News - Middle East: An Israeli soldier has been filmed assaulting a prominent Palestinian human rights activist in front of a famous American journalist in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil.

In a video posted on Twitter by Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker on Monday, the Israeli soldier is seen grabbing Issa Amro by his jacket and neck and throwing him to the ground. He then kicks Amro before being pulled away by another soldier.

"I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this …I can't stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it,” Wright, the author of The Looming Tower, wrote in a post on his Twitter account.

The Israeli military claimed in a statement that the incident occurred after the soldier, who was guarding a military post, asked the Palestinian activist who approached the post, to step away.

It further claimed that in response, the Palestinian began recording and cursing at the soldier, and that a verbal confrontation followed, which soon became a physical confrontation, during which the soldier hit the Palestinian.