More than half of Israelis support a soldier accused of shooting dead a severely wounded and incapacitated Palestinian assailant in Hebron last week, according to a poll by an Israeli TV station. The soldier is being investigated by the Israeli military police on suspicion of murder.



The soldier was the subject of a court hearing on Tuesday over the death of 21-year-old Abed Fatah al-Sharif last Thursday.

At the hearing, the prosecution told the court there were discrepancies in the soldier’s account of events, adding that the accused – an army medic – had fired into the wounded man’s head without any operational need for such action.

The shooting of Sharif, 11 minutes after he had allegedly participated in an attack in which an Israeli soldier was wounded, has turned into a bitter political debate, splitting Israel’s rightwing cabinet and inspiring demonstrations in several Israeli towns.



The soldier – who has not been officially named – has also attracted widespread support on Israeli social media with more than 13,000 people joining Facebook support groups and another 50,000 signing a petition backing his actions.

The mood among the Israeli public, however, is in stark contrast to that on the West Bank, where Palestinian leaders on Monday demanded that the UN open an investigation into Israeli forces’ “extrajudicial executions” following the shooting.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s secretary general, Saeb Erekat, added: “These executions are not isolated events and Israel must be held accountable for committing these crimes.”

The growing popular Israeli support for the soldier comes amid new revelations about the incident, including reports that the soldier was congratulated by a far-right settler activist after the shooting.

According to a poll conducted for Israel’s Channel 2, 57% of Israelis opposed the soldier’s arrest, while 42% described his actions as “responsible.” Only 5% of those polled said they would describe the shooting as murder.

While the shooting was condemned by human rights groups – and a senior UN official – as looking like an “apparent extrajudicial execution,” the affair has also exposed the febrile faultlines in Israeli society, with a number of senior politicians, including the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, being heavily criticised for pursuing a legal case against the soldier.

The two most prominent figures who have given vocal support to the soldier and his family have been the far-right Israeli education minister, Naftali Bennett, whose Jewish Home party has organised a demonstration in the city of Ramle, and the hawkish former foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

The demonstration in Ramle is being organised by the city’s mayor and follows a similar demonstration organised by the municipality in Beit Shemesh on Monday night.

Monday saw bitter exchanges over the soldier’s investigation move from the cabinet to the floor of the Israeli parliament, where Yaalon insisted: “There was an initial inquiry on Thursday, and the bottom line that emerged was that this was an incident of a soldier who did something wrong, not of a hero.”

“The person who decided to make this a criminal investigation was the brigade commander, and this was even before the film was released. Since then, an investigative military police investigation has been taking place.

“It was important for us to say right away how we, the chief of staff, the defence minister and the prime minister, view this incident. All this fiery language and this false information and the manipulations and the attacks on the chief of staff [are out of place]. What do you want, a bestial army that has lost its moral backbone?”

In reply Bennett accused Yaalon of “smearing” the soldier as he admitted he had called the accused’s family several times to offer his support. He added: “Suddenly, we’re not allowed to talk to the wonderful family of an outstanding soldier? Have we lost our compass? We send our children to protect us. [The incident took place in] a battlefield, not a sterile media studio.”

Bennett added: “The story is not Yaalon, or Bennett, but the soldiers. A soldier was condemned because of one video by B’Tselem, led away in handcuffs and charged with murder. Have we lost our minds?” Bennett said it was important for soldiers guarding Israel to know that politicians were guarding them.

Despite the continuing political row, a senior Israeli military official involved with ordering the investigation into the soldier defended the army’s actions, insisting that that the B’Tselem video had played no part in launching the inquiry into the soldier.

“It was brought to us by the soldier’s commanding officer 20 minutes after the incident took place and before B’Tselem’s video [of the shooting] appeared. We were called and told there was an ethical issue. I went and investigated and we found something we do not expect of our soldiers.”

An Israeli military investigation established the soldier was not part of the group that was attacked by two Palestinians with a knife, one of whom was Sharif, and that the accused soldier had arrived on the scene along with his platoon commanders after the incident.

Investigators were also reportedly told by another soldier that the accused had said Sharif “deserved to die” for stabbing their platoon comrades before loading his weapon and shooting him once in the head.