2000 Ramallah lynching

2000 Ramallah lynching
Aziz Salha, one of the lynchers, waving his blood-stained hands from the police station window. Salha was later arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.
LocationRamallah, Israeli-occupied West Bank
DateOctober 12, 2000; 23 years ago (2000-10-12)
Attack type
Lynching
Deaths2
Injured13 Palestinian police officers
VictimsVadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami
PerpetratorsAziz Salha, Muhammad Howara, Ziad Hamdada, Mohamed Abu Ida, Wisam Radi, Haiman Zabam, Marwan Ibrahim Tawfik Maadi, and Yasser Ibrahim Mohammed Khatab

The 2000 Ramallah lynching[1] was a violent incident that took place at the el-Bireh police station, where a Palestinian crowd of passing funeral marchers broke in and killed and mutilated the bodies of two Israeli military reservists on 12 October 2000 during the Second Intifada.[2]

Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef "Yossi" Avrahami[a] had accidentally[3] entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and were taken into custody by Palestinian Authority policemen, 13 of whom were injured while trying to stop the lynching.[4] Tensions had been escalating prior to the incident; over 100 Palestinians, nearly two dozen of them minors, had been killed in the preceding two weeks; the escalating violence had been condemned just five days beforehand by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1322.[2][5][6]

  1. ^ Sources describing the event as a "lynching":
    • Karon, Tony (2000-10-12). "Ramallah lynching leaves peace in pieces". CNN. Retrieved 6 October 2023. A lynching in a dusty West Bank town may have not only dashed the fragile hopes for ending the current violence in the Palestinian territories
    • Levine, Cody (2020-10-16). "Remembering the Ramallah Lynching, 20 years later". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 6 October 2023. The lynching was perhaps a watershed moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and set the course of the next five years of great suffering.
    • Shezaf, Hagar (2021-06-21). "Two Decades After Ramallah Lynching, Two Palestinians Involved Receive Harsher Sentences". Haaretz. Retrieved 6 October 2023. Two Decades After Ramallah Lynching, Two Palestinians Involved Receive Harsher Sentences
    • Sterman, Adam (2013-12-25). "'We were in a craze to see blood'". Times of Israel. Retrieved 6 October 2023. Court releases testimonies of Palestinians who were involved in the brutal Ramallah lynching of two IDF soldiers in 2000
  2. ^ a b Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 10 - Autumn 2000; Jerusalem Chronology: 1 August 2000 - 31 October 2000: "12 October Two Israeli reserve soldiers spotted in a car in Ramallah are taken by Palestinian security men to a police station. A crowd of passing funeral marchers hearing of their presence surrounds the headquarters. The two soldiers are killed and mutilated by the enraged crowd. The scene is captured by an Italian television crew and broadcast around the world. In retaliation, Israeli helicopter gunships fire rockets at Palestinian targets including the police station where the lynching occurred, a radio tower, and Yasser Arafat's compound in Gaza. The twelve-year-old boy shot October 10th dies of his wounds."
  3. ^ Zitun, Yoav; Levy, Elior (30 March 2017). "2000 Ramallah lynch terrorist released from prison". Ynetnews.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Spangler was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Pratt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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