VIDEO UPDATE: Lieberman apologises over Bianca Zammit shooting

Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman today read out a formal apology for the incident in which Bianca Zammit, a Maltese national, was shot in the leg by Israeli Defence Forces personnel in Gaza back on 24 April.

He was giving a press conference with his Maltese counterpart Tonio Borg.

“The investigations are in the hands of the Attorney General in Tel Aviv and we are awaiting their outcome. I am sorry and we are sorry, because it is always a terrible event when civilians are injured.”

Bianca Zammit was injured in an unwarranted attack by IDF personnel while accompanying Palestinian farmers in Gaza to their fields in the so called ‘buffer zone’, a no-go area unilaterally declared by Israel. There is no legal basis for the no-go area, and forms part of the blockade by Israel of the area. Zammit is a member of the International Solidarity Movement.

Asked whether the investigations by the Attorney General would lead to the prosecution of IDF personnel, Lieberman refrained from committing himself. Tonio Borg said the Maltese government “would continue to pursue all avenues”.

Lieberman was met with a wave of protest outside Castille yesterday from members of Moviment Graffitti, who held out a large Palestinian flag and shouted out ‘terrorist’ to the right-wing minister.

His apology yesterday was in stark contrast to the aloofness of the Israeli ambassador to Malta Gideon Meir, who claimed Zammit was “used” by Palestinian militants, accusing the ISM of putting foreigners in harm’s way at the border so that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “could plant bombs and injure Israeli soldiers… ISM has an anti-Israeli policy in whatever it does and says.”

Despite Meir’s claim that the ISM is linked to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, journalists in Gaza say the opposite is true. “The ISM has no links to armed Palestinian factions,” Neta Golan, herself an Israeli Jew and co-founder of ISM, said. “The claim that the ISM receives orders from armed groups is a figment of the ambassador’s imagination, and we challenge him to produce evidence,” Golan said.

The so-called “closed military zones” are in effect areas unilaterally declared so by Israel on Palestinian land, mostly agricultural, having no grounds in international law. Golan says the Israeli-declared no-go areas are also a way of suppressing nonviolent resistance by force. “Whenever there is a peaceful Palestinian demonstration, it becomes a ‘closed military zone’,” she said.