• A person who saw Israeli forces kill a Palestinian said that he thinks the man was killed just because he punched a police officer.
• Last Friday, Ammar Mefleh was shot and killed close up in the occupied West Bank.
• He is the 10th Palestinian killed in a week by Israeli soldiers.

Last Friday, Ammar Mefleh was shot and killed close up in the occupied West Bank.

He is the tenth Palestinian killed by Israeli soldiers in the past week.

Video of the shooting got a lot of attention online, and a top UN official who said he was “horrified” by the killing was told off by Israel.

Israeli officials praised the officer, saying that he acted after the Palestinian stabbed a police officer in the face and stopped a “mass terror attack” because of it.

Palestinian leaders said it was a “cold-blooded” killing.

Mr. Mefleh, who was 22 years old, was killed in the Palestinian town of Huwara. Huwara is on a main road that Israeli settlers often use, and violence there has been getting worse over the past few months.

Incident filmed
This year, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, and almost all of them were killed by Israeli forces. Among the dead are unarmed civilians, militant gunmen, and people who attacked with guns.

Several attacks on Israelis by Palestinians, as well as gunfire from militants at troops during arrest raids, have killed more than 30 people, including civilians, police officers, and soldiers.

The video from Friday, which was widely shared online, was unusual in that it showed in detail a part of what happened before the shooting. A second video shows the last 13 seconds from a different point of view.

On the recording, the Israeli officer can be seen putting a headlock on Mr. Mefleh as the two fight. At first, two other Palestinians join the fight, but then they step back.

After Mr. Mefleh gets out of the headlock, he tries to grab the policeman’s gun. As they fight over the weapon, the officer takes his hand off of it, first to try to hit the Palestinian, who hits him back, and then to reach for his pistol.

Mr. Mefleh grabs the rifle for a split second, but as soon as he sees the officer raise his gun, he throws it down or lets go of it. The officer shoots him four times right away.

A popular Israeli news site said that the officer had “eliminated the terrorist” after he was killed. The video was shared many times on Palestinian social media, where people were horrified by the killing.

Tor Wennesland, the UN’s representative in the area, tweeted that he was “horrified” by the killing of Ammar Mefleh, a Palestinian man, in a fight with an Israeli soldier today. He called for those responsible to be held accountable.

In response, Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Wennesland’s response was “a total distortion of reality.”

“The attack was a terror attack. An Israeli police officer was stabbed in the face, and another officer’s life was in danger, so he shot his attacker,” Mr. Nahshon said.

“This is NOT a “scuffle”; it’s a terror attack!”

Disputed account

The fight made people think more about what happened right before he was killed.

Friday night, Israeli police said that the trouble started when a Palestinian with a knife picked up a rock and tried to break into the car of an Israeli couple. They said that the driver, who was a soldier off-duty, shot the man, hurting him in the head. This is thought to have been caused by the bullet or shrapnel.

Police said that the wounded Palestinian then went up to two border police officers who were on patrol in their car and stabbed one of them in the face. The other officer, who was later seen in the video, got out and chased him, which led to the events shown in the video and the fatal shooting.
Police released a picture of an officer with a cut on his face and a close-up picture of a knife lying on the side of the road (although one Israeli media report cited the police investigation as saying the knife fell into the police car after the officer was stabbed).

Over the weekend, police released a video of the officer who killed Mr. Mefleh talking about what happened: “Me and my team were on a mission patrolling the road when the terrorist came and stabbed my driver in the face.” I knew right away that it was an attack by terrorists. “I got out of the car and went after the terrorist,” the unnamed police officer said.

“I recognised the terrorist and the Israeli civilian vehicle he tried to break into with a knife,” he said in a second statement. “The terrorist attacked me right away,” he added.

“He tried to take my gun. I took out my pistol because I knew that if he took my gun, there would be a big terror attack. I was able to get my gun out, and I shot the terrorist until he was dead,” he said.

But what four people who saw what happened in Huwara told the sources didn’t match what the police said happened.

One person said that the situation seemed to have started with a fight in the street, which could have been related to an accident on the road that was stopping traffic.

Nader Allan, who had just left a nearby wedding, said, “I was standing over there next to the butchers.”

“The car of a settler stopped. I’m not sure if he hit the Palestinian guy’s car or if the Palestinian guy was walking in the street. They started yelling at each other, and then I heard a shot. He shot the man right in the face. “He was bleeding and fell to the floor,” he said.

Like the other people who saw what happened, Mr. Allan said that this was when the Israeli police officer showed up. A short video taken by a witness shows an officer, who looks like the one in the video of the fatal shooting, giving orders over a police radio while standing near Mr. Mefleh, who is lying on the street with blood on his face as people gather around.

Another picture shows a similar scene, where people are talking on their phones but it seems pretty calm. Someone said that people tried to help Mr. Mefleh.

Mahmoud Abed, who works in a kebab shop, said that he also ran out when he heard the Israeli driver shooting at Mr. Mefleh.

“We found a man on the ground with blood all over his face. A cop came from a long way away. “He looked at him and kicked him, and then the policeman said something on the radio,” he said.

Both Mr. Abed and Mr. Allan say that after the Palestinian was hurt, he got up and tried to hit the Israeli officer. People say that this is what started the fight that led to the officer putting him in a headlock and shooting him to death.

Another eyewitness, Bahaa Odeh, who owns an ice cream shop, said he heard a commotion and went outside to see the policeman holding Mr. Mefleh by the head and then killing him.

“I was so upset by what I saw that I started yelling at the soldier, ‘You’re disgusting!'” “You weren’t in danger, so why did you kill him?”

“I told him, ‘You’re a coward,’ and… He punched you, so you killed him. “He has the right to stand up for himself,” Mr. Odeh said.

Knife claims

As anger grew over the killing of Mr. Mefleh, there were later fights between Israeli forces and residents. Mr. Odeh was hurt in his chest and arm when he was hit by a rubber bullet.

All four witnesses said that Mr. Mefleh did not have a knife when they were asked about it. In the picture of Mr. Mefleh lying on the ground hurt after the Israeli driver shot him, there is no sign of a gun in his hands or anywhere else.

To make things even more confusing about the order of events, Israeli police were quoted as saying on Saturday that they were “97% certain” that Mr. Mefleh was the one who stabbed the police officer in the car, while on Friday they were sure of this.

Police were quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying that longer footage from multiple cameras “strengthens the assessment” that the Palestinian man who was killed was the one who stabbed the policeman.

When asked how the eyewitness accounts compared to what the officers said, the Israeli police did not answer.