed that the
bruised man had tried to steal a gun from
one of the soldiers. This response, which was
given based only on the soldiers’ statements, is
incomprehensible. The fact that the man was
Some of these testimonies are presented below.
In one particularly gruesome case, two soldiers
abused six Palestinians. On 30 December at
about 6:30 A.M., two students on their way
to a-Najah University, in Nablus, came to
the checkpoint. The soldiers told them that it
was closed. The students, along with another
student, decided to go around the checkpoint
and over the hills to get to the university.
Around 7:00 A.M., as they were making their
way to Nablus, two soldiers appeared. The
soldiers aimed their rifles at the students,
kicked them, and beat them with their hands
and weapons. Thirty minutes later, they put
the students in a circle around an olive tree,
and bound their hands with plastic handcuffs,
one to the other. The soldiers also bound the
handcuffs to branches of the tree, so that the
Palestinians’ hands were suspended in the air.
Then the soldiers kicked them and went back to
their position to “ambush” others.
About ten minutes later, the two soldiers
stopped three more Palestinians. They kicked
them in the abdomen and beat them with their
hands and weapons. Then the soldiers ordered
the three Palestinians to lie down on their
stomachs. One of the soldiers held his rifle to
the back of one of their heads, threatened to
shoot him, counted to three, and then the other
soldier fired into the air.
After abusing them for about a half an hour,
the soldiers took these three men to the olive
tree and told them to take off the handcuffs of
the three Palestinians who were tied to the tree.
When they were unable to do so, the soldiers
beat them. The soldiers returned to their
ambush position, and came back about fifteen
minutes later, around 9:00. They ordered the
second group to go back home, and told the
Palestinians who were tied to the tree to wait
there until 10:30, even if they found a way to
free themselves before then. Shortly before
10:00, the Palestinians managed to cut the
handcuffs and free themselves. They went back
to the checkpoint, where the soldiers gave them
back their ID cards and ordered them to leave.
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