JERUSALEM
An Israeli military court convicted an Israeli soldier of manslaughter Wednesday for fatally shooting an already-injured Palestinian man last year.
Elor Azaria, 18, was convicted after Judge Col. Maya Heller said he had "needlessly" shot Abdul-Fattah Sharif in the head, resulting in the latter’s death.
The court rejected arguments by the soldier’s defense team that Sharif had already died of wounds sustained earlier when he was shot by Azaria.
Sharif had already been injured and disarmed after allegedly carrying out an attack -- during which a second Palestinian was also killed -- in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron last March.
Azaria later claimed that he had feared Sharif had been carrying a bomb at the time.
The court, however, found that there had been no imminent threat to the soldier, meaning he violated the Israeli security forces’ so-called "rules of engagement" when he shot the injured Palestinian.
The court dismissed most of Azaria's argument, describing it as "evasive", including claims he had suffered psychologically.
The shooting was caught on camera by a Palestinian activist, leading to a split within the Israeli government after the military moved to prosecute Azaria despite vocal opposition from Israel’s far right -- including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Following Wednesday’s court verdict, Arab-Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh said Israel’s "criminal occupation" of the Palestinian territories had "produced the likes of Azaria", asserting that "hundreds of similar incidents" had not been caught on film.
One day earlier, Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot said that Azaria should not be viewed as a hero by Israeli society, stressing that he was a soldier obliged to adhere to acceptable military conduct.
In contrast, right-wing education minister and head of the Jewish Home party Naftali Bennett has called for Azaria to be immediately pardoned -- even if he was found guilty of manslaughter.
After the court verdict, Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Weissman, the case’s military prosecutor, said: "This is not a happy day for us. We would have preferred this [the shooting] hadn’t happened. But the deed was done and the offense was severe."
He went on to describe the verdict as "important, clear and decisive".
In a Wednesday statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said: "Not only Azaria, but the entire [Israeli] occupation should be convicted for the crimes it commits daily against the Palestinian people."
Commenting on Facebook, Jamal Zahalgah, an Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), said the crime for which Azaria had been convicted was "only one example of thousands of similar -- and more dangerous -- crimes" committed by Israel’s occupation authorities.
Fathi Abdul Sharif, for his part, a spokesman for the slain man’s family, described Azaria’s trial as "farcical".
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, he said Sharif’s family planned to resort to the International Criminal Court "to prosecute the soldier who killed our son in cold blood".
The court has not yet sentenced Azaria, who is expected to appeal the guilty verdict.
