Chairman of the Yesha Council Danny Dayan lashed out at the IDF
Spokesperson Unit on Sunday for not saying it was a terror attack that
killed
Hillel Palmer, 25, and his one-year-old son Jonathan on Friday near Kiryat Arba.
Earlier, Police suspected that
rock throwing was
the cause of the car accident that killed the father and son, Army
Radio reported. "There is no other way of saying it, the IDF did not
tell the truth to the public, the media or the bereaved family," Dayan
said.
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Man, baby killed when car overturns near Kiryat Arba
"As someone that usually protects the IDF, I feel anger and disappointment toward the IDF, its commanders and spokesmen, who covered up the murder of Palmer and his son Jonathan," Dayan continued.
According to a Sunday statement from the IDF Spokesman's Office, a Central Command investigation of the incident on Friday revealed that there were no rocks thrown at the car from the side of the road. It is possible, the statement said, that rocks were thrown from a passing car.
During the incident, which happened on Friday afternoon, the car turned over on Route 60
in the West Bank, between Kiryat Arba
and Karmei Tzur. Soldiers who were at the scene claimed
that they did not witness rocks being thrown toward the road, but at a
court hearing the police representative said that there was reasonable
suspicion that the car veered off the road due to a rock shattering the
windshield.
The
police said that the front window was shattered, and a large rock was
found inside the car with Palmer's blood on it. People close to the
victims claimed that the police quickly determined it as a car accident
in order not to inflame the region.
"So far initial external
examinations of the deceased have raised suspicions that he was probably
hit by some sort of object thrown by a passing car," Judea and Samaria
Police said, adding that nothing had been proven.
The family of Palmer reached
an agreement with the state on Sunday to have blood samples taken from
the bodies of Palmer and his infant son Jonathan.
The agreement
came after the State Attorney's Office petitioned the High Court of
Justice after Palmer's family refused the state permission to conduct an
autopsy on the bodies, to determine the cause of death.
A police representative said over the past month in Hebron, 18 cases of
stone throwing at Israeli vehicles from cars were reported, according to Israel Radio.
An
initial Traffic Police investigation found that the Subaru was
traveling northbound at apparent high speed, and overturned
into a ditch, striking a stone wall. The vehicle flipped in the air twice before falling into the roadside ditch.
Yaakov Lappin , Joanna Paraszczuk and Ben Hartman contributed to this report.