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On Sunday evening, 12 March, at 18:30, three Israeli military jeeps entered the village of Sayer,
in the Hebron district,
an area with a population of 22,000. When the soldiers entered the Raf Arud market,
an area full of shops, children began throwing stones at them. At this point,
the soldiers entered and searched a number of shops and arrested three young,
male shop owners.
One of them, Arafat Sherif Jaradat, a 22-year-old student at Hebron University
and owner of a cosmetic shop, was brought outside by the soldiers, who then asked
him to sit down in the front of the jeep while they traveled around the village. Jaradat
immediately refused, stating that if he did this, he would be between the
soldiers and the stones being thrown by the children.
While checking his ID, they discovered that he had been in jail 10 months
ago, and started arguing with him about this. When they give Jaradat back his
ID and let him go, showing him which street to walk down, he believed that the
soldiers were releasing him and left the area.
A few minutes later, on the same street, a different group of soldiers spotted
Jaradat and stopped him. They began to beat him; when some of the locals saw
this happening they rushed to help him. The soldiers then fired warning shots
in the air to try to disperse the crowd and ordered everyone to go home.
Arafat Sherif Jaradat was seriously injured and subsequently arrested. Two
other Palestinian men who were stopped with Jaradat in the market were also arrested.
All three were taken by the Israeli military troops to an unknown military detention
camp.
This is not the first time that Israeli soldiers have entered this area
and caused serious damage to the population as well as to the infrastructure.
One month ago, the Israeli military entered the same village and children, as
in the present case, commenced throwing stones at them. In reaction, the
soldiers destroyed almost 15 water pipes on the rooftops of houses. During yet
another incursion, Israeli soldiers seriously injured three people, one of whom
is now handicapped.
This latest incident is one of many violent incursions into villages in
the area, and most likely will not be the last. In this particular incident,
the massive human rights violation of using a man as a human shield can be
added. In addition, one cannot help but notice the strange instance that, in a
village of 22,000 inhabitants, the same person is stopped two times by two separate
groups of soldiers, in less than one hour.
The level of violence employed by the Israeli military appears to be
endless, and young people are a favorite target. The use by the Israeli forces,
of a multitude of different measures to disrupt Palestinian life is spiraling
into the abuse and violation of every civil law, not just of coexistence
between adversaries, but between human beings in general.
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