Interpreting the video of a West Bank scuffle
JERUSALEM — A video documenting a violent scuffle between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian child and his family in the West Bank went viral over the weekend, becoming a sort of Rorschach test of the passions and perspectives of the Middle East conflict.
Shot on Friday by Palestinians in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, site of weekly demonstrations since 2009, the video shows an Israeli soldier wrestling 11-year-old Mohammed Tamimi to the ground in rocky terrain and pinning him as the child’s mother, aunt and sister thrash at the soldier and bite him to pry the child from the soldier’s grip.
The scene appears to continue for about a minute before the soldier’s commander intervenes to release the boy.
Other than the boy’s young age and the presence of cameras, the incident was not unlike many other encounters between Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers. But as it captured an almost random incident from one physical angle, the video became open to widely differing interpretations.
A statement from Israel’s military described the demonstration as a “violent riot” during which crowds threw rocks at the soldiers. “The forces decided to detain one of the Palestinians identified hurling rocks,” the army said, referring to Mohammed, and a “group of rioters, amongst them women and children, attacked the soldiers in [an] attempt to prevent the arrest.”
From the family’s perspective, the army acted with excessive force against a child, whose relatives were merely trying to protect him. Noting that he had a broken arm in a cast, the family denied that Mohammed had been throwing rocks.
“If you are a mother, you will protect your children without thinking,” Nariman Tamimi told the Middle East Eye website. “They weren’t just trying to arrest him, the way the soldier’s hand was around my son’s neck he could have killed him.”
The soldier’s parents also defended their son. Speaking to Israel’s Channel 10 by phone, his mother (who was not named in order to protect the soldier’s identity) said she was proud of her son for showing “great restraint” in a difficult situation.
The image of the soldier holding a Palestinian child in a stranglehold reached millions of viewers on social media and international news outlets, sparking outrage at Israeli policies in the West Bank, in particular toward minors. But in Israel, many focused on the Palestinian women beating the soldier. And some drew the conclusion that army policies were too weak.
Opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon of “lax leadership” and failing to back Israeli soldiers; the incident, he said, gravely undermines the Israeli army’s deterrence.
“The Palestinians have understood that the camera is a weapon,” said Chen Bareket, a former army commander. He suggested soldiers also use cameras to show their perspective.