Ni’lin, West Bank: Human rights advocates in the Occupied Territories are calling for a investigation after video footage (above) surfaced of an Israeli soldier shooting a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian at close range with a rubber bullet.

The incident occurred July 7 in Ni’lin, a village in the West Bank where residents have protested against the construction of a separation barrier to protect Israeli settlements. The Palestinian, Ashraf Abu-Rahma, 27, was stopped by soldiers, who cuffed and blindfolded him for about 30 minutes. Abu-Rahma said the soldiers beat him and then led him to an army Jeep, where the battalion commander held his arm and another soldier shot him in the foot. The rubber-coated steel bullet hit his left toe, he received treatment from an army medic, and was then released by the soldiers.

The video was filmed by a young girl who witnessed the shooting from her home in Ni’lin. Until the video appeared, the Military Police had not conducted an investigation or taken any measures against the soldier or the battalion commander. Residents of Ni’lin stated that, the day after the incident, they saw the soldier still serving in his unit.

Now, according to media reports, the Military Police have opened an investigation and arrested the soldier who fired the shot. The Ni’lin Popular Committee Against the Illegal Apartheid Wall has started an “>online petition calling for full prosecution and justice for the human rights abuses committed in Ni’lin.

Israeli soldiers have cracked down on the village ever since residents there began protesting what they call the “apartheid wall” – a barrier of razor-wire fences and concrete barricades that cuts into their land and has been deemed illegal by the World Court.

Willow Heske, an Advocacy Project (AP) Peace Fellow volunteering with the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center (DWRC) in Ramallah this summer, created a presentation on the wall’s negative effects on the workers of Ni’lin. The DWRC, an AP partner, advocates for the rights of Palestinian workers and promotes principles of democracy and social justice in the Occupied Territories.

Read Willow’s blog.

Sign the petition.