Israel committed a criminal act against me, says Palestinian tied to army vehicle

Mujahed Abbadeh speaks to The National from hospital about his brutal arrest during a raid by Israeli forces in Jenin on Saturday

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Mujahed Abbadeh grimaced as he shifted in his hospital bed, his right arm held by metal rods, as he told The National how he was arrested by Israeli troops, tied to the front of a military vehicle and driven through the streets of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

The incident on Saturday was captured in a video that caused global outrage and an admission from the Israeli military that Mr Abbadeh's treatment was “in violation of orders and standard operating procedures”.

“I can’t move my leg,” Mr Abbadeh said. “My arm hurts tremendously. I feel very bad about what happened.”

The vegetable seller, 23, said the soldiers beat and abused him as they arrested him, despite finding nothing incriminating when they raided his family home.

“They were hitting me on my head, they were hitting me on my leg before even putting me on the jeep,” said Mr Abbadeh, who in earlier reports was misnamed as Mujahed Azmi. “They were insulting me while they put me on the jeep.”

The Israeli military said Mr Abbadeh was arrested during a “counter-terrorism operation”, but he says he is not part of any militant group and that the army had no reason to attack him.

“They committed a criminal act against me. They acted against me in a horrendous manner … I’m on nobody's list. I told them to check me and they checked me and still they mistreated me.”

Exactly what the Israeli military hoped to achieve by strapping Mr Abbadeh to the bonnet was not immediately clear.

It is possible troops wanted to humiliate him or prevent Palestinians from throwing rocks or shooting at the vehicle by using him as a human shield, a tactic Israel has been accused of in the past.

Mr Abbadeh's cousin said the military had recently done the same thing to three other people, but the claim could not be independently verified.

Video showed Mujahed Abbadeh strapped to the front of an Israeli military vehicle in Jenin. Reuters

The military said Mr Abbadeh was later handed over to the Palestine Red Crescent for treatment, and that “the incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly”.

But an acknowledgement that he was mistreated brings him little comfort.

“This is all talk, in reality they won’t do anything. They won’t punish anybody who mistreated me,” Mr Abbadeh said.

Dr Bahaa Abu Hammad, the doctor treating Mr Abbadeh at Ibn Sina hospital, told AFP that “he has burns on his back from neck to lower back” from being tied to the vehicle in the scorching summer heat.

A few kilometres from the hospital, at Mr Abbadeh's family home overlooking Jenin, bullet marks on the outside walls and the burnt shell of his car are reminders of Saturday's raid.

Mujahed Abbadeh in Ibn Sina Specialised Hospital in Jenin, where he is being treated for his injuries. Willy Lowry / The National

His cousin, Rafat Hasanieh, said the military searched the home but did not find any weapons.

“The army came into the house with a drone, they searched the house, then the soldiers came in with dogs and searched again,” he said.

“We have no weapons in the house.”

The city of Jenin has been a flashpoint for years but in the months since that start of the war in Gaza on October 7, it has consistently drawn the focus of the Israeli military in the West Bank.

“After October 7, the have been acting very viciously against the people of Jenin. They come in, they destroy, they kill,” Mr Hasanieh told The National. “It’s been extremely difficult.”

Dimitri Diliani, the representative for Fatah’s Reformist Democratic Faction, said that “such barbaric atrocities are not isolated incidents but part of a systemic Israeli policy aimed at dehumanising and oppressing the Palestinian people".

Mujahed Abbadeh's car, outside his family home, was burnt during the Israeli military's raid. Willy Lowry / The National

“During the Second Intifada, the Israel Occupation Forces resorted to using Palestinian civilians as human shields on over 1,200 occasions," Mr Dilani said.

"This involved tying a 13-year-old boy to an armoured vehicle and forcing civilians to engage in perilous military tasks.

“Despite the Israeli Supreme Court’s 2002 injunction and subsequent 2005 ruling banning this inhumane practice, it has continued unabated, as evidenced by numerous incidents during Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge.”

Mr Diliani said that human rights organisations have consistently highlighted the breaking of regulation.

In 2002, the Israeli soldiers were accused of using human shields during the Battle of Jenin, one of the worst periods of fighting during the uprising.

Five years later, during an Israeli raid and gun battle in the town of Nablus, video emerged of Sameh Amira, a Palestinian who was pushed to the front of an Israeli patrol during a raid.

His ordeal sparked an internal Israeli army investigation, but the practice appears to have continued.

The UN special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, called the latest incident “human shielding in action”.

“It is flabbergasting how a state born 76 years ago has managed to turn international law literally on its head,” she said on social media channel X.

“This risks being the end of multilateralism, which for some influential member states no longer serves any relevant purpose.”

Violence in the West Bank, which was already on the rise before the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, has escalated.

At least 553 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out in October, according to Palestinian officials.

On Sunday, three children were arrested by Israel's armed forces during a raid in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Uday Awad, 14, was severely beaten, the news agency said.

The three children were among eight people from Hebron governorate who were arrested. A man from Qalqilya city and another from Nablus were also arrested.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said a 15-year-old was shot in the hand during a raid in Nablus.