Old video shows Palestinian confronting Israeli soldiers, not 'crisis actor'

"What's going over here? Is it Pallyywood in action?" says a December 13, 2023 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, using a derogatory term that blends "Palestine" with "Hollywood."

The post from Visegrad 24, an account that has previously amplified misinformation, shows footage of an elderly man shouting at Israeli soldiers before abruptly falling to the pavement.

"Are they regular citizens or actors in action movies of Hamas terrorists!?" says another X user sharing the clip.

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Screenshot from X taken December 14, 2023

Similar "crisis actor" conspiracy theories accusing people in Israel and the Gaza Strip of faking casualties have flooded social media since Hamas militants launched a bloody October 7 attack, killing about 1,200 people -- mostly civilians -- and taking some 240 hostages, according to the latest official Israeli figures.

Israel responded with an air and ground offensive that has killed more than 18,700 people -- around 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, according to the Hamas government's health ministry.

At the same time, violence has increased in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

But the video shared online does not show a recent confrontation between soldiers and a Palestinian man. It is more than eight years old and the man did not fake an injury.

AFP could not determine the source of the clip shared online, but a reverse image search surfaced other footage from various news outlets that depicts the altercation from a slightly different angle.

The October 2015 videos show the same individual -- identifiable by his outfit -- soldiers and red-and-white striped curb (archived here, here, here and here).

Reports indicate the man, Ziyad Abu Haleel, was confronting the soldiers in Hebron, at a time of heightened violence in the in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

After yelling for some time, Haleel, then 65 years old, collapsed. Nearby journalists assisted him until an ambulance arrived.

He was later treated and released from the hospital, according to reports. The man spoke to Al Jazeera about the incident (archived here).

The confrontation followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration of "war" on stone-throwers -- often Palestinian youth -- implementing new rules for security forces on when to open fire.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported an uptick in violence in October 2015 led to more than 7,400 Palestinian casualties. Among those in the West Bank, it was to date the highest recorded figure in a single month since 2005 (archived here).

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war, including false "crisis actor" claims, here.