The shooting of a blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian teenager by an Israeli soldier is the kind of incident in the occupied territories seen, read and heard time and time again. It also comes when the US-sponsored deal that is supposed to bring an end to the Palestinian-Israeli problem is close to being unveiled, adding what will probably be another insult to the Palestinians along with the injury.
Photos and video from the scene from residents of the Palestinian village of Tuqu’ show 15-year-old Osama Al-Badan, with his hands bound behind his back, trying to run away from at least four Israeli soldiers who are standing nearby. The boy’s father said Al-Badan was shot once in each leg with a pistol - for throwing stones.
Al-Badan was eventually taken to a nearby clinic for medical treatment where he remains in stable condition. Whether Al-Baden will be able to walk again or walk unaided is not known but being shot in the lower limbs is a tactic being used a lot these days by Israeli soldiers, specifically after the start of mass protests in March last year near the Gaza border by Palestinians as part of the Great March of Return initiative and in opposition to Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza. Since the protests began, at least 272 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, including health workers and journalists. Last month, a UN inquiry concluded that Israeli soldiers had intentionally maimed Palestinians protesting in Gaza over the past year, creating a generation of disabled youth. The UN report noted that over 80 percent of the 6,106 protestors wounded in the first nine months of the Great March of Return were shot in the lower limbs.
The pattern of wounds shows that Israeli soldiers are purposefully shooting to maim protesters, most of whom are in their 20s and now require long-term medical care. In the broader sense, the Palestinians are being crippled metaphorically as well. The US administration now seems determined to produce a peace plan that will be dead before arrival and which will drive the final nail in the coffin of a peace process that is already on life support.
Over the past year, the administration has waged a relentless campaign of economic and political pressure against the Palestinians — closing the PLO office in Washington, withdrawing US assistance from the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees and cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority. In addition, the administration’s gratuitous decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and open an embassy there went completely against international law and inflicted serious damage on US credibility as a mediator. While the details of the Jared Kushner plan have been shrouded in secrecy for over a year, the way his team has operated and leaks to the media suggest a plan that gives priority to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s politics and needs.
It is also doing all it can to kill and bury the long-standing policy of seeking a two-state solution to achieving a conflict-ending settlement. In fact, the words “Palestinian state” are unlikely to appear in the Kushner plan. Even more telling, testifying before Congress last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to endorse Palestinian statehood as the goal of US policy.
And even if the words “two-state solution” were uttered, the administration’s view of the Palestinian state is clearly a far cry from the size and contiguity that any Palestinian leader and his people could accept as part of a deal.
If you didn’t know any better, you would think the Palestinians were being done favors. Israel apparently will not shoot to kill that many Palestinians but will maim a lot of them for life. Meanwhile, the US will offer a deal to the Palestinians to solve their plight but one that is made in Israel and which they will definitely reject. The Palestinians are being seriously injured, physically and figuratively.
