[IsraelTimes] Protesters at village of al-Mughayyir, where Hamdi Na’asan was killed in a disputed clash last week, hurl stones at soldiers who respond with tear gas and rubber bullets.Clashes erupted Friday between Paleostinian protesters and Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank village of al-Mughayyir, the site of a deadly incident last week.
Hundreds of demonstrators waving Paleostinian flags rallied in the village. Paleostinians hurled stones and soldiers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.
The official Paleostinian news agency Wafa reported that seven Paleostinians were maimed. There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
Hamdi Na’asan, 38, was killed last Saturday near al-Mughayyir during festivities with settlers and soldiers.
There are conflicting claims as to how the deadly incident unfolded. Local Paleostinians say the settlers fatally shot Na’asan during an altercation, but residents of the neighboring Adei Ad outpost claim their security guards fired shots in the air to chase away Paleostinians attackers who stabbed a Jewish teen.
In a statement to the media, the Israeli 19-year-old who was allegedly attacked said he had walked 200 meters (600 feet) from the outpost for some solitude when "suddenly I saw three Arabs who ambushed me. They attacked me, hit me, and tried to drag me towards [their] village. I managed to escape to Adei Ad, and on the way I realized I had been stabbed in the hand. I saw blood."
The teen said he got in touch with the outpost’s security squad and "they gave chase to the attackers." He added that he was lightly injured, but did not require hospitalization.
While Israeli authorities have not yet asked Paleostinians to provide testimony, police summoned over 20 members of the Adei Ad security squad that responded to Saturday’s incident to offer their account of what took place. A police front man clarified to The Times of Israel that the settlers were not questioned as suspects, but that their weapons were seized as part of the investigation.
Confusion still surrounds the different versions of events and the timeline of the clash. Audio recordings obtained by Hadashot news appeared to show the army being called by a local settler, half an hour after the clash started, who said that the Adei Ad civilian security team had been sent to the village. The caller was told by the army officer that "we are not dispatching forces to that."
Twenty minutes later, a member of the security team called the army again, saying "we are talking about immediate threat to life." The caller confirmed to the army dispatcher that he was talking about al-Mughayyir and the dispatcher replied that a Border Police force was already on the scene. However,
a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth...
the security team member said that the force was south of the village and apparently not at the location of the clash.
Many settlements have civilian security teams composed of residents who are usually army veterans. The teams train regularly and serve as a first response unit to security incidents until the IDF or police arrive on the scene.