The United States urged restraint on Tuesday as anger flared over the death of 2 Palestinian teenagers — allegedly killed by the IDF — during the May 15 Nakba Day riots by the Ofer prison near Ramallah.
The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday called for an international commission of inquiry into their deaths and denounced the incident as a war crime. It spoke after video footage showed that the teens were not engaged in violence at the time of their death.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said, however, that they died during a riot in which soldiers and border police were in danger.
“Because it was a life threatening situation, police acted accordingly,” Ya’alon said.
The military prosecution last week ordered Military Police to launch a limited investigation into the incident.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that America was closely following the incident and sought additional information.
The US, Psaki said, looked to Israel to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation.
“We express our condolences to the families of the deceased and urge all parties to express restraint,” Psaki told reporters in Washington.
The PA, the US and Ya’alon spoke after two non-governmental groups published video footage from two commercial security cameras which showed that Mohammed Odeh Abu Daher and Nadim Siam Nawawreh, both 17, were killed during brief moments of calm in an otherwise violent riot.
During the afternoon, Palestinian protesters threw stones, Molotov cocktails and rolled burning tires at soldiers and Border Police, stationed at a distance. Israeli security forces responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Video and photos from the riots showed rising tear gas and masked teens using sling shots to hurl stones. But the teens were not killed while engaged in such activity.
The absence of visible violence at the time when the two 17-year-olds were killed was first raised in the morning by the Palestinian branch of Defence for Children International. But the more telling videos were released later in the day by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
The first video was shot around 1:45 p.m. with footage from two separate cameras, so that one can see a fair distance down the length of the street from the Ofer prison down to the gas station, where such demonstrations typically take place.
To the side at a few points one can see black smoke from burning tires. But the street is fairly empty, with no soldiers present and few protesters.
Near the closed store fronts, a dozen or so male teenagers and young adults are mulling around, many of them are masked. At 1:44:50 p.m, one teenager on the edge of the camera throws a stone. After that there is no violence, for about 22 seconds.
At 1:45:12 Nadim Siam Nawawreh is walking and simply falls to the ground. While there is a half-minute discrepancy in the timer on both videos, the scene they show is identical.
In the second video, shot over an hour later, there is almost an exact repetition of the first, except that the black smoke is thicker. A dozen or so protestors are seen mulling around. One of them is walking, the shots on both sides of these street are fairly clear. Then all of a sudden Mohammed Odeh Abu Daher falls at about 2:58:49 p.m.
Palestinians and B’Tselem claim they were both killed by live IDF bullets. The IDF has claimed that it fired only rubber bullets that afternoon.
Ya’alon did not address the issue of live fire or the possibility of IDF responsibility for the deaths. He said he had not seen the videos but did know of the incident.
“In these incidents violent Palestinian demonstrators throw stones [and] Molotov cocktails at Border Police,” Ya’alon said.
Responding to the new videos, the IDF Spokesperson Unit said, “On Thursday, an illegal and violent disturbance occurred in Betinuia.
The said video is edited in a tendentious manner and does not reflect the level of violence that occurred at the disturbance."
The military added that an initial check of the incident and interviews of security personnel who dealt with it found that "no live fire" was used.
Last week, military sources said rubber bullets had been fired in the course of a riot involving 150 Palestinians who had gathered to mark "Nakba Day."
"The rioting was very serious," an army source stated. "This was a very aggressive attack on security personnel," the source added.
B’Tselem said that the entry and exit wounds in the two teens were consistent with injuries caused by live fire and not rubber coated metal bullets. This is particularly true, it said, when fired from far away as these bullets were.
“Eyewitness accounts described the sound of live gunfire, which sounds different from rubber-coated bullet fire,” B’Tselem said.
It added that the use of live fire in this situation, in which lives were not immediately in danger, was against IDF regulations.
The PA government called upon international legal and judicial institutions to urgently form a commission of inquiry into the killings.
The government said that it was necessary to "force the occupation government to acknowledge its responsibility for this war crime against innocent and defenseless children."
In a statement, the PA government said that the killing of the two teenagers was part of the "occupation's ongoing brutal crimes against Palestinians over the past 66 years."
PLO Executive Committee member, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, stated: “Israel’s use of excessive and indiscriminate violence and live ammunition at non-violent Palestinian demonstrations constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law.”
“We call on the United Nations, the European Union, and other members of the international community to take immediate action and adopt the necessary punitive measures and initiatives required to hold Israel accountable for the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian civilians, and for its use of live ammunition on Palestinian civilians, among other violations of international and humanitarian law,” Ashrawi said.