Distraught Hebron resident can't get arrested for trying

Unemployed Palestinian goes to extremes to convince IDF to imprison him.

By YAAKOV KATZ
nablus arrest 224.88 (photo credit: AP [file])
nablus arrest 224.88
(photo credit: AP [file])
What does it take to get arrested in the West Bank? A lot if you are Amin Amaro, a 30-year-old Palestinian from Hebron. Amaro, whose trial will begin later this month at the Ofer Military Court near Jerusalem, wanted so badly to get arrested that he sent a death threat to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and then when he wasn't arrested, asked a soldier at a roadblock to lie and say that he had tried to stab him. The motive? Amaro told police that he wanted to be arrested since he didn't get along with his father and brother, didn't have a job and missed his friends who were already in Israeli prisons. The story began in late June when Amaro went to the Hebron Public Library and sent a fax to the Prime Minister's Office in which he threatened Netanyahu that his days "are numbered" and that soon he would be killed. Amaro signed the letter with his name and ID number. But several days later, after no one came to his house to arrest him, Amaro became impatient. "I waited for the Shin Bet to come and arrest me and several days went by, but they didn't come," Amaro said in a signed affidavit presented to the Ofer Military Court. "So I thought that I had no choice but to take a knife and go stab a settler so the Shin Bet would have to pay attention to me." On July 17, Amaro left his home in Hebron armed with a 10-cm. knife and traveled to the Gush Etzion junction with the aim of stabbing a settler. He spotted a female civilian standing next to two soldiers, so instead he approached one of the soldiers. "I told the soldier to call his commanders and say that he captured a Palestinian armed with a knife," Amaro said in his signed confession. "The soldier refused to lie and said that he would tell the police what really happened." That was finally enough, though, for the IDF and the soldier called the police who then arrived at the scene and arrested Amaro. He is being charged by the IDF Prosecutor's Office with threatening Netanyahu, attempted assault and obstruction of justice.