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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘This is an unimaginable nightmare': Residents gather to mourn Palestinian-American and friend killed in Israeli-occupied West Bank
Palestinian flags covered their bodies and their heads were wrapped with keffiyehs as the two young men were lifted through the crowd. Hundreds of residents of Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya, in the occupied West Bank , gathered on Sunday to mourn two of their own. American citizen Sayfollah Musallet (20) and Palestinian Mohammed Hussein Al-Shalabi (23) died last Friday – one was beaten to death by Israeli settlers, the other shot, their families and witnesses say. The men were killed after they went to agricultural land owned by local residents beside the nearby town of Sinjil. This has become a common Friday tradition, as Israeli settlers increasingly try to seize territory in this area – around 19km northeast of the city of Ramallah – and Palestinians attempt to defend it. The deaths happened three months after Israeli soldiers shot and killed 14-year-old American citizen Amer Rabee, in Turmus Aya, a town less than 5km away. READ MORE Musallet was born and living in Florida , where he worked at his family's Tampa ice-cream shop. He travelled to the West Bank on June 4th, his family said. Reading a family statement, his cousin Diana said Musallet was surrounded by settlers for more than three hours as paramedics tried to reach him, meaning they were unable to give him life-saving medical assistance. 'Saif was a brother and a son ... a kind, hard-working and deeply successful young man,' she said. 'This is an unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face. We demand the US State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes. Saif is not just a number. He is the kid that brings light in every room he walks into. We won't let him be forgotten.' [ 'Hanging on by a thread': Two days with activists protecting Palestinians from being forced off their land Opens in new window ] A US embassy spokesperson confirmed the death, telling The Irish Times: 'We offer our condolences to the family and are providing consular assistance. We have asked Israeli authorities for further details.' A state department spokesperson added that they have 'no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas', while referring questions about an investigation to the Israeli government. Men carry the bodies of American citizen Sayfollah Musallet (20) and Palestinian Mohammed Hussein Al-Shalabi (23), both killed during settler violence last Friday. Photograph: Sally Hayden Relatives of Mohammed Hussein Al-Shalabi (23) gather to mourn together the day after his death. Photograph: Sally Hayden Land near where settlers have been attacking in Sinjil, the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Sally Hayden A poster remembering American citizen Sayfollah Musallet (20) seen during his funeral on Sunday. Photograph: Sally Hayden Men pray at the funeral for American citizen Sayfollah Musallet (20) and Palestinian Mohammed Hussein Al-Shalabi (23), in Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya, the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Sally Hayden An Israeli military spokesperson said a joint investigation had been opened by the Israeli police and the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division, and they could not share further details because the case is 'ongoing.' The military previously accused 'terrorists' of 'hurl[ing] rocks at Israeli civilians', saying a 'violent confrontation' later developed 'which included vandalism of Palestinian property, arson, physical clashes, and rock hurling'. A witness to Friday's violence said the settlers came 'like a gang' and 'made a trap', arriving while Palestinians were 'up in the farms' and using a vehicle to block the exit road. He suggested one of the reasons the settlers want to control the land is that it contains dozens of farms and water wells. Many American-Palestinians, like Musallet, regularly return to the area their family originally comes from and maintains a base in, even if they find full-time existence here unsustainable. 'We have to go to America to work,' explained one of Musallet's relatives. As a Palestinian living in the occupied West Bank, Shalabi faced restricted movement under occupation. Like many others there – who say Israel's stranglehold on the Palestinian economy hugely restricts employment opportunities – Shalabi was unable to find steady work and did whatever daily jobs he could find, said his uncle Samer Shalabi (55). Still, his uncle called Shalabi a 'happy kid' who would do 'things for the family to make their life easier'. [ Sanctions against individual settlers are hopelessly inadequate. The real settler organisation is Israel Opens in new window ] The day after his death, dozens of women sat in Shalabi's home, red-eyed and in shock. In the middle was his mother, Jumana Shalabi. She described the hours, on Friday, after she heard there were clashes and someone had died. 'My heart was worried,' she said. Because the military blocked the roads, witnesses said, friends and relatives were not able to search for Shalabi until late on Friday night, when they discovered his body. His mother believed he could have survived if he received medical attention sooner. 'He is the warmest son, warm with everybody. All the people in the neighbourhood, they loved him,' she said, crying again. Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem has documented at least 40 attacks by settlers in Sinjil over the last five years, including them setting fire to vehicles and homes in January this year, and last year cutting down olive trees, vandalising cars, stealing water tanks and chasing harvesters off their land with a drone. In 2022, settlement watchdog Kerem Navot wrote : 'It's clear that the settlers ... have their eyes on the land of the village of Sinjil,' saying an area of around 1,200 acres had been 'marked as a target for takeover decades ago'. As the settlers advanced, residents of Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya and Sinjil issued calls to journalists. On July 4th, they invited The Irish Times to a 'civil peaceful demonstration and protest', saying, 'We can't access our lands due to the settlers' violent act[s] toward us. We have farms, homes and property and lands that we cannot attend to due to Israeli settlers blocking the roads, shooting at us, and throwing rocks on our vehicles.' Diana, a cousin of Sayfollah Musallet, reads a family statement the day after his death. Photograph: Sally Hayden A civil defence volunteer used his vehicle to transport wounded people following Friday's violence. Photograph: Sally Hayden Blood stains were still visible in a vehicle used to transport injured people the day after Friday's violence. Photograph: Sally Hayden One week later, the two young men were killed. Residents said more people were injured, with one civil defence volunteer showing The Irish Times streaked blood inside the vehicle he said he used to transport wounded people before the roads were blocked. At least 1,161 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of 2023, according to the UN, including at least 22 women and 236 children. The vast majority – 884 – were killed by live ammunition, the UN says. Over the same period, at least 59 Israelis were killed in the West Bank, including nine women and nine children. Musallet's friend from the US, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Juma, said they were part of a 'bunch of guys in Tampa who used to hang out every day ... We used to go to his house just to chill. We used to go to the pool, we used to go to the range, we used to go fishing together'. Juma – whose family is originally from the same area – called Musallet 'the best of us ... He never drank, he never did any drugs. This kid was just the best human being you'll ever meet in your life'. [ Three Palestinians killed by Israeli army during raid by settlers Opens in new window ] The 23-year-old said he finds being an American citizen 'very difficult' now. 'The country I live in supports the killing of my people. It's hard ... You see what's happening in Gaza. I hope something changes ... You can see this new generation that's coming up. They're becoming more aware of what's going on around the world ... They're seeing what they're seeing.' 'What happened is something that is not acceptable, not easy to deal with,' said Shalabi's uncle, Samer. 'Two kids who were killed in a very cold blood ... If you look at the eyes of the people you find the anger and sadness.' He said locals are terrified now, 'but even with that, they will never leave here ... It's our country. We're going to stay here. There's no other place for us'.
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Israeli Forces Said They Killed a ‘Terrorist.' He Was 14 Years Old.
The clothes were strewn on a ridge dotted with olive and almond trees, perched above a highway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. On rust-colored earth sprinkled with wildflowers were a torn black T-shirt, black Converse socks and a pair of Nike Air white sneakers. Nearby lay a pair of bloodied, gray Nike sweatpants and a black hoodie perforated with holes. Here, on April 6, near Turmus Aya, a village in the West Bank where most of the residents have U.S. citizenship, Israeli soldiers gunned down Amer Rabee a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy who was born in New Jersey. The military handed over his naked, bullet-ridden body a few hours later in a blue body bag, according to his family. The Israeli military has accused Amer and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians. It described the boys as 'terrorists,' and said its soldiers had 'eliminated' one and shot the two others. Amer's family and one of the surviving boys deny the accusation, saying that they were picking almonds. Amer was shot multiple times in his upper body, according to photographs his family shared with The New York Times. Amer's killing has added to accusations that the Israeli military uses excessive force and operates with impunity. It came amid a sharp spike in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out raids and tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation. Rampages by extremist settlers against Palestinians have also increased recently. Amer's death has also raised questions about the American response to helping its own citizens. Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey have called for an American-led investigation into Amer's death, but the Trump administration has remained largely noncommittal. Last month, the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said at a press briefing that the Israeli military believed it was stopping an act of terrorism. 'We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground,' she added. American officials did not respond to a request for further information. More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mostly by the Israeli military and some by settlers, since the Hamas-led offensive against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations. Roughly 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank during that period. From 2018 to 2022, less than a third of complaints that soldiers had harmed Palestinians in the West Bank resulted in an investigation, according to a recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization. Only a fraction have led to legal action. A Hail of Gunfire The three young boys had gone out to pick green almonds, a seasonal delicacy, in a terraced orchard between Turmus Aya and Route 60, a busy north-south artery linking a patchwork of Palestinian towns and Jewish settlements, one of the friends, Ayoub Jabara, 14, told The Times at his home in Turmus Aya. He denied that they had thrown stones, saying that they had merely been throwing dried almonds at each other. Ayoub, who is also a Palestinian-American, described reaching a point very close to the main road, and finding a tree with dried-up nuts. 'Amer picked one up and was joking that it was like a stone and threw it at me. I threw it back,' he said. Amer was shot at least 11 times, according to his father, Mohammed Rabee. Photographs taken on the cellphone of a family friend who accompanied Mr. Rabee when they picked up Amer's body appeared to show several entry wounds, including one in the center of his forehead and others in his neck and upper torso. Hours after the shooting, the Israeli military issued a 10-second clip of blurry footage without a time stamp that shows three unidentifiable figures appearing to gather things from the ground. One of the figures appears to fling something in a downward motion, though no object is visible. The video cuts out as all three appear to turn and run. The military said that its footage was filmed from a military post and that the soldiers were lying in ambush in what they described as a counterterrorism operation in the area. Four days after Amer died, reporters for The Times searched the ridge where he was killed for any signs of the shooting and came across the clothes. Garments that appeared to have been cut off by soldiers and blue surgical gloves were scattered around a bloodstained rock. The military said it was standard procedure to remove clothes to ensure the body was not booby-trapped. The clothes were later identified by the family as Amer's, when the reporters returned them to the family at their home. Even if the boys did throw stones, said Mr. Rabee, Amer's father, the soldiers could have fired warning shots to scare them away, or could have chased and detained them. 'He was 14 years old,' he said. 'It takes no special training to catch a little kid.' Instead, the soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at family believes they wanted to kill him. The military declined to confirm or deny that it has a shoot-to-kill policy for stone throwers. Ayoub, Amer's friend, suffered 'multiple gunshot wounds,' according to medical records from the Istishari Arab hospital in nearby Ramallah, where he spent three days in the intensive care unit. Both Dr. Mohammad Qneibi, a physician at a local clinic where Ayoub was first taken, and Ayoub's father, Ahed Jabara, told The Times that the boy was shot at least three times in the groin area. The family of the third boy, Abdulrahman Shihada, 15, declined to be interviewed. Hopes of Living in America In Turmus Aya, Amer's parents were still reeling from their loss in the days after the shooting, and Amer's siblings and cousins from the United States had flown in to mourn him. Mr. Rabee and his wife, Majed, left the West Bank for New Jersey in 2001. They moved back to Turmus Aya in 2013, when Amer, the youngest of their five children, was a toddler. The parents wanted their children to be schooled in Arabic and to absorb Palestinian identity and culture. Amer's four older siblings had moved back to the United States after finishing high school. He had dreamed of joining them, and the night before he was killed, he had been texting in English with his siblings about his future business plans to market mini cotton candy machines. Villagers first started moving to the United States more than a century ago and relatives followed. Now, about 85 percent of Turmus Aya's residents are dual Palestinian-American citizens. Many, like the Rabee family, come and go. The evening Amer died, he left the house without saying goodbye, his mother, Majed, said. 'He didn't think he was never coming back.' Amer's father, Mr. Rabee, got a call from a friend at 6:41 p.m. saying there had been a shooting. Word had been spreading in the village that Amer was involved. Mr. Rabee called his son's phone several times but got no reply. At 6:58 p.m., he called the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem's hotline and said his son needed immediate help. He said American officials did not respond with any practical assistance. The embassy did not respond to a request for comment. At about 9:30 p.m., a Palestinian official called to say that Amer had been killed. Mr. Rabee went to an Israeli military base in the northern West Bank where, shortly before midnight, Amer's body was transferred to a Palestinian ambulance. 'I said, 'Praise be to God,' and I kissed him,' Mr. Rabee said. Mr. Rabee said that he did not trust any of the authorities to investigate and that Amer had been buried a day later, without an autopsy. 'Only God can judge; I have sent the case to God for judgment,' Mr. Rabee said. .
NBC News
12-04-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Community mourns after Palestinian-American teenager killed in West Bank
A community in the West Bank is mourning the death of 14-year-old Amer Rabee, a Palestinian-American boy who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers after they claim he was throwing rocks at passing cars. NBC News' Matt Bradley is in his home village of Turmus Ayya, where thousands of other Palestinian-Americans say they feel abandoned by the Trump administration.
Washington Post
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Palestinian American teen fatally shot by Israeli troops in West Bank village
TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — Hundreds of people gathered at the mosque in this small village Monday as they bid farewell to Amer Rabee, a 14-year-old Palestinian American shot dead by Israeli forces a day earlier. The Israeli military shot three teenage boys in Turmus Ayay on Sunday, the mayor and mourners said, as violent attacks by Israeli settlers and troops in the West Bank continues to surge in the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war.
