Injured Palestinians Forced onto Israeli Jeep Bonnets during West Bank Operation: Witnesses
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Two Palestinian men injured during a military operation in the occupied West Bank last week have said that Israeli soldiers forced them onto the bonnet of an army jeep and drove them at speed along village roads.
Their accounts follow footage of 23-year-old Mujahid Abadi Balas clinging to the bonnet of an Israeli army jeep, sparking international outrage.
The BBC spoke to two men who allege similar treatment during the operation in Jabariyat, near Jenin, last Saturday.
Samir Dabaya, 25, now hospitalized in Jenin, says he was shot in the back by Israeli forces during the Jabariyat operation and lay face-down and bleeding for hours until soldiers assessed him.
When they found him alive, he was beaten with a gun before being carried to the jeep and thrown onto it.
“They took off my trousers. I wanted to hold onto the car, but one soldier hit my face and told me not to. Then he started driving,” he said. “I was waiting for death.”
Samir showed video footage from a security camera appearing to show him semi-naked, lying on a fast-moving jeep marked with the number 1.
The location matches where the operation took place, but no date or time is visible on the recording.
Another Palestinian man, Hesham Isleit, told the BBC he was shot twice during the Jabariyat operation and forced onto the same military jeep.
He described “shooting from all sides” and tried to run away but was shot in the leg, after which an army unit arrived to collect him and another man.
“They ordered us to stand up and undressed us,” he said. “Then they asked us to get onto the front of the jeep.”
The car was so hot, it felt “like fire,” he said.
“I was barefoot and undressed. I tried to put my hand on the jeep and couldn’t. It was burning hot. I was telling them it was very hot, and they were forcing me to get on – telling me that if I didn’t want to die, I should do it.”
From his hospital bed, Mujahid told the BBC he hadn’t expected to survive and was saying his final prayers as he lay on the moving vehicle.
He showed the BBC a second video, recorded at a distance, appearing to support his account of being thrown onto the vehicle by Israeli soldiers.
“Once they confirmed that I had no weapon, they came down from the jeep and started beating me on the face, the head, and the sites of my injuries,” he said. “The soldiers picked me up by my wrists and ankles and swung me right and left before throwing me in the air.”
He says he fell to the ground, was picked up and swung again, before being thrown onto the jeep and driven to a nearby house.
Hesham said the house that he and Mujahid were in that day belonged to Majd al-Azmi, a neighbor and friend, who was arrested during the operation and remains in Israeli custody.
All three men say they were unarmed.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has been tracking the cases.
Spokesman Shai Parnes said that since the 7 October, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and settlers has reached record levels.
“It’s more radicalized, it’s more brutalized, it’s more extreme,” he said. “Since 7 October, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed – more than 100 of them minors – and every day there are invasions of Palestinian cities.”
Footage shared online last week showed an Israeli armored vehicle driving past ambulances in Jenin, with an injured Palestinian man strapped to the hood, appearing to be used as a human shield. The severity of this image reflected the numerous instances in the West Bank of Israeli human rights violations.
Jenin has been a particular target for Israeli raids since the 7 October, with more than 120 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers there.
Soldiers still patrol and raid Jenin camp where residents in the town say there’s no sign of the war subsiding.
“What the army doesn’t know is that resistance is an idea planted in the heart,” one resident said. “It won’t stop. If one is killed, five more will replace him.”
This battle began long before the Gaza War, but tactics and attitudes are shifting, and the behavior of Israeli troops is under scrutiny in the West Bank too.
Israel has arrested at least 9,450 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October, holding many of them indefinitely in “administrative detention”, an emergency measure Israeli authorities inherited from the colonial British Mandate for Palestine.
At least 553 Palestinians have been killed – including 137 children – and nearly 5,300 injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied West Bank since Israel’s war on Gaza began last October.