Authorities to investigate after video shows officers beating detained suspect

Officials were set to probe police officers’ behavior after a video emerged Tuesday showing cops beating a detained and apparently unresisting Arab suspect in southern Israel.

In the short clip, filmed by an unidentified onlooker from a vehicle, two officers are seen with a man standing between them who had just been detained.

Two other officers approach them and one shouts, “You said you would put a bullet in my head,” and then slaps the suspect hard in the face.

A struggle erupts and the suspect is knocked to the ground. Two officers continue to hit the suspect while pinning him down, one kicking him and another repeatedly punching him in the head.

Another officer who arrives with a pistol in his hand instructs passing motorists to move on.

Arab MK Ahmad Tibi of Hafash-Ta’al tweeted the video along with the remark: “This is how a young Arab Bedouin is arrested in Israel: Two officers grab [him] and the rest come to take revenge and beat him savagely.”

A police source, speaking anonymously, said that the video had been passed on to the Police Internal Investigations Department, which sits under the Justice Ministry.

Kan news reported that the PIID had already opened an investigation and that the officers will be summoned for questioning.

כך עוצרים צעיר ערבי בדואי בישראל: שני שוטרים תופסים והשאר מגיעים לנקום ולהרביץ בפראות. pic.twitter.com/kK8zDmpCCu

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) October 25, 2022

“It is unthinkable, they aren’t police officers. They are criminals,” the suspect’s brother, Khalad Hawashla, told Kan. “This is criminal behavior.”

An Israel Police spokesperson said in a statement that the incident came during a raid to seize illegal weapons in the southern region, during which officers uncovered five pistols and ammunition.

Officers stormed a private compound, the home of three brothers, near Route 31 in an unrecognized Bedouin community.

During the raid, officers “encountered a gathering and commotion, apparently with the aim of removing illegal weapons from the compound.”

The statement said that one of the suspects threatened officers that “he would harm them with a firearm” and fled.

“Fearing that he would carry out his threat with… a weapon in his possession or in the compound, he was arrested by other policemen,” the statement said.

In addition, one of the suspects began to flee with a bag, and an officer, noticing that he was putting his hand into the bag, fired a shot in the air.

The suspect stopped and dropped the bag, which was found to contain the five pistols, some of which were loaded with ammunition.

All three siblings were arrested and taken away for questioning on suspicion of possession of illegal weapons and threatening officers, police said.

The spokesperson did not comment on the violence exhibited by cops in the video.

Authorities have increasingly sought to crack down on the spread of illegal weapons in the Arab Israeli community, which have been used to carry out a record-breaking number of murders in recent years.