Youssef Amireh, bottom right, pictured on the day of his shooting during Ahmed Mousa's funeral

At around 19:30 today, an Israeli border policeman shot Youssef Amireh, 17 years old, in the head at close range with a rubber coated bullet, causing him mortal wounds. Amireh was shortly after pronounced brain dead by the doctors in the Ramallah hospital. The incident took place just hours after the funeral of ten year old Ahmed Mousa, who was murdered by a border policeman yesterday.

Ahmed Mousa's funeral

Thousands of people attended the very charged funeral of ten years old Ahmed Mousa who was murdered by a border policeman yesterday. Even as the procession was attacked with teargas and concussion grenades by soldiers and border policeman with no justification, none of the many attendants could have imagined the day would end with the tragic shooting of yet another of the village's sons.

Shortly after the funeral ended, enraged villagers set out to the blockaded entrance to the village, where a very large contingent of soldiers was provocatively present. The army responded to the villagers' presence with teargas and rubber bullets, while the grieving youngsters threw stones at the jeeps and soldiers. Once more, barricades were raised and lit.

A young villager confronting soldiers at the entrance to the village 

This went on for hours. At some point and armored military bulldozer was sent in to clear the barricades, but was only partially successful. Youssef Amireh was standing a yard with friends and neighbors, watching the clashes, but not taking part.

At around 19:30, with clashes already drawing to a close because of the nearing dark, an armored border police jeep drove by the yard Amireh was standing in. A barrel of a gun was extended through the firing loophole of the jeep's bullet proof window, and a burst of three rubber-coated bullets were shot. Two of the bullets hit Amireh's head from a distance of about ten meters, shattered his skull and went into his brain. He was taken to the Ramallah Hospital, not before the ambulance he was in was inspected for a minute or two by the soldiers at the entrance to the village, where he was diagnosed as brain dead. His doctors also announced his death to be only a matter of time.

The Israeli media quoted the army spokesman claiming Israeli passengers on the nearby road were at risk, and that the soldiers felt their own lives were under threat. The facts however, tell a different story. Amireh was shot about 300 meters from the abovementioned road, a distance no stone could ever travel, and regardless, Amireh was not taking part in the clashes. The shooting border policeman was inside an armored bulletproof vehicle at the time. Under such circumstances, no person in the village could have threatened the soldiers, let alone a seventeen years old peacefully watching the events around him from his yard.

A policeman pushing demonstrators after they tried blocking a road in front of Ehud Barak's home

Coincidentally, at the time of Amireh's shooting Israeli activists held a demonstration protesting Ahmed Mousa's murder the prior day in front of the house of the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv. The demonstrators pointed at Barak, soldiers, the silent Israeli civilians as being accomplices in Ahmad Mousa’s murder, and demonstrators were not aware of the second casualty at the time.