Soldier charged with forcing Palestinian to give him a ride

The IDF’s Military Advocate General charged a soldier with threatening a Palestinian man to drive him to a West Bank settlement at gunpoint.

According to the charge sheet, the armed Israeli soldier forced a Palestinian man at gunpoint to give him a ride to the settlement of Yitzhar in late March.

The accused’s name was not published in the Israeli media.

The Palestinian man, a 19-year-old resident of the village of Madama, told police after the incident that the soldier signaled him to stop as he was leaving his chicken coops near Road 60 in the northern West Bank, believing the soldier was conducting a routine inspection.

The Golani brigade soldier was attempting to leave his military post in an isolated area of the Samaria region, where Israeli vehicles rarely travel. He allegedly entered the vehicle and demanded the driver take him to Yitzhar.

“The complainant started driving according to the soldier’s instructions,” the MAG said in a statement. “The soldier didn’t cease his actions even after he saw the Palestinian was full of fear, and silenced him when he made calls for help at passersby.

“The incident ended only after the driver drove the car off the road, dumped it into a ditched and fled the scene running,” the statement said.

The soldier also abandoned the scene of the crash, and hitched a ride with a bus that was transporting soldiers to a nearby base.

A military tribunal initially determined that the soldier would be detained on his base pending trial, but the military prosecutor appealed and had the accused imprisoned ahead of a court martial, the Walla news site reported.

The appeals court said in its decision to jail the soldier ahead of trial that the soldier was accused of “using of a weapon while causing potential danger to the body and honor of the complainant.”