Israeli security guards on Monday shot and wounded a Palestinian who is deaf and could not hear their commands to stop at a West Bank checkpoint, police said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the 60-year-old man was walking in an area of the Qalandiya crossing north of Jerusalem where only vehicles are permitted. Mr Rosenfeld said security guards called upon the man to stop but he continued to “approach them suspiciously”.
They then shot at his legs, wounding him moderately. Only afterwards did the guards discover that the suspect did not respond because he “cannot hear or communicate”, Mr Rosenfeld said.
The incident comes less than three months after Israeli border police shot and killed a 32-year-old Palestinian with severe autism who was apparently mistaken for an attacker. Officers chased the man into a nook in Jerusalem’s Old City and fatally shot him as he cowered next to a rubbish bin.
The killing sparked widespread criticism and calls for police to amend their open fire guidelines to take into consideration those with disabilities.
Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups have long accused Israeli security forces of using excessive force in some cases.
Heba Yazbak, an Arab MP, said Monday’s incident exposed Israeli forces as trigger-happy.
“First they shoot and then they check,” she said. “The shooting of an innocent deaf Palestinian is just another example of the ease with which Israeli security forces can harm human life.”
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
