The images circulating on social media since Thursday afternoon are unmistakable. Uniformed Israeli officers stand in front of a building, and an excavator begins breaking down the metal door of a building that could be a garage. Two men come out from under the door with their hands raised; They also lift up their shirts so agents can see they don’t have weapons on them. They get on their knees and lie on the ground and the officers kick them. They do not react to the blows and do not appear to pose any threat, but a police officer shoots them at close range.
The two victims are Al-Muntaser Billah Mahmoud Qasim Abdullah (26 years old) and Youssef Ali Yousef Asasa (37 years old), both residents of the Jabal Abu Dhaher neighborhood in the town of Jenin, one of the hot spots in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli army and police forces carry out widespread and violent raids.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, “Israeli forces, including secret units, surrounded one of the buildings and opened fire on it with air cover. A military bulldozer demolished the main door of the house’s warehouse and forced two men out, before killing them at close range.”
For its part, the Israeli army acknowledged that the shooting occurred Thursday during a joint operation with the border police in Jenin, where “the forces arrested people wanted for terrorist activities, such as throwing explosives and shooting at security forces.”
In a statement, he recounted his version of the events: “The forces entered the area, surrounded the building in which the suspects were located, and began their surrender procedures, which lasted several hours. After using engineering tools on the structure (the excavator), the two suspects fled, and after they left, the suspects were shot.”
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, The Israeli Ministry of Justice opened an investigation towards three border guards, after one of them opened fire on two Palestinian suspects who had apparently surrendered. Although the army said in its statement on Thursday that the incident was under review, it was the ministry unit charged with investigating police misconduct that opened the investigation on Friday, he said. Haaretz.
A border police source told Haaretz that when the two men left the building several hours later, “agents began arrest procedures to verify that they were not carrying weapons or explosives.” The same source added, “One of them, while he was on the ground, tried to get up and made a suspicious movement, so the officers decided to shoot him.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from Geneva condemned the “flagrant killing of two Palestinian men,” noting that it appeared to be a “summary execution.”
It also expressed its concern about “statements by a senior Israeli government official who attempted to exonerate the Israeli security forces of responsibility, which raised serious doubts about the credibility of any future review or investigation by an entity that is not completely independent of the government.”
The High Commissioner refers to the statements of the Minister of National Security, the ultra-nationalist Itamar Ben Gvir, who showed his support for the men in military uniform who “shot wanted terrorists who left a building in Jenin.” “The fighters have behaved exactly as they are expected to do: terrorists must die,” said Ben Gvir, who has overseen the police and granted them sweeping powers in the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023 — when Israel launched its brutal punitive war against Gazans in the wake of Hamas attacks that day.
According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from that date until this week, Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have killed 1,030 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (the territories occupied by Israel), including 223 minors.