Footage of an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank showed a soldier pushing an apparently dead man off a rooftop, in what the army described Friday as a “serious incident”.
AFPTV footage of the operation in the town of Qabatiyah, near Jenin, on Thursday showed an Israeli soldier using his foot to roll the body towards the edge of the roof and then pushing him over, while at least two other soldiers looked on.
Qabatiyah is in the northern West Bank, where the military has been carrying out large-scale raids since late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have left dozens dead.
Israel’s military said in a statement on Friday that four militants were killed “in an exchange of fire” in Qabatiyah, while three were killed in an air strike on a vehicle.
Asked about the footage showing a soldier pushing a body off a rooftop, the military said the action conflicted with its values.
“This is a serious incident that does not coincide with (Israel Defense Forces) values and the expectations from IDF soldiers. The incident is under review,” it said.
The White House on Friday described the footage as “deeply disturbing”, and said it had demanded an explanation from Israel.
“We’ve seen that video, and we found it deeply disturbing. If it’s proven to be authentic, it clearly would depict abhorrent and egregious behaviour by professional soldiers,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Surging violence
Violence in the West Bank has surged alongside the war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Since that attack, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 682 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 24 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian militant attacks during the same period, Israeli officials say.
Since the large-scale raids began in late August, Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad, have claimed at least 14 of the dead as their members.
The military said that one of those killed in Qabatiyah was Shadi Zakarneh, and identified him as “responsible for directing and carrying out attacks in the northern West Bank area”.
It said he was “the head of the terrorist organisation” in Qabatiyah, but did not specify which group he belonged to.
Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades”, United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on September 9.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but residents say the current raids are an escalation.
