In a powerful and comprehensive report, the global human rights organization Amnesty International has sharply criticized Israeli soldiers for their reckless use of force in putting down nonthreatening Palestinian demonstrations. The report calls on Israel to stop using lethal force against Palestinian demonstrators and rescind military orders that reject Palestinian rights to freedom of expression and assembly. It also called on the Palestinian Authority and the PLO to “sign and ratify, without reservations, international human rights treaties including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

Publishing a damning report on Israel at a time when the world is busy with Syria and Ukraine will no doubt help shift attention back to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It also adds a powerful element to the political discussion, namely the need for Western powers to stop selling weapons to Israel because of its flagrant violation of human rights and its war crimes that have been taking place undetected. The fact that a major international organization like Amnesty International is supporting the weapons boycott of Israel is a major political breakthrough.

The 87-page research report, citing UN figures, titled "Trigger-Happy, Israel's Use of Excessive Force in the West Bank," reveals the Israeli military’s disregard for Palestinian human life. It includes field investigations of 22 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank killed by Israeli soldiers in 2013. A further 261 Palestinians, among them 67 children, were injured by live ammunition in the period 2011-13. The number of killings and injuries in 2013 were a sharp increase of previous years. Most of the cases documented involved young people below the age of 25, and included four children.

Amnesty’s report opens with the heart-wrenching story of Samir Awad, a 16-year-old Palestinian student from the village of Bodrus, northwest of Ramallah. Awad and other students took part in an impromptu protest against the wall built on the town’s land, when they were ambushed by Israeli soldiers. Awad was shot three times, according to the report. He was initially hit in the leg, then in the shoulder and finally in the back of the head — a shot that proved to be fatal. The report details how Awad ran away after the initial shots, clearly proving the lives of Israeli soldiers were never in danger and constituting his killing as “extrajudicial.”