For a group of Palestinian youths, a casual soccer game in central Hebron ended in hospital after action-hungry settlers brutally attacked them. The incident took place on Sunday evening, 12 April 2020, in the Gheith neighborhood in the city center. At around 8:00 P.M., some 15 young Palestinians were playing soccer in front of the Bakery Checkpoint (southeast of al-Haram al-Ibrahimi and the Tomb of the Patriarchs) when a car with Israeli license plates sped towards them from a-Shuhada Street and came to a screeching halt next to them. Four settlers got out and started pushing the youths. When they tried to defend themselves, two settlers pepper-sprayed and beat them.
Two Border Police officers arrived from the direction of the Bakery Checkpoint and three of the settlers managed to escape uncaught, while the fourth was detained.
Some 15 more officers arrived and ordered neighborhood residents who had started gathering to move over to the other side of the fence, locking the gate behind them. The military installed the fence in the neighborhood in 2017 to make the street available to settlers only, leaving Palestinians a narrow, unpaved passage.
Two youths who were injured, one 16 and the other 21, were taken by a Red Crescent ambulance to the Muhammad al-Muhtaseb Hospital in the city center.