Roqaya Abu-Eid, 13, who tried to stab guard was influenced by other deaths, funerals; father says there was no need to kill her
A relative of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, who was shot and killed on Saturday when trying to knife a security guard at a West Bank settlement, said she had an “urge” to act and was influenced by other terrorists.
At the same time, other family members of Roqaya Abu-Eid questioned why she had been killed rather than subdued. Her father said there had been no need to kill her.
Abu-Eid was shot by a civilian security guard at the entrance to Anatot, near Jerusalem, when she rushed at him with a knife, police said. She lived in the nearby Palestinian village of the same name.
Israel Police said after an initial investigation that the girl had fought with her parents and stormed out the family home with the knife, declaring that she wanted to die, a claim rejected by her family.
A teenage relative told Channel 2 on Sunday that she had been inspired to carry out the attack by seeing other incidents.
“She had this urge.That was the reason. She saw the martyrs at Anata, or saw the processions, or saw on TV how they die and their funerals,” he said.
Security camera footage of the incident showed the girl chasing the guard at the gate to the settlement, north of Jerusalem. He then turned around and shot her.
One family member accused the security guard of executing the girl.
“If he’d wanted to protect himself, he could have just shot her in the legs, right? It was clearly an execution,” the relative told the channel.
Eid Abu-Eid, Roqaya’s father, told AFP the guard should have acted differently.
“She was a little girl. There’s no reason in the world for her to be shot and killed. It was as though he issued her a death sentence,” he said.
Eid Abu-Eid was among the hundreds who attended her funeral on Sunday in Yatta, the southern Hebron hills village from where the family originated. “The person who shot her could have apprehended her or shot her in the leg — he didn’t have to kill her,” he said by telephone.
Asked if he would seek legal redress, Abu-Eid said he had “turned to God” instead, since he trusted no court, Israeli or any other.
At least 29 Israelis and some 150 Palestinians, most of them attackers according to the IDF, have been killed in the latest spate of terrorism and violence in recent months, which has included Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks in Israel and the West Bank.
As reported by The Times of Israel