Video from AlJazeera English
Palestinian Ministry of Information
Ramallah, 06-06-07: Israeli soldiers executed a 68-year-old Palestinian civilian in his home in Hebron city in the early hours of this morning, a willful killing which Minister of Information Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi said represented a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and which he therefore condemned as a war crime.
Israeli soldiers stormed the house of Yahiya Itzhak Al Jabari in the Haram Ar Rama area of Hebron this morning as part of an ‘arrest operation’, and demanded to see his sons. When Jabari called his two sons, 30-year-old Kamel and 19-year-old Rajah into the living room, the soldiers began beating the two men.
When Jabari tried to intervene to protect his sons, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, killing him instantly.
Rafah Jabari was also shot in the head. The bullet did not penetrate his skull and he was taken to the hospital where he remains in a serious, but stable condition.
His brother Kamel was shot in the legs and feet, while his two sisters aged 15 and 25-years-old were also beaten.
The dead man’s wife, Fatmeh Jabari was critically wounded after being shot by an Israeli soldier in the chest while trying to assist her husband. She is now in a coma.
No one was arrested following the attack.
While acknowledging the Israel military’s open policy of extrajudicial executions of Palestinians, Dr. Barghouthi said that Jabari’s murder was now indicative of the targeting of civilians through this policy.
He demanded an international investigation into the murder, saying that past investigations carried out by Israel into its military’s conduct had been whitewashes.
A total killed of 470 Palestinians have been killed in executions and targeted killings by the Israeli military since September 2000, of whom at least 166 were civilians, including at 52 children.