JERUSALEM, Oct 5: A grainy video of an Israeli soldier bellydancing around a bound and blindfolded woman prisoner has provoked a furious response from the Palestinians.

The clip, which came to light after it was screened on Israel's private Channel 10 television late on Monday showed a soldier gyrating to rhythmic drumbeat of an Arabic track as the woman, who is wearing a headscarf, huddles against a wall, her hands bound in front of her and her eyes bound with a white cloth.

The soldier, who is wearing sunglasses and grinning broadly, repeatedly brushes up close to the woman who has a Hebrew speech bubble coming out of her mouth reading “Allahu Akbar”.

Crudely captioned “israeli soldier catch arab terrorist (he dance on haer) funny”, the clip lasts just over a minute.

The video was immediately slammed by the Palestinian Authority as “deeply offensive to the dignity of women”.

“This is a disgusting illustration of the sick mentality of the occupier. This is not an isolated incident,” said a strongly-worded statement from the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

In response, the army condemned the clip and said the military police had opened an investigation into what it described as an “isolated” incident.

“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) denounces actions such as those depicted in the videos,” it said, referring to an unspecified number of video clips. “The videos are isolated cases that do not represent the IDF as a whole.”

The statement said that from now on, a military police investigation would become “standard practice in cases in which similar behaviour is alleged”.

Exposure of the video came just seven weeks after an Israeli soldier sparked widespread outrage by posting pictures of herself smiling and larking around next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners.

The army denounced the pictures as “shameful,” while the Palestinian Authority described them as humiliating, but the former soldier, Eden Abergil, could not understand why the images had caused such offence.

Rights groups said at the time that photographs were clear evidence of a culture within the military that treated Palestinians as objects rather than human beings -- a sentiment which was echoed by Mr Fayyad's office on Tuesday .

“With the advent of easy-to-use media like YouTube, the truth is coming to light about a culture of humiliation of the Palestinians,” it said.

“The soldiers are fed by a wider Israeli policy that behaves (as if it were) above the law and human rights values.” —AFP