An hour later, after al-Durrahs had been evacuated by ambulance, Abu Rahma managed to escape from the scene, he said. In 2002 he told German journalist Esther Schapira that he hid behind a white minivan for safety while he was filming, and that it was around 15 minutes after the shooting ended before he felt it was safe to drive to his studio in Gaza to send the footage by satellite to France 2's bureau in Jerusalem,[55] where Enderlin watched the footage and compiled his report. An affidavit sworn by Abu Rahma on October 3, 2000, says the Israeli soldiers shot the boy in cold blood: "I can assert that shooting at the child Mohammed and his father Jamal came from the above-mentioned Israeli military outpost, as it was the only place from which shooting at the child and his father was possible. So, by logic and nature, my long experience in covering hot incidents and violent clashes, and my ability to distinguish sounds of shooting, I can confirm that the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army."[21] The affidavit was given to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, and signed by the cameraman in the presence of Raji Sourani, a human rights lawyer. France 2's communications director, Christine Delavennat, later said Abu Rahma denied having accused the Israeli army of firing at the boy in cold blood, and that this had been falsely attributed to him.[34]
[edit] Israeli response
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Isaac Herzog, Israeli Cabinet Secretary, said the Palestinian police could have stopped the shooting.[46]
The position of the Israeli government and IDF changed over time, from accepting responsibility in October 2000 to retracting that admission in September 2007.[3] The IDF's first response when Enderlin contacted them before his broadcast was that the Palestinians "make cynical use of women and children," which he decided not to air.[26] The day after the shooting, the IDF issued a statement saying it was impossible to determine the origin of the fire.[41] On October 3, the Israeli army's chief of operations, Major-General Giora Eiland, said the shots had apparently been fired by Israeli soldiers; the soldiers had been shooting from small slits in the wall, he said, and had not had a clear field of vision.[51] Second Lieutenant Idan Quris, who was at the time in command of an engineering platoon at the Israeli outpost, and Lieutenant-Colonel Nizar Fares of the Herev Battalion, at the time acting commander of the outpost, said they did not know who killed the boy, and that no one had seen him from the Israeli position.[56] The Israeli Cabinet Secretary, Isaac Herzog, said that Palestinian security forces could have intervened. "[I]f Palestinian policemen had wanted to save the boy," he told the BBC, "they could have walked into the square, said 'Stop the fire'... and rescued the kid". He said the Israelis had been trying to speak to Palestinian commanders for hours.[46]
In late October 2000, General Samia set up a controversial team of largely non-military investigators (see below), who concluded that the IDF was probably, or certainly, not responsible, depending on who was issuing the statement. The investigators' report was not published, but was presented in 2001 to the prime minister's foreign media adviser, Ra'anan Gissin, and Daniel Seaman, director of the Israeli government press office. Gissin and Seaman began to challenge France 2 in media interviews, to the point where the network threatened the prime minister's office three times with legal action. In 2005, Major-General Eiland publicly retracted the army's admission of responsibility, and in September 2007 a government press office statement to that effect was approved by the prime minister's office. Seaman writes that this was done, at least in part, because Israel's reluctance to support Philippe Karsenty in the libel action France 2 had brought against him (see below)—based on an unwillingness to appear to interfere in another state's legal proceedings—was being misinterpreted as a validation of the France 2 report.[3]Passages Malibu self defense
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