The Israel Defense Forces on Friday indicated that troops accidentally shot an American activist in the leg during a protest in the Beita area in the northern West Bank earlier in the day.
Troops “used riot dispersal means and fired live rounds in the air to disperse” a “gathering” in the area, an IDF spokesperson said.
“Shortly afterward, a report was received regarding a foreign national who was accidentally injured by the riot dispersal means and was evacuated to the hospital,” the military statement added.
The activist, who goes by Amado Sison, 40, is from New Jersey and traveled to the West Bank earlier this week, according to the IDF.
Sison, who was shot in the right thigh, was in stable condition at a hospital in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
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He told reporters on Friday that he had joined the protest against settlement expansion in the West Bank to help defend Palestinians.
Illustrative: Soldiers stand guard while Palestinians and left-wing activists protest in the village of Beit Dajan, in the West Bank, on August 11, 2023. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
“There was a demonstration and we were there to film, to make sure we have eyes on the [IDF],” he said from a hospital bed in Nablus. “As internationals, we support Palestinians, we take their lead, we are nonviolent.”
As the security forces approached the protesters, “We ran into the olive groves and when I was running away they shot at us and it went through my leg,” he said, adding that Israeli troops were “firing tear gas at us, live rounds.”
Foreign activists often join Palestinian protesters for near-weekly demonstrations against settlement expansion in Beita, said another foreign activist, who asked not to be named for security concerns.
The European Union’s representative office in the Palestinian territories said earlier this month that Israel advanced last year the highest number of West Bank settlements since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
The West Bank has seen a surge in already heightened violence since war broke out in Gaza after the Hamas terror group’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.
A handout photo shows IDF troops operating near Jenin in the West Bank on August 6, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
Since then, troops have arrested some 4,400 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,850 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 590 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 25 Israelis, including security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
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