Human Rights Voices

While the UN devotes its human rights operations to the demonization of the democratic state of Israel above all others and condemns the United States more often than the vast majority of non-democracies around the world, the voices of real victims around the world must be heard.

Palestinian Authority/Gaza, May 14, 2020

Israeli hurt in car-ramming attack in southern West Bank

Original source

The Times of Israel

An Israeli soldier was injured when he was hit by a car in what the military said was a deliberate attack in the southern West Bank on Thursday, Israeli officials said.

The driver of the vehicle was shot dead by another soldier at the scene, the military said.

The wounded serviceman, 21, sustained injuries to his extremities, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. He was listed in moderate-to-serious condition.

The apparent ramming attack came amid heightened tensions in the West Bank and a day before Nakba - or catastrophe - Day, which commemorates the displacement of Palestinians before and after Israel's creation on May 14, 1948. The period around Nakba Day often sees increased levels of violence in the West Bank and Israel.

The incident occurred along a highway near the Negohot settlement in the southern Hebron Hills.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the driver accelerated as he drove his car toward a group of soldiers who were standing next to a military post outside Negohot.

The driver, whose name was not immediately released, struck one of the soldiers before another serviceman opened fire at the car and killed him, an army spokesperson said.

"When we arrived at the scene, we joined up with an IDF medical team that was giving medical treatment to the young man who was injured by the car. We quickly put him in our intensive care ambulance and took him to the hospital fully conscious and in stable condition," an MDA medic said.

The injured serviceman was taken to Beersheba's Soroka Medical Center. He was being treated in the trauma center, the hospital said.

Tensions in the West Bank have been high in recent days, after an IDF soldier was killed during an arrest raid in the Palestinian village of Yabed when a rock was thrown at his head on Tuesday morning and a Palestinian teenager was shot dead during clashes with Israeli troops in the al-Fawar refugee camp the following day.

Israeli defense officials have also warned of a potential outbreak of violence in response to plans by the government to unilaterally annex portions of the West Bank.