Republished from Electronic Intifada
Four Palestinians, including a child, were shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces during May.
Zaid Fadil Qaisiya, 17, was shot in the head and killed during a raid on al-Fawwar refugee camp near the West Bank city of Hebron on 13 May. When he was injured, the teen was standing on a rooftop watching confrontations that broke out after Israeli forces disguised as Palestinian civilians raided the camp.
Another boy, 16, was shot in the thigh during the raid, breaking his leg.
The following day, occupation forces shot and killed Baha Awawda near Hebron during what Israel says was a car-ramming attack in which a soldier was injured.
Another Palestinian motorist, Fadi Samara Qaad, was killed by soldiers who said that the man accelerated toward them in the central West Bank on 29 May. No Israeli soldiers were injured and Qaad’s family said the 37-year-old was on his way to pick up his wife and was not attempting any attack when he was killed.
Several Palestinians have been killed in recent years in what Israel claimed were car-ramming attacks, only to be contradicted by human rights groups that investigated the incidents.
On 30 May, Israeli forces killed Iyad Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian with autism, near a special education institute that he attended in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Israeli forces claimed they suspected Hallaq of carrying a “suspicious object” when they chased him and gunned him down, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
Palestinian killed outside hospital
In addition to the four Palestinians killed by Israeli state forces, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was killed by private security guards outside a hospital near Tel Aviv on 13 May.
Video of the incident shows a man lying on the ground who appears to stab another man in plain clothes who has pinned him down. At that point, three additional men open fire several times at close range.
The slain man was identified as Mustafa Mahmoud Younis, 26. His father told media that Younis was at the hospital for a psychotherapy session and was undergoing treatment for epilepsy.
The fatal shooting of Younis came a week after police killed Salama Abu Kaf in southern Israel after the man allegedly attempted to steal a car.
The slain man’s family said that Abu Kaf “was killed in cold blood because he’s an Arab.”
An Israeli soldier died after a rock was dropped on his head during a raid on a town in the northern West Bank on 12 May, the sole Israeli fatality so far this year.
Coronavirus
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip recorded its first – and so far only – death from the coronavirus during May.
Fadila Muhammad Abu Raida, 77, died while in isolation at a field hospital on the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
At the beginning of June, there were more than 600 confirmed cases in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Of those cases, more than 500 patients had recovered.
Four patients in the West Bank have died from the coronavirus.
