The Mohammed al-Dura Case

(September 30, 2000)

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Perhaps the most vivid image from the begining of the Second Intifada/Palestinian War was the film of a Palestinian father supposedly trying to shield his son from Israeli gunfire while caught in a crossfire at a major junction in the Gaza Strip.

After Palestinian policemen fired at an IDF outpost from positions around the Netzarim junction, the Israeli soldiers returned fire toward the sources of the shooting. During the exchanges of fire, a Palestinian child - Mohammed al-Dura, aged 12 - was apparently hit by fire and killed.

IDF aerial photo describing the exchange of fire at the Netzarim junction in which al-Dura was killed. Click for larger image.

Immediately following the incident, and due mostly to the release of video footage from France-2, Israel was universally blamed for al-Dura's death. Subsequent investigations, however, have revealed that this story was far more complicated than the video supposedly showed and that the boy, if killed at all, was most likely hit by Palestinian bullets and not IDF fire.

Contrary to the conventional belief that the footage of the incident was live, it was actually edited before it was broadcast around the world. Though a number of cameramen were in the area, only one, a Palestinian working for France 2, recorded the shooting.

Conflicting stories have been given as to why the father and child were in the vicinity during the incident. French media commentator Philippe Karsenty was sued for libel by France 2 when he suggested that the station cut out the final few seconds of the original footage in which Mohammed appeared to life his hand from his face. Karsenty also said that the scene had been staged by Palestinian protesters.

An IDF investigation of the incident released in November 2000, found that al-Dura was most likely killed by a Palestinian policeman and not by IDF fire. The investigation noted that its results were not conclusive, but Maj.-Gen. Yomtov Samia noted that "the possibility that [al-Dura and his father] were shot by Palestinians is higher than that they were shot by Israelis."

Maj. Gen Samia added that the conclusions of the investigation were based on an in-depth analysis of all information the IDF could gather about the incident; however, he added that a number of questions about the incident remain, including why al-Dura and his father Jamal, 37, of El-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, came to the intersection when there already had been shooting there for several hours and why they did not flee, as many others did. This report was confirmed by an investigation by German ARD Television, which said the footage of al-Dura's death was censored by the Palestinians to look as if he had been killed by the Israelis when, in fact, his death was caused by Palestinian gunfire.

Adding to the skepticism about the source of the deadly fire, Yehuda David, the Israeli doctor who operated on Mohammed's father Jamal after he was injured in the crossfire, reported that Jamal's injuries were actually the result of an earlier attack by fellow Palestinians and could not have come from IDF fire.

Moreover, journalist James Fallows revisted the story a number of years later and found that "the physical evidence of the shooting was in all ways inconsistent with shots coming from the IDF outpost." Fallows cited a number of unanswered questions, which have led some to conclude the whole incident was staged.

For example, he asked, "Why is there no footage of the boy after he was shot? Why does he appear to move in his father's lap, and to clasp a hand over his eyes after he is supposedly dead? Why is one Palestinian policeman wearing a Secret Service-style earpiece in one ear? Why is another Palestinian man shown waving his arms and yelling at others, as if 'directing' a dramatic scene? Why does the funeral appear — based on the length of shadows — to have occurred before the apparent time of the shooting? Why is there no blood on the father's shirt just after they are shot? Why did a voice that seems to be that of the France 2 cameraman yell, in Arabic, 'The boy is dead' before he had been hit? Why do ambulances appear instantly for seemingly everyone else and not for al-Dura?"

In 2009, Denis Jeambar, editor-in-chief of the French news weekly l’Express, and filmmaker Daniel Leconte, a producer and owner of the film company Doc en Stock, saw the raw, unedited video of the shooting and said the boy could not have been shot by Israeli soldiers. “The only ones who could hit the child were the Palestinians from their position. If they had been Israeli bullets, they would be very strange bullets because they would have needed to go around the corner.”