Changing the Guard

Israel completes its pullback from Jericho and the Gaza Strip, but not without glitches and gunfire

It was clear from the start how Ammar Shawa, 12, died. His family was posing for photographs with newly arrived Palestinian soldiers in Jericho when one of them allowed Ammar's 13-year-old brother to handle a loaded AK-47 rifle. It went off, accidentally, and the bullet shattered the younger boy's head. Immediately, local activists of the Palestine Liberation Organization put out a story to townsfolk that withdrawing Israeli soldiers had deliberately left the rifle behind to cause an accident. Later they said that an Arab collaborating with Israel had given the boy the gun, and then that ammunition left by the Israelis...

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