The US government said Tuesday it remains concerned about the death of a Palestinian American who was dragged from a car, tied up and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers after detaining him at a checkpoint last month.
Omar Assad, 78, had lived in the US as a citizen for four decades, and still has family in the United States, before returning to retire in his hometown in the occupied West Bank. Even after Israel announced that its soldiers would be reprimanded, the US State Department expressed continued concern over the incident.
“We remain deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Omar Assad, a US citizen who was found dead on January 12, 2022, after he was detained by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank,” said department spokesman Ned Price. . he said in a statement.
“The United States looks forward to a thorough criminal investigation and full accountability in this case, and we welcome additional information on these efforts as soon as possible,” he added. “We continue to discuss this concerning incident with the Israeli government.”
On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces released a statement about the completion of its internal investigation into the military’s role in Assad’s death. Soldiers stopped Assad’s car at a checkpoint in Jiljilya around 3 am on January 12. The soldiers took him to a nearby building, where they had arrested three other Palestinians.
The IDF said the soldiers “identified no signs of distress” and thought Assad was asleep when they cut his bridles and left him face down in the abandoned building. The other detainees have said they did not know Assad was with them until the soldiers left.
After finding him unconscious, Assad’s fellow detainees took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A Palestinian autopsy report made public last week said Assad died of a heart attack “caused by psychological strain due to external violence to which he was exposed.” While she had underlying health conditions, the autopsy also found bruises on her head, redness on her wrists from the bridles, and bleeding on her eyelids from being blindfolded.
IDF Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi said the soldiers’ conduct was “immoral and reprehensible” and that the military would reprimand a senior officer and remove two others from their leadership positions over Assad’s death. The IDF still maintained that its internal investigation found no use of violence “other than when [Assad] was detained after refusing to cooperate.”
Omar Assad’s son, Hane Assad, told the Associated Press that his father was too old and weak to fight anyone, especially a group of soldiers, and would tell him to remain calm and docile if stopped by Israeli forces. .
Military police are still conducting a separate criminal investigation and said they are fully investigating such incidents. But members of the Wisconsin congressional delegation , Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who is a Palestinian American, and Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Illinois) , are calling on the administration of President Joe Biden to carry out its own research.
“We strongly support human rights and the rule of law as the foundation of United States foreign policy,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) wrote to the Secretary of State. Antony Blinken on Monday. “As a Palestinian American, Mr. Assad deserves the protections afforded to American citizens living abroad, and his family deserves answers.”
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and the progressive Jewish organization IfNotNow said Israel rarely holds soldiers accountable for Palestinian deaths, and even the most shocking cases result in relatively light punishments. B’Tselem is tracking more than 30 open investigations into Palestinian killings in the West Bank, spokesman Dror Sadot told AP.
Sadot told AP that Assad’s case was “unusual” because “investigations often take years and usually end with nothing.” Both B’Tselem and IfNotNow noted that Assad’s death likely received special attention due to his US citizenship and pressure from the US government.
“If only all Palestinians had US citizenship,” IfNotNow tweeted. “The first step of verbal responsibility must be applied to every Palestinian killed under apartheid. Where is the [State Department] condemnation of last month’s hit-and-run Palestinian elder Haj Suleiman Hathaleen by Israeli police?”
The State Department’s comments on Assad came on the same day that the human rights organization Amnesty International released a 278-page report concluding that Israel’s maintenance of “a system of oppression and domination” over Palestinians amounts to international definition of apartheid. The group joins Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem – as well as the Palestinians themselves, in accusing Israel of apartheid, both within its borders and in the occupied territories.
Biden’s ambassador to Israel denounced the Amnesty International report, calling it “absurd.” Price also rejected the report’s findings, saying “the State Department’s own reports have never used that terminology.”
During a press conference Tuesday, Price was asked by an AP reporter why the United States is so critical of Amnesty International’s report on Israel when it relies heavily on the group’s findings revealing human rights abuses in Israel. other parts of the world. The reporter, Matt Lee, cited the organization’s findings for countries such as Cuba, South Africa, Myanmar and China, where the US cited those findings and used the same term Amnesty used to label the atrocities.
“So it’s only when it comes to criticism of Israel that you feel free to disagree?” Lee asked. “Where have you ever disagreed with an Amnesty report or a human rights report on a country like Iran?”
“This is not about any outside group,” Price said. “This is about our vehement disagreement with a certain finding in an outside group report.”