The grainy video shows a car slowly approaching the checkpoint, before accelerating and turning sharply toward a police booth, sending a police sergeant flying backwards.
Israeli police say it was a deliberate attempt to ram a car at the Israeli security forces. The driver’s relatives, including a senior Palestinian official, say he lost control of his vehicle and accidentally stepped onto the sidewalk.
The last seconds of the 12-second clip show Ahmad Erekat getting out of the car and an officer shooting at him. His figure as he got out of the car was blurred before the video was released to the public, making it impossible to know if he presented a threat or if he had his hands in the air when he was shot dead.
Many who denounced the collision as a terrorist attack say that the soldier who opened fire was acting in self-defense. Others, including the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, a relative of the car’s driver, say the shooting was a cold-blooded murder.
Ahmad Erekat was working in the advertising industry, his cousin Imad told CNN, and he would be married in a month.
On Tuesday, the day in question, his sister was getting married and he had to run errands to prepare for the celebration, Imad said. His errands would take him from his home in Abu Dis, which is located in the West Bank, immediately east of Jerusalem, to nearby Bethlehem. Family members say he was pressed for time.
“Ahmad left in a hurry to continue last minute preparations for the wedding. It is what any brother would do for his sister when it is their wedding,” Imad said.
“He was in a hurry and what appears to have happened when he arrived at the container checkpoint is that the car slipped and slipped and Israeli forces opened fire on him and killed him.”
Another cousin, Noura Erakat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University in the United States, said those who saw the video and called it a terrorist attack were being biased.
“This is not evidence of an attack,” he wrote on Facebook. “The Palestinians are as secure as a threat that we cannot make human mistakes, such as losing momentary control of our car, pressing the accelerator in a rush, getting into a car accident.”
Israeli police said the incident was terrorism. “Yesterday at 4:00 PM there was an attack and the terrorist was shot dead. In the images, the terrorist drives his vehicle to the security crossing, slowly and then heads in the direction of the angled female border guard and the the officer was slightly injured and taken to the hospital, “the statement read in a statement accompanying the public release of the video.
Shani or Hama Kadosh, the border police sergeant hit by the car, was released from the hospital where she was treated for minor injuries.
“A car stopped and I signaled it to stop. The car started to slow down. The moment I saw it start to slow down, I moved in its direction. I took a step, [the driver] “I saw that I had taken the step, he looked me in the eye, he turned the wheel, he ran me over and I was thrown in the opposite direction,” he told Israeli television.
“At first I never understood why he was looking at me. Only when I flew through the air did I understand that it was an attempted attack.”
The video released by the police was not the only one circulating. A recording of an eyewitness allegedly showing Ahmad Erekat immediately after he was shot was published on the official Palestinian Authority news agency, WAFA. It appears to show him lying almost motionless on the floor, his fingers moving slightly and his chest heaving. No one is seen tending to him over the course of the one-minute clip.
His family, as well as a Palestinian ambulance service, allege that he was denied medical treatment and allowed to bleed on the way.
The Israeli army says that one of its ambulances arrived on the scene in five minutes and that a military paramedic declared Ahmad Erekat dead at the time. Explaining why no one had treated Ahmad Erekat before the ambulance arrived, a border police spokesman said: “It was the type of incident in which you do not let anyone approach for fear that they may be trapped.”
An ambulance service in the nearby Palestinian municipality of Bethany said it tried to help Ahmad, but that Israeli forces “prevented” the vehicles from reaching the checkpoint. The Israeli army said that at no time did it prevent Ahmad Erekat from receiving aid.
Acts of violence in the West Bank are not uncommon. Vehicle attacks, stabbings, and shootings of Israeli soldiers and civilians there and in Jerusalem have occurred in recent years. Israel itself has been accused by human rights groups and others of often using deadly force when its soldiers are not in danger. Palestinians say living under Israeli occupation means violence is a feature of everyday life.
That is one of the reasons why the international community has invested so much energy for decades in trying to bring peace to the region, and why there is so much concern about the possible escalation if Israel moves forward with plans to annex part of the territory.
A stranger involved in the region’s politics for many years is Alistair Burt, a former UK minister with responsibility for the Middle East. He also tweeted about the incident the day it happened, calling Erekat’s death unnecessary. After the video came out, he rechecked his comments in a thoughtful thread, making it clear that he is unlikely to find favor with “those who only see unilateral responses to everything.”
“The car’s trajectory is obvious. If it was a murder, similar to the recent car crash, then it’s wrong. We don’t know, and we’ll never know,” he wrote on Twitter. “And if, after being shot, he made no further threats, he will be asked why he was not treated and why he died.”
He continued: “There will be no consensus on this, as there is seldom in the deaths of many. I have spoken for many years about the agony of young Israelis and Palestinians, who instead of growing up together face each other through barbed wire and wall. This is not a future for them. “
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