Human rights organizations have criticized Israel for targeting health facilities and emergency vehicles in its war against Hamas, but a video of a soldier stopping an ambulance at gunpoint is unrelated to the 2023 conflict. The clip spreading online was filmed in the occupied West Bank in 2019.
“Israeli forces detain paramedics at gunpoint preventing them from saving lives in Gaza,” says a December 7, 2023 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In the video, a soldier points an assault rifle through an emergency vehicle’s window. Subtitles say: “Hand over the car keys! Hand them over.”
Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 and carried out the deadliest attack since the country was created in 1948. Fighters associated with the Palestinian Islamist movement killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and took some 240 hostages, according to the latest official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that has left swathes of Gaza in ruins.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says more than 18,700 people have been killed — around 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents. The United Nations estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million citizens have been displaced.
Human Rights Watch in November called for an investigation of an Israeli ambulance strike in Gaza, and other groups have criticized the country for targeting health facilities. More than a dozen member states of the World Health Organization have urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarian workers in the Palestinian territory.
However, the video shared on social media is unrelated to the war — a keyword search found the same clip in a 2019 YouTube video (archived here).
The footage, posted by the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, is titled: “Israeli soldiers detain Palestinian ambulance at gunpoint during protest in the village of Beit Sira.”
The Jerusalem-based human rights group said in its corresponding report (archived here) that Israeli soldiers detained the ambulance for approximately 15 minutes on March 8, 2019.
The vehicle was attempting to respond to a demonstration against the killing of two men that turned violent in Beit Sira, a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank. Israeli authorities shot teargas and rubber bullets into the crowd, according to the report.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Troops there have recently carried out deadly raids in Jenin, with Palestinian militants and children among the casualties.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war here.