THE early morning traffic began to ease as the funeral procession departed from Bethlehem’s city limits, and cars sped up on their way to the nearby village of Tuqu, in the southern occupied West Bank.
‘Look, look,’ said one of the drivers in the funeral procession, pointing upwards to a group of Israeli soldiers stationed on the hill just above the shared Palestinian-Israeli settler road. ‘They’re trying to provoke us.’
As traffic slowed for a moment, young men – residents of Tuqu where 17-year-old Qusay al-Umour was shot dead less than 24 hours earlier – hopped out of their vehicles to grab stones from the side of the road and hurl them as far as they could at the soldiers, not knowing if one of them had shot the four fatal bullets that killed their friend.
Women and children gathered on rooftops, passersby honked their horns, and young men hung out of the windows of speeding cars waving Palestinian and Fatah flags, with pictures of al-Umour, the latest ‘martyr,’ taped to the backs of their cars.
Within moments of arriving at the teenager’s hometown, thousands of Tuqu residents flooded the main street – men and teenage boys crowding around the ambulance holding al-Umour’s body, women and children peering from windows and rooftops wiping away tears.
The sea of people joined al-Umour’s family and school friends to chant slogans of redemption as they marched through the town holding the body of their slain son and friend draped in a Palestinian flag, with a traditional Palestinian kuffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head.
As the procession stopped in front of the teenager’s house, where women from the al-Umour family waited to say goodbye to Qusay, the chants of the men in the street quickly faded amid the piercing shrills and screams of the women inside.
‘They (the Israelis) are terrorists. They are tyrants. They didn’t allow me to see him. They didn’t help him,’ said Fatima al-Umour, Qusay’s mother, in a faint cry, barely able to speak as dozens of mourning women crowded around her.
‘I kept asking them (the soldiers) to give him first aid without taking me with them, but they didn’t. They dragged him to a remote area and we didn’t know where he was. They took him behind the jeep, tore his clothes, then they threw him away and left him alone to die,’ she said as she struggled to sit up straight, resting her head on a family member next to her.
‘Lift your head up, you are the mother of a martyr’ some women shouted in an attempt to comfort Fatima, ‘your son is a hero!’ The attempts at consolation were drowned out by Fatima’s cries.
The residents of Tuqu – those who were present at the clashes where al-Umour was shot, and those who saw the video documenting the events immediately following his death – seemed to be sure of two things:
The high school student was wrongfully killed by Israeli forces, and they do not know, and will likely never know, if Qusay was already dead when soldiers got a hold of his motionless body, or if he died in their custody.
The footage taken by Palestinian journalist Hisham Abu Sharqah immediately after al-Umour was shot went viral on social media, as it seemingly contradicted Israeli army allegations that al-Umour had been the ‘main instigator’ of the clashes that day.
The video shows Israeli forces running towards the teenager’s motionless body, lying in a field of olive trees at least 100 metres away from the road where the clashes were taking place. As the Israeli soldiers reach a motionless al-Umour lying face down in the ground, one soldier can be seen stumbling on al-Umour’s legs, while another one gets on top of him, forcefully turning him onto his back before more soldiers arrive.
The video then shows four soldiers, each carrying one of al-Umour’s arms or legs, dragging the motionless teen to the road in an area surrounded by soldiers and armoured jeeps. Though initial reports claimed that al-Umour was shot six times, a medical source from the Hussein hospital in Beit Jala, where the body was examined, reported that the teenager was shot four times – twice in the chest, once in each hip.
‘One of the bullets perforated his heart. Medically, this is a fatal bullet,’ the source said
When asked to recall details of the incident, specifically regarding the allegation that al-Umour was the ‘main instigator’ despite being shot from a distance of at least 100 metres, Ahmad, distracted and overwhelmed, could fixate only on the fact that al-Umour was dragged by his limbs and left to bleed, with villagers unable to reach him.
‘They fired four rounds at his chest, and he fell immediately. They left him bleeding without offering any first aid. After we tried to rush to help him, the soldiers took him to a military base at the entrance of the town,’ Ahmad said. They then notified the Palestinian liaison office of his martyrdom, and the Palestinian Red Crescent went to receive the martyr’s body.’
Ahmad managed to say a few words about his cousin just as his body was carried into the mosque.
‘Qusay was beloved among the village’s youth. He always helped everyone, he helped his classmates with their lessons. He was sociable,’ adding that al-Umour was also ‘active in the resistance’ against the Israeli soldiers who regularly raid the village. But when questioned about Qusay or about Monday’s events, Ahmad, Fatima, and every relative and villager became fixated on the hour or so when the teenager was in Israeli custody before his body was returned. Not on the fact that he was shot in the chest, but that the Israeli army had his body, and for that reason, they could never be sure exactly what happened to him.
Though official medical reports might solve the mystery surrounding whether al-Umour was killed instantly or whether he died after being dragged by Israeli forces and held in Israeli custody, the overwhelming sentiment of denial and doubt surrounding the events of the teenager’s death will likely never be put to rest.
Al-Umour was the 251st Palestinian to be killed by Israelis since a wave of unrest broke out across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel in October 2015. He was the fourth Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in January 2017. Yet on Tuesday, another Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces in the northern occupied West Bank, after allegedly attempting to stab Israeli soldiers.
In tens of cases, Israel’s version of events has been disputed by witnesses, activists, and rights groups who have denounced what they have termed as a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy against Palestinians who did not constitute a threat at the time of their death, or who could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner – amid a backdrop of impunity for Israeli forces who have committed the killings.
When asked if Israeli authorities would be opening an investigation into al-Umour’s death, as they have done in a handful of cases, an Israeli police spokesperson said that he ‘was not aware’ of any investigation. Were an investigation to be opened, the precedent set by cases such as that of 15-year-old Khalid Bahr, who was shot dead by Israeli forces in October for allegedly throwing rocks at soldiers during a raid in a Hebron-area village, casts doubts on the likelihood of real accountability.
Whether al-Umour’s death will have broader repercussions on the accountability of Israeli forces, it will likely not change much for al-Umour’s family, friends, and his fellow villagers.
‘They took him about a kilometre away without giving him any medical help or first aid until he bled to death,’ said a relative of al-Umour. ‘What would you tell the world about killing a child this way? This is criminal and terrorist behaviour.’
