Muhammad Al-Durrah Incident - Netzarim Junction

Netzarim Junction

The Netzarim junction, a right-angle intersection of two roads known locally as the al-Shohada (martyrs') junction after the Palestinians who have died there in clashes with Israeli soldiers, lies a few kilometers south of Gaza City (at 31°27′54″N 34°25′36″E / 31.465129°N 34.426689°E / 31.465129; 34.426689). An Israeli military outpost, Magen-3, was maintained here to guard the approach to the nearby Netzarim settlement where—until Israel's withdrawal in 2005—60 Israeli families lived; entering and leaving the settlement only with a military convoy. Magen-3 lay In the lower right/north west quadrant alongside an abandoned warehouse and two six-story buildings known as the "twins." On the day of the incident—Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year—it was manned by 18 Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade Engineering Platoon and the Herev Battalion.

Diagonally across from the IDF position, on the upper left quadrant, was a small building housing a Palestinian police post under the command of Brigadier-General Osama al-Ali, a member of the Palestine National Council. In front of it was a sidewalk along which ran a concrete wall. This was the wall Jamal and Muhammad crouched against. The upper right and lower left of the crossroads consisted of vacant land. According to several commentators—such as James Fallows in The Atlantic in 2003, and a diagram prepared in 2008 by a French ballistics expert (above right)—the lower left quadrant contained a circular dirt berm known locally as the "pita," because it was shaped like pita bread. Fallows writes that a group of uniformed Palestinian policemen stood on the pita, armed with automatic rifles. The "pita" position is not mentioned in the diagram produced by the France 2 cameraman, which marks the position only as "Fields" (see above left).