Footage that emerged on Thursday morning, March 23, of a police officer violently confronting a Palestinian truck driver in occupied East Jerusalem has led to accusations of police brutality, including condemnations from law enforcement authorities.

In the video recording that went viral on social media, a police officer and truck driver, 50-year-old Mazen Shwiki, are seen engaged in a heated conversation that took place on Tuesday, March 21, and that eventually deteriorated into violence; with the officer head butting, punching and kneeing Shwiki in the groin. Bystanders are seen arriving at the scene and attempting to turn the police officer’s attention away from the visibly shaken truck driver. More blows are exchanged, this time between the officer and an onlooker. The officer steps out of the video frame, but then returns to the scene and kicks Shwiki in the back before the clip ends. The incident, which took place in the parking lot of offices of the Ministry of the Interior in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz, reportedly began when the truck driver inadvertently hit the police officer’s car as he was parking his truck.

The police officer who assaulted the truck driver Mazen Shwiki (center background) now attacks a bystander who intervened on the latter’s behalf.

Joint List chairman MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) said he had asked the chief of the Israel Police and the Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan to take action. “I demand the officer’s immediate arrest and that he and his two colleagues who subsequently joined the attack be brought to trial.” MK Odeh emphasized that the problem was not this specific violent police officer, but is rather systemic “This rotten racist violence goes down deep within the police,” he said. “And this police commissioner and public security minister only help spread it.”

Shwiki, the assaulted truck driver, spoke about the incident on Thursday morning, saying that he was suffering from shortness of breath due to fractures to his sternum caused by his battering. “That morning I drove to work, which is by the Interior Ministry in Wadi Joz, in my truck,” he recounted. Shwiki said the police officer accused him of hitting his car while parking the truck, and when he attempted to apologize and offered to help fix the damage to the police officer’s car, the officer attacked him. “The policeman started to curse me and used derogatory language, and then he butted my head and started hitting me for no reason, even though I admitted that I hit his car,” Shwiki said.

Responding to the incident, Joint List MK Yousef Jabareen (Hadash) called it “another testament to the brutality of the police, and the racist and barbaric manner in which they act towards Arab citizens. … Officers in the field have internalized the incitement of the politicians. According to them, Arabs are second-class citizens, or worse, and are citizens without rights.”

The video clip of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3h2AskKlig