Footage shows police assaulting MK Ayman Odeh during deadly demolition raid

Newly released footage shows Israeli police attacking MK Ayman Odeh during a violent home demolition raid in Umm Al-Hiran on 18 January, as reported by +972 Magazine.

At the time, Israeli authorities claimed that the deceased, Yacoub Abu Al-Qiyan, was shot while carrying out a “terrorist attack” on the Israeli forces conducting the demolition raid. Subsequent video evidence revealed that Al-Qiyan had been shot before he lost control of his vehicle.

The new video, shot by an Al Jazeera cameraman, shows Israeli riot police blocking Odeh’s path, before shoving the parliamentarian and spraying him in the face with pepper spray.

“Moments later,” describes +972 Magazine, “after Odeh appears to fall to the ground in pain, officers throw stun grenades toward him and others. Police later shot Odeh in the head and back with sponge-tipped bullets, although that part of the incident was not caught on camera.”

At the time, police claimed Odeh had been struck by protesters’ stones, “only to change their story in the hours and days that followed”.

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Responding to the footage, Odeh said: “The police and government’s lies and incitement continue to be exposed. Everything we claimed from the get go has turned out to be true.”

He added that the “only justice” it is possible to offer the Al-Qiyan family “is to uncover the truth, to recognise the village of Umm Al-Hiran, and to allow its residents to remain on their land.”

Israeli authorities plan to demolish the entirety of Umm Al-Hiran in order to construct a new Jewish community in its place, Hiran. Work on the latter began in mid-2016, when the state and Jewish National Fund “began breaking ground just meters from the Bedouin villagers’ homes”.