June 18, 2021: Israeli prosecutors on Thursday charged a border police officer with reckless manslaughter in the deadly shooting of an autistic Palestinian man in Jerusalem’s Old City last year.
The indictment came just over a year after the shooting of Eyad Hallaq, whose family has criticized Israel’s investigation into the killing and called for much tougher charges. The shooting has drawn comparisons to the police killing of George Floyd in the United States.
Rights groups say Israel rarely holds accountable members of its security forces for deadly Palestinian shootings. Interrogations often end with charges or lenient sentences, and in many cases witnesses are not even called in for questioning. The indictment, filed in Jerusalem’s district court on Thursday, found him guilty of reckless murder as an unidentified officer, and could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted. “We want justice for our son.” Hallaq’s father Khairi said on this issue.
“Why is it that when someone kills an Arab they say he is a murderer and when someone kills an Israeli they call him a reckless massacre?” Hallaq, 32, was shot dead inside the Old City Gate on May 30, 2020, as he was walking to a special needs institution he attended. The officer’s commander, who was also present at the time of the incident, was not charged. The area is a regular scene of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, and hundreds of security cameras have been set up in the narrow streets of the old city under police surveillance. But as the investigation progressed last summer, the prosecution claimed that no cameras had worked in the area and that there was no footage of the incident.
The Old City is part of East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the mid-1967 war and incorporated into its capital as a result of this move, which was not recognized by most of the international community. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their next state, and the fate of this city is the most divisive issue in the conflict.
Prosecutors in the Interior Ministry’s investigation department said in a statement that the decision to charge the officer was made after examining the evidence, examining all the circumstances of the incident and the depth of the claims heard during the officer’s hearing. He described the throat death as a “serious and unfortunate incident” and said the officer shot him “while he took an unreasonable risk that it would lead to his death.”
According to accounts at the time, Hallaq was shot after running away and failing to heed calls to stop. Two members of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police then chased Hallaq into a garbage room and shot him as he cowered next to a bin.
The Justice Ministry said in a statement in October, when prosecutors recommended charges against the officer, that the sore throat pointed to a woman she knew and that something had changed. The officer then turned to the woman and asked her in Arabic, “Where is the gun?” She replied, “Which gun?”
The woman mentioned in the statement appears to be Hallaq’s teacher, who was with him that morning. At the time of the shooting, she told an Israeli TV station that she had repeatedly called out to police that he was “disabled.”
At the time of the shooting, he told an Israeli TV station that he had repeatedly called police that he was “disabled.” In the charges filed on Thursday, the prosecution described how the accused shot Hallaq in the abdomen when his back was against a wall in a corner, then shot him in the chest a second time while the wounded spread to the ground. Hallaq’s family has expressed fears that the killing will turn white, especially after a camera malfunction. In cases of attacks against Israeli security forces, police often release security camera footage to the public immediately.
Palestinians and human rights groups say Israel has a poor record of prosecuting cases in which soldiers and police kill Palestinians under questionable circumstances. The Associated Press’s 2019 investigation found that over the past year, the Israeli military has launched an investigation into 24 possible criminal shootings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. No one was convicted or charged, and in most cases, the military did not interview key witnesses or retrieve evidence from the field.
The Israeli military says it investigates all cases in which Palestinians are killed and that its soldiers often have to make split-second decisions in hostile situations. Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank in recent years.
Hallaq’s death prompted a series of small demonstrations in which Jews and Palestinians protested against police violence. Some evoked the killing of Floyd, which sparked a wave of protests across the U.S. demanding racial justice and police accountability. Israeli leaders expressed regret over the shooting death of Hallaq.
Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List of Arab parties in Israel’s parliament, criticized the indictment, tweeting that reckless manslaughter was “an infuriating and denigrating charge,” given the gravity of what happened.
