Israeli Forces Said They Killed a ‘Terrorist.’ He Was 14 Years Old.
The death of Amer Rabee, a Palestinian American in the West Bank, has spurred anger over soldiers’ use of force and an apparent lack of accountability.
The clothes were strewn on a ridge dotted with olive and almond trees, perched above a highway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. On rust-colored earth sprinkled with wildflowers were a torn black T-shirt, black Converse socks and a pair of Nike Air white sneakers.
Nearby lay a pair of bloodied, gray Nike sweatpants and a black hoodie perforated with holes.
Here, on April 6, near Turmus Aya, a village in the West Bank where most of the residents have U.S. citizenship, Israeli soldiers gunned down Amer Rabee, a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy who was born in New Jersey. The military handed over his naked, bullet-ridden body a few hours later in a blue body bag, according to his family.
The Israeli military has accused Amer and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians. It described the boys as “terrorists,” and said its soldiers had “eliminated” one and shot the two others.
Last month, the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said at a press briefing that the Israeli military believed it was stopping an act of terrorism. “We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground,” she added. American officials did not respond to a request for further information.
More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mostly by the Israeli military and some by settlers, since the Hamas-led offensive against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations. Roughly 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank during that period.
From 2018 to 2022, less than a third of complaints that soldiers had harmed Palestinians in the West Bank resulted in an investigation, according to a recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization. Only a fraction have led to legal action.
A Hail of Gunfire
The three young boys had gone out to pick green almonds, a seasonal delicacy, in a terraced orchard between Turmus Aya and Route 60, a busy north-south artery linking a patchwork of Palestinian towns and Jewish settlements, one of the friends, Ayoub Jabara, 14, told The Times at his home in Turmus Aya.
He denied that they had thrown stones, saying that they had merely been throwing dried almonds at each other. Ayoub, who is also a Palestinian-American, described reaching a point very close to the main road, and finding a tree with dried-up nuts. “Amer picked one up and was joking that it was like a stone and threw it at me. I threw it back,” he said.
Amer was shot at least 11 times, according to his father, Mohammed Rabee. Photographs taken on the cellphone of a family friend who accompanied Mr. Rabee when they picked up Amer’s body appeared to show several entry wounds, including one in the center of his forehead and others in his neck and upper torso.
Hours after the shooting, the Israeli military issued a 10-second clip of blurry footage without a time stamp that shows three unidentifiable figures appearing to gather things from the ground. One of the figures appears to fling something in a downward motion, though no object is visible. The video cuts out as all three appear to turn and run.
Four days after Amer died, reporters for The Times searched the ridge where he was killed for any signs of the shooting and came across the clothes.
Garments that appeared to have been cut off by soldiers and blue surgical gloves were scattered around a bloodstained rock. The military said it was standard procedure to remove clothes to ensure the body was not booby-trapped. The clothes were later identified by the family as Amer’s, when the reporters returned them to the family at their home.
Even if the boys did throw stones, said Mr. Rabee, Amer’s father, the soldiers could have fired warning shots to scare them away, or could have chased and detained them. “He was 14 years old,” he said. “It takes no special training to catch a little kid.”
Instead, the soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at him. His family believes they wanted to kill him. The military declined to confirm or deny that it has a shoot-to-kill policy for stone throwers.
Ayoub, Amer’s friend, suffered “multiple gunshot wounds,” according to medical records from the Istishari Arab hospital in nearby Ramallah, where he spent three days in the intensive care unit. Both Dr. Mohammad Qneibi, a physician at a local clinic where Ayoub was first taken, and Ayoub’s father, Ahed Jabara, told The Times that the boy was shot at least three times in the groin area.
The family of the third boy, Abdulrahman Shihada, 15, declined to be interviewed.
Hopes of Living in America
In Turmus Aya, Amer’s parents were still reeling from their loss in the days after the shooting, and Amer’s siblings and cousins from the United States had flown in to mourn him.
Mr. Rabee and his wife, Majed, left the West Bank for New Jersey in 2001. They moved back to Turmus Aya in 2013, when Amer, the youngest of their five children, was a toddler. The parents wanted their children to be schooled in Arabic and to absorb Palestinian identity and culture.
Amer’s four older siblings had moved back to the United States after finishing high school. He had dreamed of joining them, and the night before he was killed, he had been texting in English with his siblings about his future business plans to market mini cotton candy machines.
Villagers first started moving to the United States more than a century ago and relatives followed. Now, about 85 percent of Turmus Aya’s residents are dual Palestinian-American citizens. Many, like the Rabee family, come and go.
The evening Amer died, he left the house without saying goodbye, his mother, Majed, said. “He didn’t think he was never coming back.”
Amer’s father, Mr. Rabee, got a call from a friend at 6:41 p.m. saying there had been a shooting. Word had been spreading in the village that Amer was involved. Mr. Rabee called his son’s phone several times but got no reply. At 6:58 p.m., he called the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem’s hotline and said his son needed immediate help. He said American officials did not respond with any practical assistance. The embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
At about 9:30 p.m., a Palestinian official called to say that Amer had been killed. Mr. Rabee went to an Israeli military base in the northern West Bank where, shortly before midnight, Amer’s body was transferred to a Palestinian ambulance.
“I said, ‘Praise be to God,’ and I kissed him,” Mr. Rabee said.
Mr. Rabee said that he did not trust any of the authorities to investigate and that Amer had been buried a day later, without an autopsy. “Only God can judge; I have sent the case to God for judgment,” Mr. Rabee said.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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