MIDDLE EAST: The Israeli authorities have received complaints that police tied a 12-year-old Palestinian boy to the bonnet of a jeep to deter stone-throwing protesters in a village north-west of Jerusalem.
The alleged "human shield" incident was witnessed by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the leader of the Israeli Rabbis for Human Rights group, who said he was arrested when he tried to intervene.
The incident was also photographed by the Alternative Information Centre, a Palestinian-Israeli organisation.
According to Rabbi Ascherman, the incident occurred on April 15th, when demonstrators were attempting to prevent workers from building a section of Israel's controversial separation barrier through the lands of the Palestinian village of Bidu in the West Bank.
Rabbi Ascherman, who had been taking part in a demonstration in another part of the village against the route of the fence, received a call alerting him that a boy, Mohammed Badwan, was being beaten by the police.
When he attempted to intervene, Rabbi Ascherman said he was tear-gassed, head-butted, beaten, arrested, handcuffed and forced to stand with two other arrested activists, a Palestinian and a Swede, in front of another jeep for more than two hours.
He said the boy was crying and shaking from fear. Rabbi Ascherman said he repeatedly tried to inform the policemen that the use of human shields is illegal, and asked for medical attention for the boy, but his requests were met with "physical and verbal threats, orders to 'shut up.' " He said he had made a formal complaint.
"Will we as a society come to realise that these kinds of incidents are almost an inevitable part of the reality of occupation, in a situation where Palestinians and Israelis are like two roosters being put in a ring to fight each other? It's a lose-lose situation," he added.
A spokesman for the Israeli police, Supt Gil Kleiman, said: "We got information which gave us suspicion that certain procedures with regard to dispersing rioters wasn't being abided by and there was a suspicion of prima facie evidence that a criminal offence might have been committed."
Five Palestinians have died during protests at Bidu against the fence, including four stone-throwers who were shot dead and an elderly man who had a heart attack after being tear-gassed.