Army checking if soldier broke open-fire rules in Faqoua shooting

Update, 12 September, 22:07 Israel time

An Israeli security official said the army is examining whether the soldier departed from the military's open-fire regulations when he fired at the Palestinian man near Faqoua. Ynet reported that the official described the episode as being debriefed because of the suspicion that the shooting went beyond the instructions governing when troops may open fire.

The same report said an initial check by the military indicated that the friction began when a group of Palestinians gathered around a shepherd who was in the area. That account, attributed to a security official rather than to the IDF spokesperson, does not address the claims made earlier by people connected to the Zayit Bagilboa outpost that soldiers fired into the air before the crowd closed in, and it does not state whether stones were thrown.

Ynet's alerts channel carried the same line from the security official. Separately, Barak Ravid of Axios wrote that the soldier was filmed shooting the Palestinian in the leg with no visible reason, and that the army said the incident is being debriefed.

The reports still do not identify the soldier, his unit or the man who was shot, and they give no update on the wounded man's condition. There is no word on whether the soldier has been removed from duty while the review continues.

The story as first reported

The Israeli military said it is investigating a soldier who shot and wounded a Palestinian man in the leg on the outskirts of the village of Faqoua, in the northern West Bank, after video of the shooting circulated online. The Times of Israel reported that the footage shows the man being shot while he was not throwing stones and while presenting no apparent threat to the troops, and that the shooting appeared to breach army procedure. The wounded man was evacuated by the Palestinian Red Crescent, and his condition was not given.

In a statement carried by Ynet, the Israel Defense Forces did not say that the man had posed an explicit threat to the force. The military said the episode was being reviewed and that the findings would be passed to the authorised bodies for examination. In a later update, Ynet's alerts channel quoted the IDF as saying of the video that "there is no claim that danger was posed to the force."

Where this happened

Faqoua is a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank, near the city of Jenin, sitting on the eastern edge of the hills that face the Gilboa ridge inside Israel. The area is one of the seams between the West Bank and Israeli territory, and the village borders farmland on the Gilboa side. Ynet described the man who was shot as having been in the area of Faqoua, which adjoins the Gilboa.

The Times of Israel reported that troops had been sent to the edge of the village after reports of a confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. Those settlers, according to the same report, came from a newly established farming outpost called Zayit Bagilboa, and had brought livestock to graze on land in the area. The Palestinian Authority's official news agency, WAFA, also addressed the status of the land, according to the Times of Israel, though the full detail of its account was not included in the material available.

What a farming outpost is

Shepherding or farming outposts are small Israeli settlement sites in the West Bank built around grazing herds rather than housing blocks. They are typically established by a handful of residents who claim use of wide tracts of open land for pasture. Such sites have become a recurring flashpoint between settlers and nearby Palestinian villages, because grazing routes run across land that Palestinian farmers and herders also use. The Times of Israel identified the outpost involved here as newly established.

The account from the outpost

People connected to the farm gave a different version of the sequence. The Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, which monitors and translates Arabic-language and Palestinian media, published a statement attributed to Zayit Bagilboa saying that dozens of Arabs from Faqoua came out to attack the farm's shepherd, who had gone out to a grazing area the statement said had been allocated to the farm by the brigade. According to that statement, soldiers stationed at the farm over the holiday went out with the farm's owner to help the shepherd, the crowd kept approaching while holding stones, and the soldiers fired into the air before the crowd continued to close to within a few metres.

A similar description was relayed to Ynet by the farm operating at the site, which said Arabs had attacked a shepherd and that a crowd approached the force with stones in their hands. The military's own statement, as published by Ynet, did not endorse that characterisation and did not assert that the force was in danger.

Why the distinction matters

Israeli open-fire regulations in the West Bank set out a graduated process before live fire at a person, and permit shooting at an individual only in defined circumstances such as mortal danger. When the IDF says it is not claiming danger to the force, it is signalling that the shooting is being examined against those rules rather than treated as a justified response. The army said the findings of its review would go to the authorised bodies, the standard phrasing used when material may be forwarded for a decision on whether a criminal investigation is opened.

What the reports do not say

The material does not identify the soldier, the unit involved, or the man who was shot. It does not give his age, his condition after treatment, or the hospital where he was taken, beyond Ynet's statement that he was evacuated to a hospital and the Times of Israel's report that the Palestinian Red Crescent took him for treatment. It does not say who filmed the video, at what point in the confrontation the recording begins, or whether the footage captures the moments described in the farm's account, including the claimed firing into the air. It does not say whether anyone was arrested, whether the soldier has been suspended, or what the legal status of the grazing land is. The accounts from the outpost and the military's own statement are not reconciled in any of the reports.