Israel’s prime minister has condemned the beating by an angry mob of a wounded Eritrean migrant who was mistakenly believed to be involved in a bus station shooting.
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Israel’s Interior Ministry identified the man as Haptom Zerhom, an Eritrean in his late 20s.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet also approved a bill that effectively permits security forces to search anyone on the street – a practice activists say is targeting Palestinians.
The statement also said that police would attempt to identify the citizens who attacked Zarhum and bring them in for questioning.
The attacker, Bedouin-Israeli Mouhand al-Okbi, 21, entered the bus station on Sunday night armed with a handgun and a knife.
One video urges Palestinians to carry out their attacks using every means at their disposal, including knives, vehicles, poison and explosives.
In a bid to stem the most serious Palestinian attacks on its streets since an uprising a decade ago, Israel has poured hundreds of troops into its cities and set up roadblocks in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Just a few days earlier, a 17-year-old from the southern city of Dimona stabbed four Arab citizens, while in the coastal city of Netanyahu a group of Jewish men attacked and beat a local Palestinian man in a revenge attack.
Forty-one Palestinians, including assailants and protesters at anti-Israeli demonstrations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.
The special United Nations meeting was called after a Palestinian appeal for worldwide protection for the al-Aqsa mosque- Islam’s third holiest shrine, which they say is being encroached by Israel.
However, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Club reported that Israel arrested 58 Palestinians in the overnight raids, and said those taken into custody were former prisoners in Israel who were released under the terms of the prisoner exchange for the Hamas-held Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.
Where Israelis see attackers killed in self-defense against what headlines call the “wave of terrorism”, Palestinians tend to see martyrs sacrificing themselves to fight the unacceptable predicament of their oppressed and humiliated people.
He also pushed back on suggestions that diplomacy should take a back seat to the immediate goal of restoring stability. Al-Oqbi wounded 10 more people before police shot him dead.
France’s ambassador to Israel was summoned Monday to the Israeli Foreign Ministry in the wake of France’s proposal to place independent observers at the contested holy site.
Spokesman Mark Regev noted that Israel has tough gun ownership rules, “and so if you pass those tests and you legally have a firearm, the police are suggesting that you carry that firearm, because of the security situation”.
Nahshon said Monday that Israel is opposed to any moves not coordinated or proposed jointly with Israel that related to the country’s “critical interests”.
Nachson said that Maisonnave told the Israeli officials that Paris was proposing ideas because of the “continued stalemate in the peace process”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday said Israeli and Palestinian leaders need to clarify the status of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound to help end a spate of bloodshed and restore stability. He was shot and killed during the attack. Hospital officials said two people were in critical condition.
A lone gunman thought to be Palestinian opened fire killing an Israeli soldier and wounding eleven other people at a bus station in the southern Israel on Sunday.
The migrant, who was mistaken for a second assailant, was shot and died hours later at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
Israeli news websites posted security camera footage that shows Zerhom crawling on the floor and a security guard shooting him.
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At least one Israeli soldier was filmed kicking Zarhum in the head as he lay bleeding on the floor of the terminal.
