Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah
On 30 September 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah was killed at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip during widespread protests and riots across the Palestinian territories against Israeli military occupation. Jamal al-Durrah and his son Muhammad were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian television cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they were caught in crossfire between the Israeli military and Palestinian security forces. Footage shows them crouching behind a concrete cylinder, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust. Muhammad is shown slumping as he is mortally wounded by gunfire, dying soon after.
Fifty-nine seconds of the footage were broadcast on television in France with a voiceover from Charles Enderlin, the station's bureau chief in Israel. Based on information from the cameraman, Enderlin told viewers that the al-Durrahs had been the target of fire from the Israeli positions and that the boy had died. After an emotional public funeral, Muhammad was hailed throughout the Muslim world as a martyr.
Initially, the Israel Defense Forces accepted responsibility for the shooting, but claimed that Palestinians used children as human shields; the IDF retracted its admission of responsibility in 2005. In 2000, the IDF commissioned Nahum Shahaf to investigate, producing a report which provoked widespread criticism. One of the Israeli investigators claimed the incident had been staged by Palestinian gunmen, cameraman and Muhammad's own father. The report eventually concluded that Muhammad was possibly killed by Palestinian fire. However, a Palestinian investigation that same year concluded Muhammad was killed by bullets that came from the Israeli post.
In 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commissioned another investigation. In 2013, that report concluded that not only was Muhammad not hit by IDF fire, Muhammad was perhaps never shot nor killed. Jamal al-Durrah rejected the idea that his son was somehow not dead and offered to exhume Muhammad's grave. The report was criticized by Charles Enderlin and France 2, Reporters Without Borders and Barak Ravid. In France, Philippe Karsenty, a media commentator, also alleged that the scene had been staged by France 2; France 2 sued him for libel in 2006 leading to Karsenty's eventual conviction in 2013 for the allegation.
The footage of the father and son acquired what one writer called the power of a battle flag. Postage stamps in the Middle East carried the images. Abu Rahma's coverage of the al-Durrah shooting brought him several journalism awards, including the Rory Peck Award in 2001.
Background
On 28 September 2000, two days before the shooting, the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy site in both Judaism and Islam with contested rules of access. The violence that followed had its roots in several events, but the visit was provocative and triggered protests that escalated into rioting across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The uprising became known as the Second Intifada; it lasted over four years and cost around 4,000 lives, over 3,000 of them Palestinian.The Netzarim junction, where the shooting took place, is known locally as the al-Shohada junction. It lies on Saladin Road, a few kilometres south of Gaza City. The source of conflict at the junction was the nearby Netzarim settlement, where 60 Israeli families lived until Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. A military escort accompanied the settlers whenever they left or arrived at the settlement, and an Israeli military outpost, Magen-3, guarded the approach. The area had been the scene of violent incidents in the days before the shooting.
People
Jamal and Muhammad al-Durrah
Jamal al-Durrah was a carpenter and house painter before the shooting. Since then, because of his injuries, he has worked as a truck driver. He and his wife, Amal, live in the UNRWA-run Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. As of 2013 they had four daughters and six sons, including a boy, Muhammad, born two years after the shooting.Until the shooting, Jamal had worked for Moshe Tamam, an Israeli contractor, for 20 years, since he was 14. Writer Helen Schary Motro came to know Jamal when she employed him to help build her house in Tel Aviv. She described his years of rising at 3:30 am to catch the bus to the border crossing at four, then a second bus out of Gaza so he could be at work by six. Tamam called him a "terrific man," someone he trusted to work alone in his customers' homes.
During the Gaza war, both of Jamal Al-Durrah’s brothers were killed by Israeli airstrikes, and he was seen mourning next to their body bags.
Muhammad Jamal Al-Durrah was in fifth grade, but his school was closed on 30 September 2000; the Palestinian Authority had called for a general strike and day of mourning following violence in Jerusalem the day before. His mother said he had been watching the rioting on television and asked if he could join in. Father and son decided instead to go to a car auction. Jamal had just sold his 1974 Fiat, Motro wrote, and Muhammad loved cars, so they went to the auction together.
Charles Enderlin
was born in 1945 in Paris; his grandparents were Austrian Jews who had left the country in 1938 when Germany invaded. After briefly studying medicine, he moved to Jerusalem in 1968 where he became an Israeli national. He began working for France 2 in 1981, serving as their bureau chief in Israel from 1990 until his retirement in 2015. Enderlin is the author of several books about the Middle East, including one about Muhammad al-Durrah, Un Enfant est Mort: Netzarim, 30 Septembre 2000. Highly regarded among his peers and within the French establishment, he submitted a letter from Jacques Chirac, during the Philippe Karsenty libel action, who wrote in flattering terms of Enderlin's integrity. In 2009, he was awarded France's highest decoration, the Légion d'honneur.According to French journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Enderlin's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was respected by other journalists but was regularly criticized by pro-Israel groups. As a result of the al-Durrah case, he received death threats, his wife was assaulted in the street, his children were threatened, the family had to move home, and at one point they considered emigrating to the United States.
Talal Abu Rahma
Talal Hassan Abu Rahma studied business administration in the United States, and began working as a freelance cameraman for France 2 in Gaza in 1988. At the time of the shooting, he ran his own press office, the National News Center, contributed to CNN through the Al-Wataneya Press Office, and was a board member of the Palestinian Journalists' Association. His coverage of the al-Durrah shooting brought him several journalism awards, including the Rory Peck Award in 2001. According to France 2 correspondent Gérard Grizbec, Abu Rahma had never been a member of a Palestinian political group, had twice been arrested by Palestinian police for filming images that did not meet the approval of Yasser Arafat, and had never been accused of security breaches by Israel.Events of the shooting
Before shooting
On the day of the shooting—Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year—the two-story Israel Defense Forces outpost at the Netzarim junction was manned by Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade Engineering Platoon and the Herev Battalion. According to Enderlin, the soldiers were Druze.The two-story IDF outpost sat northwest of the junction. Two six-story Palestinian blocks lay directly behind it. South of the junction, diagonally across from the IDF, there was a Palestinian National Security Forces outpost under the command of Brigadier-General Osama al-Ali, a member of the Palestine National Council. The concrete wall that Jamal and Muhammad crouched against was in front of this building; the spot was less than 120 metres from the most northerly point of the Israeli outpost.
In addition to France 2, the Associated Press and Reuters also had camera crews at the junction. They captured brief footage of the al-Durrahs and Abu Rahma. Abu Rahma was the only journalist to film the moment the al-Durrahs were shot.
Arrival at the junction
Jamal and Muhammad arrived at the junction in a cab around midday, on their way back from the car auction. There had been a protest, demonstrators had thrown stones, and the IDF had responded with tear gas. Abu Rahma was filming events and interviewing protesters, including Abdel Hakim Awad, head of the Fatah youth movement in Gaza. Because of the protest, a police officer stopped Jamal and Muhammad's cab from going any further, so father and son proceeded on foot across the junction. It was at that point, according to Jamal, that the live fire started. Enderlin said the first shots were fired from the Palestinian positions and returned by the Israeli soldiers.Jamal, Muhammad, the Associated Press cameraman, and Shams Oudeh, the Reuters cameraman, took cover against the concrete wall in the south-east quadrant of the crossroads, diagonally across from the Israeli outpost. Jamal, Muhammad and Shams Oudeh crouched behind a three-foot-tall concrete drum, apparently part of a culvert, that was sitting against the wall. A thick paving stone sat on top of the drum, which offered further protection. Abu Rahma hid behind a white minibus parked across the road about 15 metres away from the wall. The Reuters and Associated Press cameramen briefly filmed over Jamal and Muhammad's shoulders—the cameras pointing toward the Israeli outpost—before the men moved away. Jamal and Muhammad did not move away, but stayed behind the drum for 45 minutes. In Enderlin's view, they were frozen in fear.
France 2 report
In an affidavit three days after the shooting, Abu Rahma said shots had been fired for about 45 minutes and that he had filmed around 27 minutes of it. He began filming Jamal and Muhammad when he heard Muhammad cry and saw that the boy had been shot in the right leg. He said he filmed the scene containing the father and son for about six minutes. He sent those six minutes to Enderlin in Jerusalem via satellite. Enderlin edited the footage down to 59 seconds and added a voiceover:The footage shows Jamal and Muhammad crouching behind the cylinder, the child screaming and the father shielding him. Jamal appears to shout something in the direction of the cameraman, then waves and shouts in the direction of the Israeli outpost. There is a burst of gunfire and the camera goes out of focus. When the gunfire subsides, Jamal is sitting upright and injured and Muhammad is lying over his legs. Enderlin cut a final few seconds from the footage that shows Muhammad lift his hand from his face. This cut became the basis of much of the controversy over the film.
The [|raw footage stops suddenly] at this point and begins again with unidentified people being loaded into an ambulance. Bassam al-Bilbeisi, an ambulance driver on his way to the scene, was reported to have been shot and killed, leaving a widow and eleven children. Abu Rahma said Muhammad lay bleeding for at least 17 minutes before an ambulance picked up father and son together. He said he did not film them being picked up because he was worried about having only one battery. Abu Rahma remained at the junction for 30–40 minutes until he felt it was safe to leave, then drove to his studio in Gaza City to send the footage to Enderlin. The 59 seconds of footage were first broadcast on France 2's nightly news at 8:00 pm local time, after which France 2 distributed several minutes of raw footage around the world without charge.