Civilian guards grilled over fatal shooting of Palestinian siblings
Police suspect private security officers wrongfully shot pair at Qalandiya, despite initially saying woman threw knife at forces
Police have questioned the civilian security guards who shot dead two Palestinian siblings they suspected of planning a stabbing attack at the Qalandiya crossing, Channel 10 reported Sunday.
Police suspect that the guards were wrong to shoot the Palestinians — a woman and her teenage brother — at the West Bank crossing outside Jerusalem in late April, although at the time police said the woman had thrown a knife at security forces and that her brother was carrying two blades.
During the interrogation that took place in the past two days, the guards said they felt the siblings posed an immediate threat to their lives, the TV report said.
The investigators reportedly said the privately contracted guards were not authorized to shoot.
The police had said Thursday they would investigate suspicions of unlawful conduct by the guards.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court imposed a gag order on the details of the investigation, as well as the names of the guards.
Maram Hassan Abu Ismail, 23, and her brother Ibrahim Saleh Taha, 16 — both from the central West Bank village of Surif — were killed by the civilian guards and not by Border Police, a preliminary probe determined last Sunday.
According to the police account of the incident, Abu Ismail and her brother raised suspicions after approaching the checkpoint in the wrong lane — intended for vehicles rather than pedestrians.
Police said Abu Ismail then hurled a knife at security personnel before she was shot. The knife was recovered at the scene, and a spokeswoman said a second, identical knife was found on Taha’s belt, along with a Leatherman-style multi-tool.
Two weeks ago, Israel Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said that Abu Ismail was spotted walking toward guards with her hand concealed inside her purse, and that security personnel fired only after calling on her to stop several times.
Their father, Salah Abu Ismail, 61, from the village of Katana north of Jerusalem, told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview a day after the incident that his daughter had arrived at the crossing to obtain a permit to enter Jerusalem for medical treatment. He insisted that neither of his children was carrying a knife.
The Military Police said Sunday that a Border Police officer guarding the busy West Bank crossing at the time complied with protocol and arrest procedures by firing warning shots into the air as the siblings approached guards at the checkpoint in a suspicious manner. One of the guards from a privately contracted security firm fired at them moments later.
When police wrongdoing had been ruled out, authority over the investigation was transferred from the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department to the Israel Police.
“The investigation of the shooting at Qalandiya has been handed over to the Judea and Samaria District police,” Samri said in a statement Thursday.
Police have so far refused to release footage of the incident, classifying it as evidence in an ongoing investigation, despite demands from the Abu Ismail family.
The Defense Ministry often contracts guards from private companies to bolster its security presence at major crossings between Israel and Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.
Professionally subordinate to the police, the private guards don’t usually come into contact with Palestinians crossing through the checkpoints, and are frequently stationed behind concrete barriers to generally reinforce Israeli security.
Qalandiya, and the adjacent crossing between the West Bank and Israel, has been a flashpoint of conflict in the recent wave of violence that has rocked the area since September of last year.
As part of a larger effort to boost Israeli-Palestinian economic ties, the Finance Ministry is planning to improve the much-criticized conditions at crossings where tens of thousands of Palestinians enter Israel daily from the West Bank to work.
In an effort to ease heavy congestion from both pedestrians and cars in the area, Israel last Monday opened a new crossing from Jerusalem into the West Bank at Dahiat el-Barid, just southeast of the capital.
The Times of Israel Community.