Settler who shot Palestinian man yet to be charged 9 months after incident videoed
Judge issues restraining order against shooter, bans him from bearing a firearm; he had continued to carry an assault rifle after his gun license was revoked
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
A West Bank settler who entered a Palestinian village and shot and severely wounded a Palestinian man from point-blank range has yet to be charged, despite the incident being caught on video and the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses.
The State Attorney’s Office told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that the case had previously been closed due to “lack of evidence” as well as a “lack of cooperation” by the victim, who had been unable to file a complaint due to the severity of his injuries.
The State Attorney’s Office said, however, that the case has now been reopened after the victim filed a complaint on Tuesday at the Kiryat Arba police station. The police had already investigated the incident in proceedings that lasted some six months following the incident on October 13.
The details were relayed to The Times of Israel following a request for information as to the status of the case, which was passed to the State Attorney’s Office by the police for a decision in late March.
And new information about the incident has emerged due to a request by the victim, Zakaria al-Adra, for a restraining order against the shooter, who can now be named as Nir Yitzhak, a resident of the illegal West Bank outpost of Maon Farms, which lies just above al-Adra’s village of At Tuwani.
It was unclear until now why Yitzhak, who is a member of the civilian security squad for Maon Farm, entered At Tuwani.
Judge Moria Charka of the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, who heard al-Adra’s request for the restraining order on Wednesday, noted pointedly in her decision granting the order that Yitzhak admitted he had deliberately entered At Tuwani and actively engaged in the encounter with al-Adra, implying it had not been al-Adra who initiated the incident.
The video of the incident, taken by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, shows Yitzhak, armed with an assault rifle, walking down from an area of scrubland into At-Tuwani and approaching a stationary al-Adra.
Yitzhak slams the barrel of his rifle into al-Adra’s upper body causing him to stumble backwards; Al-Adra briefly raises his right hand in response, with what appears to be a rock in it, but then lowers his hand; in the next split second Yitzhak fires a shot from point blank range into al-Adra’s abdomen.
The judge noted Yitzhak’s claim that al-Adra “sought to throw rocks,” and that against the backdrop of the outbreak of war following the October 7 Hamas massacre just days before the incident it was possible that Yitzhak was acting out of self-defense.
But she also pointed in her decision to the fact that Yitzhak had not fired a warning shot, and that he had continued to carry his assault rifle and do patrols for the Maon Farm security squad despite having had his gun license revoked following the incident.
The judge therefore accepted al-Adra’s request for a restraining order against Yitzhak banning him from entering At Tuwani for 180 days, and banned him from bearing a firearm, whether his IDF-issued assault rifle or a personal sidearm, for as long as there is a criminal case open against him.
Chakra said she was issuing this ban “in particular” because Yitzhak had been the one who initiated the encounter with al-Adra.
On Tuesday, al-Adra was summoned to the Kiryat Arba police station to file a complaint against Yitzhak, even though his father and another relative filed a complaint in his name in October and provided their eyewitness testimony.
Al-Adra had been hospitalized for 82 days after the shooting, 60 of those in intensive care, and subsequently suffers physical weakness and pain resulting from his injuries.
Eitan Peleg, an attorney representing al-Adra, noted that he had requested the police come to al-Adra’s residence in At Tuwani to take his complaint and testimony there but they had failed to do so.
The police also never arrived at the scene to take evidence, a relative of al-Adra told The Times of Israel in April.
When al-Adra came to the police station on Tuesday to file the complaint he was questioned under caution for “rock throwing” in the October 13 incident and is now himself being investigated.
A spokesperson for the Judea region of the southern West Bank told The Times of Israel that al-Adra had been “one of those who rioted and threw stones and then the [Israeli] resident fired.”
When it was pointed out that al-Adra had not been seen throwing a stone during the incident, the spokesperson said he had “intended to throw a stone.”
“The case has been closed for quite a while due to a lack of evidence, a part of which stemmed from the fact that the victim who was shot did not cooperate with the police and did not go [to the police station] to give testimony,” the State Attorney’s Office said in a statement to The Times of Israel.
“Recently, he requested through an attorney to give a statement. Because of that, the case has been opened and it is now in the status of investigation.
“After the police finishes its investigation it will be sent back to us for new evaluation and a decision.”
Al-Adra suffered life-changing injuries as a result of the shooting, had a colostomy bag fitted because of injuries to his intestines, and told The Times of Israel in April that he needs help standing up because of the pain and that it hurts to speak loudly or laugh as a result of the injuries to his abdomen and ribs.
