ISRAELI PRESIDENT PARDONS SOLDIER WHO KILLED WOUNDED PALESTINIAN

Israel's President, Isaac Herzog, has pardoned Elor Azaria, a former combat medic convicted in 2017 of the manslaughter of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man he shot dead in Hebron in the occupied West Bank in 2016. Herzog's office said the decision followed a recommendation from Defence Minister Israel Katz, who had written to the president in July asking that Azaria's criminal record be cleared. Al-Sharif had stabbed a soldier before Azaria shot him in the head as he lay wounded and unarmed on the ground, an act captured on mobile phone footage. Herzog's office cited the passage of time and the approaching Yom Kippur holiday among the factors behind the decision.

The case divided opinion in Israel, where military service is compulsory for most Jewish men. Azaria began his sentence in August 2017; one report said he was released after serving two-thirds of an 18-month term, while another said he served nine months, being freed in May 2018 after a reduction by a parole committee. Herzog's office said Azaria had "expressed his sorrow" in his request, having previously called the shooting an "operational error", but a senior Israeli army officer said he had neither expressed remorse nor accepted responsibility, even a decade on. The military's chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, had recommended against the pardon, according to Israeli media. Katz called it a "right, humane and fitting decision", saying Azaria had been on a "complex operational mission", while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said it made him "emotional and very happy".

Some Palestinians and human rights groups had said Azaria's original sentence was too lenient. In 2024, the Biden administration barred Azaria and his immediate family from entering the United States, describing his actions as "a gross violation of human rights, namely an extrajudicial killing in the West Bank". Israeli generals had pushed for his prosecution amid a wave of stabbings and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, while supporters demonstrated outside his trial. In his first interview after release, Azaria said he would "act exactly the same, because that's how I needed to act".