HRW Slams Israel For Removal Of Palestinians From Oncoming Traffic

“Nothing less than ethnic cleansing.”

Gush Etzion Junction, January 31 – A leading human rights advocacy group denounced the Jewish State today following an incident in this disputed area south of Jerusalem where soldiers cleared a Palestinian family off the busy highway following an accident, a move that the group and local activists called a violation of those Palestinians’ rights and possibly a war crime.

Omar Shakir, who handles the Palestinian issue for Human Rights Watch, issued a statement today condemning Israel for removing a Palestinian family of five from their wrecked vehicle on Highway 60 just north of this intersection, after the father of the family, who was driving, lost control of their sedan and hit a guardrail. The car flipped and came to rest upside-down on the opposite side of the road, where southbound traffic threatened. IDF Soldiers waiting at a nearby bus stop rushed to the vehicle; several set up an impromptu roadblock and summoned emergency care while others worked to extract the occupants of the car. Shakir called the soldiers’ actions a “brutal disregard for the indigenous inhabitants of the Palestinian vehicle.”

“The world must not remain idle as these crimes continue day by day, week by week,” urged Shakir. “This continued uprooting of Palestinian families from their native soil, to suit the policies of a hostile occupier, constitutes nothing less than ethnic cleansing.”

The family emerged with only minor injuries thanks to seatbelts, airbags, and proper child-safety seats, according to eyewitnesses. The father was taken to a hospital in Jerusalem for treatment for whiplash and several lacerations from broken glass; the rest received treatment at the scene, first from IDF medics and then from Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived from the nearby community of Alon Shevut seven minutes later. A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance also came soon afterwards; the family chose to ride the MDA ambulance to Jerusalem rather than the PRC vehicle, a decision that Shakir also attributed to “Apartheid practices,” in presumed reference to the free treatment that will result from an Israeli hospital not charging its Palestinian patients for care and then not being reimbursed by the Palestinian Authority despite existing agreements mandating such transactions.

The incident comes on the heels of another one late last week, in which physicians at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital removed a tumor from the brain of a Palestinian child, an incident that Shakir and his organization’s director, Ken Roth, decried as an illegal and immoral invasion of Palestinian bodily autonomy.

(h/t @TheMossadIL)

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