Killing of Eyad al-Hallaq

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A fatal Israeli police shooting of an unarmed Palestinian man in Jerusalem last weekend has led to a government apology and protests comparing the case to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Eyad Hallaq, 32, was on his way to a school for special needs students in the historic Old City of Jerusalem on May 30 when police shouted, "terrorist!" before shooting him as he fled, an eyewitness told Israeli TV.


The human rights group B'Tselem cites at least 11 cases during 2018 and 2019 of Israeli forces fatally shooting Palestinians as they fled. Hallaq's killing has elicited particular shock because the victim had autism.

The eyewitness, his school counselor Warda Abu Hadid, told local media she shouted to the Israeli officers, "he's disabled," as the wounded Hallaq shouted, "I'm with her." Minutes later, a police officer, who police say mistakenly thought Hallaq had a gun, fatally shot him.

Hallaq's mother told reporters her son used to fear passing the police on his way to class and she had told him that he would be safe if he had his ID with him.

Police have not identified the officer who killed Hallaq, who remains under house arrest as police investigate.

"Policing in Jerusalem and in particular in the Old City is a particularly complex task that involves complex decisions and the risk of life," the police said in a statement following the shooting.

Officers patrolling in the Old City have faced numerous attacks by Palestinians in recent years.

Israeli officials have been remorseful about Hallaq's death. "We are very sorry," Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in a cabinet meeting, vowing a swift investigation. "The family deserves a hug," said Public Security Minister Amir Ohana.

But Ohana said he did not want Israel to be engulfed in the kind of street protests happening in the U.S., saying he did not want to "bring Minneapolis here."

Over the past week, several hundred protesters gathered in small demonstrations in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Their chants and posters echoed the language of U.S. protests against police brutality and the killing of Floyd. In one protest in downtown Jerusalem, demonstrators chanted, "I can't breathe" and carried signs that read "Palestinian Lives Matter" and "Justice For Eyad, Justice for George."

"This [killing] is not a mistake, this is not an aberration," Hala Marshood, 28, a Palestinian protester said by phone to NPR. "It's a systemized policy towards Palestinians, oppressing an entire population."

There's been an outpouring of grief from Israelis from across the spectrum, particularly parents of children with autism. Aviad Friedman, an Israeli father of a child with autism, paid Hallaq's father a condolence visit, despite friends warning him against traveling alone to a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem.

In an emotional op-ed on a religious Jewish website, Friedman said his son was also identified as suspicious and was detained aggressively by police in Jerusalem's Old City eight years ago.

"I do not think [the Hallaq killing] is similar to the incident in Minneapolis," he wrote, citing the stress Israeli police face in Jerusalem. But he added, "I expect and hope there will be a real hard investigation ... to give final justice to Eyad's father's family."

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Days after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, there was another police killing halfway across the world in Jerusalem. There, Israeli police shot an unarmed Palestinian man. While these shootings have occurred in the past, this one sparked protests, multiple Israeli apologies and comparisons to events in the U.S. NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem.

DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Thirty-two-year-old Eyad al-Hallaq (ph) was on his way to his school for special needs students when police shot him. This has happened many times before - unarmed Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. But in this case, his story has elicited shock because he had autism. It's been all over the Israeli news.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RANAD AL-HALLAQ: (Non-English language spoken)

ESTRIN: Here's his mother telling Israeli TV about his autism and that he was always afraid of Israeli officers. She'd tell him, just show them your ID, and you'll be OK. But an eyewitness said this time, police shouted terrorist and opened fire, wounding him. He ran for cover. Minutes later, an officer shot him again, killing him. A police spokesman says officers thought he had a gun. He didn't. The officer who fired the shot is under house arrest. And Israeli officials have been remorseful.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BENNY GANTZ: (Non-English language spoken)

ESTRIN: The defense minister, Benny Gantz said, "we are very sorry" and vowed a swift investigation. The public security minister, Amir Ohana, said in parliament, the family deserves a hug.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

AMIR OHANA: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: But the Israeli minister defended the police. He suggested Hallaq's autism made his behavior suspicious. Twenty-eight-year-old Palestinian Hala Marshood disagrees.

HALA MARSHOOD: Like, this is not a mistake. This is not an aberration. This is not an individual soldier's mistake. It's a systematized policy towards Palestinians, oppressing an entire population. The apology doesn't matter to us.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: She's been one of the protesters hitting the streets in demonstrations circulating on social media. Some protesters have chanted, I Can't Breathe and held signs saying Palestinian Lives Matter and other slogans comparing Hallaq to George Floyd. But Israeli professor of U.S.-Israel relations, Eytan Gilboa, thinks the comparison is unfair.

EYTAN GILBOA: I think there's a huge difference because in Jerusalem, there have been many cases of Palestinians dressed as civilians using knives to kill Israelis. It was a mistake. It was a tragic mistake. The United States is a different story. You have a history of racism in police forces and violence.

ESTRIN: But Israel has that history, too, says Hagai El-Ad of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

HAGAI EL-AD: Once in a while, there are specifically horrific cases that get some more attention. But they do not change the overall grim picture of almost blanket impunity for any Israeli security forces that kills Palestinians, no matter what the circumstance is.

ESTRIN: The Israeli protests against police brutality have been much smaller than the protests in the U.S. That's a relief to Israeli Public Security Minister Ohana. He said he hoped no one would, quote, "try to bring Minneapolis here." Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Jerusalem.

A month after the shooting death of an unarmed, autistic Palestinian man by a border policeman in Jerusalem’s Old City, a key issue remains: the existence of any footage of the incident from the many security cameras nearby.

It is also not clear how the Justice Ministry’s unit for investigating police officers has been conducting the investigation into the shooting. The investigators are expected to submit evidence to the unit’s prosecutor shortly.

Eyad Hallaq, 32, was shot to death in a garbage room in late May after entering the Old City through Lions Gate, where it is believed police there considered him suspicious. Because he was autistic, he did not understand orders to halt, so he fled and sought refuge in the roofless garbage room.

The border policeman who shot Hallaq had finished basic training only weeks before. He has said he suspected that Hallaq was planning an attack because he was wearing gloves; the officer says he opened fire after Hallaq made a suspicious move.

The officer’s commander insists that he told the new recruit to hold fire, but the younger policeman says he never heard such an order.

According to a source familiar with the investigation, the security cameras in the area, including cameras in the garbage room itself, apparently did not document the shooting. The Justice Ministry unit has only questioned the main suspect once – for five hours on the day of the shooting. His commander, who has since finished his service, has been questioned twice.

During the initial questioning of the main suspect, he was shown footage of the chasing of Hallaq into the garbage room, but no other documentation. The commander wasn’t shown any footage, the source says, nor was any video evidence produced during the questioning of the teacher Warda Abu Hadid, who was accompanying Hallaq that day.

Spokespeople for the Justice Ministry unit refused to answer Haaretz’s questions about the security cameras. At a hearing earlier this month, an official from the unit declined to address the issue, saying that if there were cameras in the area of the shooting, they were confiscated by investigators.

Haaretz has found that there are no fewer than 10 cameras in the 150 meters (164 yards) between Lions Gate, where the chase began, and the garbage room. Their location seems to make the chance of no video evidence of the incident very low.

Most of the cameras in the area are connected to the Mabat 2000 police monitoring system, which has hundreds of cameras throughout the Old City and nearby. Almost every security incident that takes place in the Old City is documented by this system, and in some cases the videos are released to the media soon after an incident.

At Lions Gate there are two Mabat 2000 cameras, and above the gate stands a pole with another camera. Three more cameras are positioned about 50 meters down the street, one belonging to Mabat 2000 and two connected to a traffic light and a system of hydraulic poles designed to block entrance by unauthorized vehicles.

Around 20 meters further down sits another camera pointed at the entrance to the garbage room, along with the two cameras in the room itself. These belong to a cleaning company, a subcontractor that employs the sanitation workers in the Old City for the Jerusalem municipality and the East Jerusalem Development Company.

An employee and a manager at the company say that after the shooting, that same day, Israeli officials took the relevant footage out of the cameras. The two workers are not sure whether the cameras were functioning properly that day, or whether the people who removed the footage were police or Justice Ministry investigators.

Although a month has passed, the Justice Ministry unit still has not staged a reenactment of the shooting. An attempt to do so soon after the incident was canceled by investigators because journalists were present at the scene. A Haaretz article on the cancellation generated criticism because some people taking part in the probe did not even know a reenactment had been planned.

Similarly, despite the contradiction between the two border policemen’s version of events, no confrontation has been staged between them. Nor has there been one between the policemen and Hallaq’s teacher, who told investigators that she shouted at the police that Hallaq was disabled, to no avail.

The source familiar with the investigation says the Justice Ministry unit does not seem to accept the teacher’s version of events, preferring the border policemen’s testimony that she reached the garbage room only after the younger policeman had shot Hallaq.

Another law enforcement source says that so far, except for Abu Hadid’s testimony, no findings contradict the testimony that the two border policemen began chasing a man suspected of being a terrorist in response to a call by the Jerusalem police. According to this source, the case against the commander does not yet show no evidence of a crime, while the case against his younger colleague will be examined by the prosecution.

“This doesn’t look like an Elor Azaria case,” a source said, referring to the soldier who in 2016 shot dead a Palestinian assailant already lying motionless on the ground, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif. The source said that in the absence of any new evidence, the case against the younger border policeman is likely to be closed

Neither suspect has been subject to any restrictions. The commander, who was doing his military service, has been discharged, while the main suspect has not been returned to his unit and the Border Police are considering how to proceed.

“The investigation into this case looks like it’s about to be completed. More investigating is required to finish it, because our client insists that he ordered the shooter to stop firing before the fatal shot,” the commander's lawyers, Oron Schwartz and Yogev Narkis, said in a statement.

“If the authorities and the Justice Ministry unit won’t work to confirm this version of events, my client will insist on undergoing a polygraph test. Although the results of a polygraph are not admissible in a legal proceeding, it is an acceptable and sometimes decisive tool for investigators and prosecutors making a decision.”

The attorneys for the border policeman who shot Hallaq, Efrat Nahmani Bar and Alon Porat, said: “We’re talking about a tragedy. Still, it’s important to remember that the soldier acted on instructions given to him and a situation presented to him by his superiors.”

The autistic Palestinian man who was shot dead by a Border Police officer in East Jerusalem in May did not pose a danger to anyone and there was no need to fire at him, said the commander of the force that pursued Eyad Hallaq and cornered him in a trash room in the Old City.

The commander, whose name has not been released for publication, told investigators from the Justice Ministry department that probes allegations of police misconduct that he ordered his partner multiple times during the incident to hold his fire. His partner, whose name is also barred for publication, ignored him, firing two bullets from his assault rifle at Hallaq’s torso

Hallaq, 32, was killed on the morning of May 30, a Saturday. The incident began when a Border Policeman near the Old City’s Lions Gate deemed his conduct suspicious and shouted “terrorist.” The force’s 21-year-old commander then led a pursuit.

“We chased him and called out to him, but he kept running,” the commander said in his testimony to the department, parts of which were obtained by Haaretz. “At one point, I shot at his lower body. I didn’t notice any wounds.”

Hallaq eventually ran into a trash room. “When I arrived, I looked at the guy and yelled ‘Stop,’” the commander said. “I meant that the police officers who were coming and my partner, who was with me, should stop shooting. Then my partner shot, and I yelled again, ‘Stop shooting, stop shooting.’ Apparently the suspect made some movement that caused my partner to shoot again.”

But even though his partner opened fire because Hallaq made “some small movement in the area of his waist and legs,” the shooting was unjustified, since the commander didn’t feel himself to be in danger at the time, he added.

“I’ve been in this sector for a little over two years, I know how explosive the place is,” he said. “There was a discrepancy between the reports I got at the beginning – that this was a terrorist incident, that it was something intended to harm innocent people – and the situation in the trash room.

“It’s a closed place with no way to escape from it. He didn’t attack or do anything. He was definitely not resisting. He didn’t endanger me in that situation.”

When investigators said he was the senior officer present and therefore bore responsibility, he insisted the junior policeman was to blame. “Ask him why he fired; he should have obeyed my orders,” he said. “We should have checked out the suspect from a distance, questioned him.

“Afterward, all the officers arrived and heard both of us together. I told them what had happened straight out. I said I’d yelled that he should stop.”

Asked how the junior officer reacted to that statement, the commander said, “He did not respond.”

The junior officer had only joined the force around six months prior. He completed his initial training just a few weeks before the incident. When questioned, he said that he fired due to the tensions in the area, the first policeman’s yell of “terrorist” and the movement that he saw Hallaq make. He also denied his partner’s version of the events.

“I didn’t hear ‘Stop,’” he said. “I acted the way I was taught. As far as I was concerned, this was a terrorist whom the force commander shot at before we entered the room.”

Even though the Justice Ministry’s investigation is almost complete, investigators have not yet arranged a confrontation between the two officers to try to reconcile their contradictory stories.

What happened in the trash room was not captured by security cameras; the room belongs to a private contractor and his cameras were not working that day. But police cameras stationed in the Old City did capture what happened before everyone entered the room.

Senior law enforcement officials who viewed that footage (which has not been made public) said Hallaq’s behavior was “very suspicious” and could well have led the policemen to think he was a terrorist. He was wearing black gloves and walking toward Lions Gate while constantly looking to the sides and behind him. Then, after entering the Old City, he hid behind a concrete pillar, from which he peered at the policemen in the nearby square.

In retrospect, Hallaq’s behavior was consistent with his diagnosis of low-functioning autism, according to experts. Yet at the time, this behavior, coupled with what one policeman thought was a handgun – but later proved to be a black glove – led the officer in the square to shout “terrorist.”

Later, this policeman told associates he had erred; he should have warned Hallaq or yelled at him to stop for identification before declaring him a terrorist. It was that declaration, a source involved in the incident said, that “sealed Hallaq’s fate,” in part by causing other policemen to chase him.

“If the statements that he was a terrorist were not enough, the chase made Hallaq flee, and that created a snowball that they were not able to stop,” the source explained.

The footage shows Hallaq running down a narrow street toward the Old City, with the junior officer hot on his heels. The commander fired at him, apparently twice, but missed. Hallaq turned left, and the footage stopped.

What the footage does not show, sources involved in the case said, was Hallaq’s teacher, who testified that she yelled to the policemen that he was disabled. She arrived on the scene only a few minutes after the incident began.

The policeman who shot Hallaq told Justice Ministry investigators that during the chase, he heard a woman screaming in fright. He thought it was somebody screaming in fear of the terrorist. But it’s possible that what he heard was Hallaq’s teacher.

Investigators questioned the junior policeman once, on the day of the shooting. They questioned the commander twice. It’s not clear that either will be questioned again, since the probe is expected to be wrapped up in the next few days. Its conclusions will then be submitted to the prosecution.

What are those conclusions likely to be? The case against the commander, who has since been demobilized, is likely to be closed. The case of the policeman who shot Hallaq is more complicated.

It’s clear to everyone involved that the incident should not have ended in Hallaq’s death. But sources involved in the probe said it’s likely to conclude that the policeman made an error of judgment rather than killing Hallaq deliberately.

One said the evidence would make it very hard to charge him with reckless homicide. “A decision cannot be made in the case just because there’s a lot of media or public pressure,” he added.

If criminal proceedings are ruled out, the only options left are disciplinary proceedings or closing the case. Consequently, it’s possible that nobody will end up being punished.

The Justice Ministry department said it is “carrying out a thorough, professional investigation and making maximal efforts to finish the investigation quickly, discover the truth and inform the deceased’s family of the investigation’s findings and results. At this stage, when the investigation still has not finished, we will not comment on actions that have been or are expected to be taken in this case.”

Haaretz asked the department why there has as yet been no reenactment of the incident. Whether due to this question or not, a source involved in the probe said a reenactment is expected to take place before dawn on Thursday.

As a result of Hallaq’s death, the Jerusalem District police decided to cooperate with organizations that work with people with special needs, in the hopes of improving police’s handling of the situation next time they have to deal with a suspect or possible suspect like Hallaq.

Efrat Nahmani Bar, the lawyer representing the junior policeman, said her client was new on the job and “acted in line with the information he received and the orders and instructions he was given. His understanding that this was an armed terrorist on his way to carrying out an attack was based on both the information he received and suspicious signs that accumulated as the incident developed.

“The behavior of the commander in the field, who shot at the deceased’s lower body when he fled during the chase, also contributed to the understanding that he was a dangerous terrorist,” she continued. And her client opened fire “after the deceased made a suspicious movement that made him think his life was in danger, which, as noted, fits the picture of the situation he was given.”

The commander’s claim that he ordered his subordinate to stop shooting was “surprising, especially in light of his behavior to that point,” Nahmani Bar said. “In any case, our client did not hear any instruction or order to stop shooting. Another eyewitness who was at the scene also said no order to stop was given.”

The commander’s lawyers, Oron Schwartz and Yogev Narkis, said in a statement that their client’s story was verified by a private polygraph test after the Justice Ministry refused to administer one. “It showed he gave an order to stop shooting before the shooting occurred, and especially that he did not get the warning by the woman who said the deceased was disabled.”

The facts prove that “based on the information in his possession in real time, he acted properly,” and he cannot be held legally responsible for what he did not know, they added

An Israeli police officer who shot dead a severely autistic Palestinian man earlier this year may stand trial for reckless manslaughter. Iyad Hallaq, 32, was shot in the chest on May 30, in the Old City of Jerusalem after he ran away in a panic when he heard Israeli soldiers shouting at him.

Though the decision to prosecute has taken five months, the officer who fired the fatal shots will now be charged with reckless manslaughter and face a hearing where he can dispute the charges before the case goes to trial. If convicted, the officer could face up to 12 years in prison. The officer’s commander, who was at the scene of the shooting, has not been charged.

Hallaq’s family criticized the slow pace of the investigations and questioned the prosecutor’s claims that security cameras in the area had not been working at the time of the shooting.

His parents are concerned that their son’s killing will be whitewashed, especially after the camera malfunction claim. Police in Israel are usually very quick to release security-camera footage to the public when their own officers or other Israelis are attacked. The 32-year-old’s relatives also condemned the decision not to prosecute the commander as “unacceptable”.

The family’s lawyer, Jad Qadamani, criticized the prosecution service, according to a report by Associated Press. Qadamani has claimed that the prosecution should have filed much tougher charges because there was sufficient evidence to charge both the officer and commander with premeditated murder.