Israeli border guard kills Palestinian in Jerusalem: police
AFP
JERUSALEM- An Israeli border guard on Sunday killed a Palestinian who tried to grab his gun when he was detained while trying to cross into east Jerusalem from the West Bank, police said.
The man was apprehended along with a group of Palestinians before he was shot and killed by the border guard, they said.
His neighbours later identified him as Ezzedine Kawasba, 38, a father of five from a small village outside the West Bank town of Hebron. They said he was a labourer who worked illegally in Israel.
Kawasba's cousin, who had been in the same group trying to enter Israel, was cited by Israeli news website Ynet as saying the victim was killed "in cold blood and at point-blank range" by a pistol shot.
"The border guard was called in for questioning and put under house arrest for four days," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
He added that an inquiry would be carried out by a special department within the justice ministry which deals with cases involving the police, since the border guards are a police unit.
Thousands of Palestinians sneak into Israel each day from the West Bank in search of work despite Israel's separation barrier, a network of walls and fences that snakes across the territory and through annexed east Jerusalem.
On September 22, clashes erupted in Jerusalem after a Jewish settlement guard shot dead a Palestinian during a confrontation in a tense neighbourhood in the annexed Arab eastern part of the city.
Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community. It views the entire city as its "eternal, undivided" capital.
The Palestinians have demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, and the city's future status remains one of the most intractable issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
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Kawasba's cousin, who had been in the same group trying to enter Israel, was cited by Israeli news website Ynet as saying the victim was killed "in cold blood and at point-blank range" by a pistol shot.
"The border guard was called in for questioning and put under house arrest for four days," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
He added that an inquiry would be carried out by a special department within the justice ministry which deals with cases involving the police, since the border guards are a police unit.
Thousands of Palestinians sneak into Israel each day from the West Bank in search of work despite Israel's separation barrier, a network of walls and fences that snakes across the territory and through annexed east Jerusalem.
On September 22, clashes erupted in Jerusalem after a Jewish settlement guard shot dead a Palestinian during a confrontation in a tense neighbourhood in the annexed Arab eastern part of the city.
Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community. It views the entire city as its "eternal, undivided" capital.
The Palestinians have demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, and the city's future status remains one of the most intractable issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
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