PALESTINIAN MAN KIDNAPS AND KILLS ISRAELI OCCUPATION SOLDIER
West Bank, 16 Dul Qai’dah 1434/22 September 2013 (MINA) – A Palestinian man abducted and killed an Israeli occupation soldier whose body was found in the north of the occupied West Bank, in the hope that he could trade the body in exchange for the release of his jailed brother.
An army spokesman said the soldier “was kidnapped and killed by a Palestinian near Qalqiliya yesterday [Friday] and his body was found” on Saturday in a well.
Twenty-year-old Sgt. Tomer Hazan was reported missing late on Friday and Israeli forces began looking for him. The search led the troops to Nidal Amar, a 42-year-old Palestinian from Beit Amin, a village near the city of Qalqiliya in the northern West Bank.
Amar told Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet that he had killed the soldier, whom he knew because he worked together with him at a restaurant in the coastal city of Bat Yam in central Israel, the agency said.
Amar recounted how he had picked up the soldier in a taxi on Friday after convincing him to accept a ride. After talking the soldier into joining him, he took the Israeli to an open field, killed him and hid his body in a well.
He was hoping to trade the soldier’s body for his brother, who was jailed by Israel in 2003 for an alleged connection to several attacks. Aljazeera reported monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
Peter Sharp reporting from Jerusalem, said “arrests are continuing. Six to eight people have been arrested, some of them members of Nidal’s family.”
The killing could deal a new blow to US-led peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which resumed in July after a nearly five-year break.
The deaths of several Palestinians in Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank intended to detain fighters involved in attacks have further soured the atmosphere between the two sides.
On Friday (20 September), The Israeli occupation troops have been accused of manhandling a group of European diplomats as they tried to hand out tents to Palestinian Bedouins whose West Bank homes were destroyed by the army.
The occupation troops used force to disperse the diplomats who had accompanied aid workers to the village of Makhul in the Jordan Valley. Marion Fesneau-Castaing, a French diplomat, was dragged out of an aid vehicle, the photographer said.
“They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,” she said. “This is how international law is being respected here.” Locals said Makhul was home to about 120 people.
The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten, after Israel’s High Court ruled that they did not have proper building permits. Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.(T/P04/E1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
