West Bank woman shot in the back by Israeli soldiers while harvesting olives
A 59-year-old Palestinian woman has been shot dead by Israeli forces while attending to her family’s olive grove in the village of Faqqua, east of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Hanan Abu Salami was shot in the back on Thursday morning as she was picking olives with other members of her family when soldiers stationed on the nearby separation wall opened fire, her son told Middle East Eye.
Faris Abu Salami, who was with his mother when she was shot, said the local council had negotiated permission from the Israeli army for the family and other villagers to pick olives on their lands providing they stayed at least 100 metres from the wall.
Abu Salami said: “We were much further than that from the wall. All of a sudden they started shooting randomly. We started collecting our things to leave and moved away. My father waved his white hat in the air hoping they would stop. They shot her in the back as we were fleeing the shooting.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent confirmed that the woman was shot in the back and said medical teams had tried to resuscitate her as she was being transferred to hospital.
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“She was taken immediately to the hospital but it seems that she died before reaching it,” said Abu Salami.
'We had permission to pick the olives but despite that they shot at us and killed my mother'
- Faris, son of Hanan Abu Salami
“We had permission to pick the olives but despite that they shot at us and killed my mother.”
Barakat Al-Omari, the mayor of Faqqua, said there had been prior coordination between local authorities, the Red Crescent and the Israeli army, to allow the residents access to their olive groves.
He said the residents had been more than 150 metres from the wall when they were shot at.
This year’s olive harvest season in the West Bank has seen Palestinians subjected to repeated attacks by settlers and Israeli security forces, with trees set on fire and damaged, crops stolen, and farmers prevented from reaching their lands or targeted while harvesting the crop.
Earlier this month, more than 50 armed settlers attacked a Palestinian family harvesting olives in the village of al-Lubban al-Gharbi, northwest of Ramallah.
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