Israel-Palestine war: Israeli army kills elderly Palestinian after taking PR photo on 'safe corridor'
Bashir Hajji's granddaughter says he was shot in the head and back after a photo showing soldiers helping him was taken
Bashir Hajji,
a 79-year-old resident of Gaza City shown here in an Israeli military
propaganda photo, shortly before he was executed (Israeli military)
Published date: 15 November 2023
The
Israeli
army released a propaganda photo of one of its soldiers helping an
elderly Palestinian man with a walking stick in an attempt to showcase
its “safe corridor” for civilians fleeing northern Gaza.
Shortly afterwards, Bashir Hajji, a 79-year-old resident of Gaza
City's Zaytoun neighbourhood, was executed in cold blood by Israeli
soldiers, according to Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
The photo published on social media by the Israeli army was taken on
10 November, as Hajji walked on the Salah al-Din Road, the main route
towards southern Gaza. According to his family, he was alone and had
difficulty walking.
Hajji’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, told the Euro-Med Monitor team
that he was executed after the photo was taken with one bullet to the
head and back.
"He died tired, cold, thirsty & hungry," she wrote in a post on Instagram, confirming her grandfather's death.
A photo of Hajji's body was also circulated by the human rights organisation.
Mass executions
There is growing evidence that such executions are far from lone events.
On Monday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that it
had documented the execution of dozens of Palestinians by the Israeli
army during their displacement from Gaza City and its north to central
and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, even though they did not pose any
threat.
The rights group said that Palestinians had been deliberately
targeted with live bullets and sometimes artillery shells as they
attempted to flee at the request of the Israeli army to the area south
of Wadi Gaza.
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The monitor has received reports from displaced people reporting
killings at military checkpoints set up by the Israeli army on the
so-called “corridor” along the main traffic artery, Salah al-Din Road,
between 9 am and 4 pm during the day.
It also condemned on Tuesday “Israel’s systematic, widespread and
growing trend of humiliating, torturing and ill-treating Palestinian
detainees with impunity”.
It has called Israel’s actions towards Palestinian prisoners “appalling” in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Israel continues to publish footage that deliberately aims to degrade and humiliate Palestinians detained, tortured and ill-treated in the West Bank for war propaganda,” said the rights group.
“We have documented multiple similar incidents that violate the Geneva Convention about the treatment of detainees.”
Since the Hamas attacks on 7 October, the Israeli military has
conducted widescale raids and arrest campaigns across Palestinian towns
and cities in the occupied West Bank.
At least 2,570 Palestinians have since been detained for no apparent
reason. Around 196 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli forces
and settlers.
EuroMed also renewed its calls for the United Nations and the
International Criminal Court to “open an urgent independent
investigation into the execution crimes to which displaced Palestinians
have been and are still being subjected to, to hold those who ordered
such crimes accountable, and to achieve justice for the victims.”