15 November 2023; MEMO: The Israeli army killed an elderly Palestinian after using him in a propaganda campaign promoting its “safe corridor” in Gaza, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has revealed. The organisation expressed its “outrage” on its website about Israel’s use of the man in an attempt to cover up its horrific crimes against displaced Palestinians fleeing Israeli violence in the northern Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli army released a photo of one of its soldiers talking to Bashir Hajji, a 79-year-old resident of Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighbourhood, as he travelled on Salah Al-Din Road, the main route to the southern Gaza Valley,” explained the organisation. “The soldier appears to be helping and protecting displaced Palestinian civilians.”
However, the elderly man’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that her grandfather was “brutally executed while crossing the ‘safe corridor’ when members of the Israeli army deliberately shot him in the head and back.” She also confirmed that he is in the photo that was put out by Israel, “exposing the army’s dangerous practice of flagrantly fabricating stories.”
Euro-Med Monitor pointed out that it has documented dozens of cases of the Israeli army executing displaced Palestinians and, in some cases, bombing them. Those displaced were attempting to flee to the south of Wadi Gaza at the Israeli army’s request.
READ: Displaced as a girl and, again, in old age, Palestinian grandmother relives the Nakba
The organisation renewed its calls for the “UN and the International Criminal Court to open an urgent independent investigation into the crimes to which displaced Palestinians have been and are still being subjected to hold those who ordered such crimes accountable; and to achieve justice for the victims.”
Euro-Med Monitor is a non-profit human rights organisation. Seventy per cent of its staff and volunteers are victims of human rights violations. According to its website, it “advocates for the human rights of all persons across Europe and the MENA region, particularly those who live under occupation, in the throes of war or political unrest and/or have been displaced due to persecution or armed conflict.”
