No charges for Israeli soldiers over death of detained Palestinian American

Israeli military prosecutors will not bring criminal charges against soldiers who detained and gagged a 78-year-old Palestinian American man and then left him unconscious at a construction site shortly before he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli army announced on Tuesday that soldiers involved in the detention of the man, Omar Assad, 78, during an early morning operation in January 2022 in a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank would face internal disciplinary action only.

The army said in a statement that those measures had already been taken against some of the soldiers “who acted in a manner inconsistent with what is required”. But it said that “no causal link was found between the errors in the soldiers’ behavior and Assad’s death.”

Mr Assad’s death sparked a wave of protest. Dozens of Palestinians are killed in the West Bank each month, often in gunfights between the Israeli army and armed Palestinian groups, but few of these incidents receive international attention.

The fate of Mr. Assad, a US citizen who once ran several grocery stores in Milwaukee, attracted unusual attention because of his dual citizenship; his profile as an elderly, unarmed civilian; and a demand from the US State Department for a criminal investigation into his death.

In a response to the announcement on Wednesday, Assad’s family accused the military of a cover-up. “They have to pay the price for what they did to him,” said Nazmieh Assad, the widow of Mr. Assad, in a telephone interview. “They can’t do this and get away with it.”

Mr Assad was stopped by soldiers as he was driving home from a friend’s house during a routine Israeli army raid into an area of ​​the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Soldiers had set up an informal checkpoint in Jiljilya village to randomly search passing cars.

At around 3am they apprehended Mr. Assad which led to an argument which resulted in them forcing him out of his car, gagging him, tying his wrists and leading him to a nearby construction site where he was held for about an hour with three other Palestinians, according to interviews with witnesses and military officers.

The soldiers then left the area and Mr. Assad was discovered by another detainee lying face down, unresponsive, in a paved courtyard. An autopsy later revealed that he had died of a heart attack.

In comments last year, the Israeli army expressed regret over Assad’s death, fired two of the mission’s commanders and acknowledged that soldiers should not have left the area after realizing Assad was unconscious. But the army’s statement on Tuesday said a senior military doctor had finally concluded that “it is not possible to determine that Assad’s death was specifically caused by the behavior of the soldiers.”

The decision not to pursue criminal charges has revived allegations that the Israeli military is doing too little to investigate and punish its soldiers for the deaths of civilians living under Israeli occupation, fostering a culture of impunity.

“How can they close the case just like that?” Hadi Assad, Mr. Assad’s son, asked in a telephone interview. “That makes no sense. There were several witnesses who saw everything.”

At least 125 Palestinians have been killed in combat with Israeli soldiers so far this year in the West Bank; be many militants but a significant portion are civilians, including a 2-year-old who was accidentally shot dead by the Israeli army earlier this month.

Israel says it is investigating any claim of wrongdoing, taking precautions to avoid claiming innocent lives, and acting only to prevent attacks on Israelis, 25 of whom have been killed in Arab attacks so far this year.

But human rights groups say Israeli investigations into allegations of military misconduct rarely lead to prosecution. An analysis by Btselem, an Israeli rights organization, found that only 3 percent of alleged Israeli military abuses between 2000-2015 resulted in charges.

No soldier has been prosecuted for the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who was shot dead during an Israeli raid last year. A research discovered by The New York Times that the bullets that killed her were fired from the approximate location of an Israeli army vehicle.