{"id":24634,"date":"2015-11-13T09:04:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/hospital-raid-video-gives-rare-look-at-murky-israeli-unit\/"},"modified":"2015-11-13T09:04:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:04:55","slug":"hospital-raid-video-gives-rare-look-at-murky-israeli-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/hospital-raid-video-gives-rare-look-at-murky-israeli-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital raid video gives rare look at murky Israeli unit"},"content":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014 <\/strong>Security camera footage of a deadly Israeli arrest raid in a West Bank hospital on Thursday gave a rare glimpse into the murky undercover units that Israel contends are a key tool in preventing violence and Palestinians revile as a ruthless symbol of Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n

In the footage, Israeli officers, disguised as Palestinian civilians in Arab garb or dressed as women, burst into the hospital and dragged away a wanted Palestinian in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

One man was shot to death during the sweep, identified by hospital workers as the Palestinian suspect\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

The pre-dawn raid in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, outraged Palestinians and drew accusations that Israel had improperly used force in a building that should be immune, or at least insulated, from military operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an outright crime,\u201d said Jihad Shawar, director of the Al-Ahli Hospital. \u201cNo one should violate hospitals, but Israel did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel has long used undercover units to arrest wanted suspects. But rarely are their activities captured on camera so vividly.<\/p>\n

The hospital released security camera footage showing about a dozen men entering a hospital ward shortly before 4 a.m. A person in a wheelchair suddenly stood up as the security men pulled out their weapons and walked down the hall.<\/p>\n

One officer was disguised as a Palestinian woman in a black niqab, a garment that completely covers the face and body. Another, wearing a headscarf, was dressed as a pregnant woman, walking slowly and holding her back. Others wore thick moustaches, Palestinian kaffiyehs or a long beard, typical of devout Muslims.<\/p>\n

At one point, the bearded man shouted and pushed a bewildered hospital worker. Roughly two minutes later, the officers were seen pushing a man in a wheelchair, presumably the suspect, back down the hallway.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military identified the target of the raid as Azzam Shalaldeh, a Palestinian accused of stabbing and severely wounding an Israeli man in the West Bank last month. It said Shalaldeh, who is about 20, was in the hospital for a gunshot wound he suffered after being shot by his stabbing victim.<\/p>\n

The statement said that during the raid, the forces shot to death another man who attacked them. Hospital workers identified him as Shalaldeh\u2019s cousin, Abdallah, and said he was shot as he emerged from a bathroom. The army said the cousins are \u201cknown Hamas operatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osama Najjar, the spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry, called the incident an \u201cassassination.\u201d The international human rights group Amnesty International said wounds to Abdallah\u2019s head and upper body suggested the shooting was an \u201cextrajudicial execution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel has used undercover units behind enemy lines since the time of its founding in 1948. But operations used against Palestinians took their current shape roughly 25 years ago, at the time of the first Palestinian uprising.<\/p>\n

Both the Israeli army and the paramilitary border police maintain such units. During a wave of violence over the past two months, the units have been especially active, and Thursday\u2019s incident was not the first time they have been caught on camera.<\/p>\n

In one videotaped case, undercover officers dragged a shooting suspect out of a West Bank hospital. Another time, they entered an east Jerusalem hospital to confiscate documents.<\/p>\n

Last month, a group of men posing as Palestinian protesters and mingling with rock-throwers in the West Bank were filmed suddenly drawing their weapons and arresting a protester.<\/p>\n

Palestinian protesters say the presence of undercover agents is a constant concern, and they often assign people to act as lookouts. The Palestinians accuse the units of using excessive and even deadly force, pointing to numerous cases of wanted militants killed in arrest raids over the years.<\/p>\n

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said one undercover unit, known as \u201cYamas,\u201d is used primarily in densely populated areas. \u201cThere is a tremendous amount of risk,\u201d he said, adding that they are crucial in both thwarting attacks and gathering intelligence.<\/p>\n

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon praised Thursday\u2019s raid. He said small undercover units can today do the work that once required entire military divisions. \u201cWe are not just on the defensive. We are also on the offensive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The author of an upcoming book on the undercover agents said they undergo months of training, often come from Arabic-speaking minorities in Israel and immerse themselves in the \u201clocal terrain,\u201d intimately learning the habits and movements of their targets. Many serve for years and rise to senior positions in security agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir mission is basically to undermine the enemy, terrorize the enemy, not make the enemy feel safe where he is and to apprehend the enemy,\u201d said Samuel M. Katz, whose book, \u201cThe Ghost Warriors: Inside Israel\u2019s Undercover War Against Suicide Terrorism,\u201d chronicles the actions of Yamas during the second Palestinian uprising a decade ago.<\/p>\n

The exploits of the units have spawned a primetime television drama in Israel called \u201cFouda,\u201d which tells the story of fictional undercover agents.<\/p>\n

The disguises in the latest video were reminiscent of an incident in 2010 when agents believed to be from the Mossad spy service were videotaped in a luxury Dubai hotel wearing tennis outfits and blond wigs during a mission to kill a Hamas weapons smuggler.<\/p>\n

The location of Thursday\u2019s operation sparked debate over whether a hospital is a legitimate target for a military raid.<\/p>\n

Emanuel Gross, an expert on military law at the University of Haifa, said \u201cthere is no prohibition\u201d under international law from entering a hospital to arrest a suspect.<\/p>\n

Hadas Ziv, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, agreed that hospitals are not immune, but she said military activity must be proportionate to the threat in question.<\/p>\n

She called Thursday\u2019s raid \u201ccompletely disproportionate,\u201d saying that visitors and hospital staff were all put at unnecessary danger.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Shin Bet security agency, which participated in Thursday\u2019s raid, said Israel will not allow wanted suspects to seek cover in \u201cplaces of refuge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent case that has generated international uproar, U.S. forces called in a devastating airstrike on a hospital in northern Afghanistan that killed at least 30 noncombatants. The Associated Press has learned that the attack came at the request of Afghan partners, adding to indications that the U.S. did not properly vet information from its Afghan allies before the attack.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014 Security camera footage of a deadly Israeli arrest raid in a West Bank hospital on Thursday gave a rare glimpse into the murky undercover units that Israel contends are a key tool in preventing violence and Palestinians revile as a ruthless symbol of Israeli occupation. In the footage, Israeli officers, disguised as Palestinian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24634"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}