Abbas demands justice over Hebron shooting

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that justice must be served over the shooting by an IDF soldier of a disarmed and incapacitated Palestinian attacker.

During a meeting at his office in Ramallah with a delegation from the International Federation of the Jews of Morocco, the Palestinian leader demanded that Israel act responsibly to investigate the shooting, his first comments over the Thursday killing.

“This incident is a red line,” Abbas declared.

“We aren’t judges, but there is a need here for a just trial that uncovers the truth and gives every one [involved] what he deserves,” he said. “We will agree with any decision of such a trial.”

On Friday, the soldier was charged in a military court with murder after video emerged of him shooting an attacker in the head, despite the assailant lying on the ground wounded from an earlier gunshot wound. The charge drew harsh criticism from the soldier’s family and some right-wing politicians, who said the IDF was passing judgment before probing the incident.

Senior IDF officials and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have defended the decision to charge the soldier and insisted that his actions violated the army’s ethical code.

Abbas’s comments came as one of his top aides, senior official Saeb Erekat, submitted a request to the United Nations asking it to formally investigate what he called Israeli extrajudicial “executions” of Palestinian attackers. Erekat submitted the request during a meeting with the UN special coordinator for the peace process, Nickolay Mladenov.

Erekat claimed that while Israel said it would investigate the Hebron murder, “history has shown that Israeli investigations do not serve justice.”

In Israel, the incident quickly escalated into a national debate about the IDF’s rules of engagement and its use of force in regards to Palestinians.

According to the army, the soldier said before shooting the surviving Palestinian stabber that he should be killed, and told his commanders afterward that the assailant had deserved to die.

Earlier on Monday, the soldier’s family was moved to a secure location after receiving death threats and abusive messages.

According to their lawyer, the family was inundated with threatening calls after their home phone number was published on a number of Palestinian social media sites.

In the Knesset on Monday, Ya’alon denounced MKs who have backed the soldier.

This is “a case of a soldier gone bad, not a hero,” he said.