On October 12, 2015, two Palestinian boys, 15-year-old Hassan Khalid Manasra and his cousin 13-year-old Ahmad Manasra, both from Beit Hanina stabbed two Israelis in the Israeli settlement in Pisgat Ze'ev in Jerusalem on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hassan was shot dead by a police officer while Ahmad was struck by a car. The attack became a lightning rod for both Israelis and Palestinians because of the young age of the attackers, a clip from after the attack showing Ahmad laying in a pool of blood while being shouted at by settlers which spread on social media, and because Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas erroneously claimed in a televised speech that Ahmad had been executed.
Attack
According to security camera footage of the attack it went as follows: Hassan and Ahmed equipped themselves with knives. In Pisgat Ze'ev they found a 20-year-old male security guard who they chased after with their knives drawn and stabbed. The guard ran away and they instead turned their attention to some nearby shops. Outside a candy shop they found a 13-year-old boy on a bicycle who they stabbed. The boy sustained critical injuries. Another angle from the security camera footage shows Hassan running across a street. Hassan was subsequently shot and killed, reportedly while advancing towards a police with a knife in his hand. Ahmad tried to escape the area but was struck by a pursuing car and suffered serious head injuries.
Viral video
A viral video of the attack spread on social media. The two minute long clip showed Ahmad lying on the street of Pisgat Ze'ev after being struck by a car with his legs twisted behind him and blood coming out of his head and bystanders filming using cell phones. A crowd surrounds him and shouts "Die, son of a bitch" and other profanities in Hebrew. After a minute or so an ambulance arrives.
Responses
Abbas reacted strongly to the attack. On October 15, he gave a televised speech translated to English by The Jerusalem Post in which he lambasted the "Israeli aggression" and called for the "immediate positive interference by the international community before it is too late." He reiterated that the Palestinian side would not accept any changes to the "status quo" to Temple Mount. He also mentioned "the execution of our children in cold blood as they did with the child Ahmed Manasra and other children from Jerusalem." In an English translation of Abbas' speech released by the PLO Abbas was quoted as saying Israel "shoots" Palestinian children "as they did with the child Ahmed Manasra," replacing the word "executions" with more moderate language. The speech was heavily criticized by the Israeli side for its inflammatory language and because Ahmed was still alive. Dr. Asher Salmon, the deputy director of the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem were Ahmed was treated, said that the boy was still alive and was in light-to-moderate condition. Photos of Manasra from the hospital were released to support his statements.
Trial of Ahmad
Ahmad was indicted by the Jerusalem District Court on two counts of attempted murder and detained in a closed facility in the Galilee in northern Israel. On November 8, 2015 a ten-minute long video was leaked to Palestinian media showing Israeli interrogators verbally abusing and shouting curses at the visibly distressed Ahmad. The video shows him confessing to the crime which he later would recant. According to Brad Parker of the Defence for Children International - Palestine the video provided evidence of a violation of international juvenile standards found in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. He further claimed that the situation in the video might have amounted to torture. Prosecutor Yuval Kedar said that it was irrelevant that Ahmad was a minor and that he should be prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law." In December 2015, Tareq Barghout, an Arab Israeli lawyer on Manasra's defense team, was arrested on suspicion of praising attackers and encouraging further further attacks on Facebook. The court released Barghout and noted that the material was poorly translated from Arabic to Hebrew and that he had freedom of expression. In May 2016, Ahmad was convicted on two counts of attempted murder, though no blood was found on the knife found in his possession, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. His legal counsel, the Israeli attorney Lea Tsemel, called the conviction "surprising, unbalanced and problematic." She argued that it was Hassan that carried out the stabbings and that neither boy intended to kill anoyone, that they "just wanted to scare Jews so they’d stop killing Palestinians." In August 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court reduced his sentence to 9 and a half years in prison. The court upheld the compensation Ahmed should pay to the two victims; NIS 100,000 to the 13-year-old boy and NIS 80,000 to the 20-year-old security guard.
The "Youth bill"
In response to Hassan and Ahmad Manasra's attack and similar attacks carried out by Palestinian children against Israelis during the 2015–2016 wave of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in August 2016 passed the "Youth bill." The bill allowed Israeli authorities to imprison children from the age of twelve if convicted of "terrorism." Knesset member Anat Berko who introduced the bill said "A society is allowed to protect itself. To those who are murdered with a knife in the heart it does not matter if the child is 12 or 15." Israeli human rights groupB'Tselem condemned the bill.
