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After footage of the shooting emerged, the UK, France, Germany and Italy released a joint statement sounding the alarm about a deadly surge in settler violence against Palestinians. This latest killing appears to be no mistake, writes chief international correspondent Bel Trew
Friday 28 November 2025 13:38 GMTComments
CloseIsraeli forces caught on camera killing Palestinians who had appeared to surrender
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The footage of Israeli security forces apparently summarily executing two Palestinians is damning.
In the short clip, first broadcast on Egyptian TV, two Palestinian men, apparently unarmed, emerge from a partially destroyed building with their hands above their heads. Several officers order them to lie down.
The officers then open fire at close range and shoot them dead. This happened on Thursday afternoon during an Israeli military and border police raid on Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.
The two men were named as Yusef ’Asa’sah, 39, and al-Muntaser bel-lah ’Abdallah, 26, by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, who said the two were surrendering and apparently posed no threat.
The Israeli military, in a statement, claimed that the individuals were “wanted” and were affiliated with a “terror network” whose name they did not disclose.
open image in galleryThe Palestinian health ministry said in a statement that the two men were killed in the shooting, identifying them as 26-year-old al-Muntaser bel-lah ’Abdallah and 39-year-old Yusef ’Asa’sah (Reuters)“Following their exit, fire was directed toward the suspects,” the military wrote, adding that the “incident is under review by the commanders on the ground”.
Such a brazen killing caught on camera prompted Israeli public broadcaster Kan to report that even the Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir had ordered an “expedited investigation” into the incident.
Kan also reported that the soldiers had said they were following orders. So it seems this is not an isolated incident – nor likely to have been an operational “mistake”.
It is some of the starkest and clearest footage showing a surge in violence and rampant violations of international law committed by Israeli forces. This violence is something that respected Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups have been documenting, and warning about, since the war in Gaza erupted in October 2023.
More than 1,000 people, including numerous foreign citizens, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers in the past two years, according to the United Nations.
That death toll is so high that rights groups say the past two years have been the bloodiest period the area has witnessed since Israel first occupied the land in 1967, almost 60 years ago.
Israeli forces have also stormed and emptied four refugee camps – Jenin, Nur Shams, Tulkarm and Far’a – forcibly displacing more than 40,000 people in February.
This latest execution, along with the other violence and killings, is “the result of an accelerated process of dehumanisation of Palestinians, and the complete abandonment of their lives by the Israeli regime”, said B’Tselem’s executive director, Yuli Novka.
open image in galleryIsraeli soldiers take their positions during the raid in Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (Reuters)“In Israel, there is no mechanism that acts to stop the killing of Palestinians or is capable of prosecuting those responsible,” she added, urging the international community to intervene.
And this is another failing. Donald Trump’s widely lauded “peace deal” for Gaza fails to even mention the occupied West Bank, despite the fact that this extraordinary level of violence has been happening alongside the slaughter in Gaza, where an unprecedented bombardment by Israel has, according to Palestinian health officials, resulted in nearly 70,000 dead.
Even in Gaza, since the ratification in October of Trump’s deal, which he heralded as the dawn of a new peace for the region, the Palestinian health authorities reported this week that more than 340 Palestinians have been killed as Israel has continued to bomb and raid parts of the besieged territory.
As the West Bank is not even mentioned in the deal, military-level raids continue, and result – as this video shows – in extrajudicial killings.
But the violence is not limited to members of the security services.
The UK, France, Germany and Italy released a joint statement on Thursday sounding the alarm about a massive and deadly surge in settler violence against Palestinians, which eyewitnesses have repeatedly explained to me occurs under the watchful gaze of the security forces.
Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 six-day war, an occupation that the International Court of Justice has deemed to be illegal and in defiance of the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood.
open image in galleryIsraeli soldiers are seen during an army raid in the West Bank town of Tubas on 26 November (AP)Since then, Israel has built and expanded its settlements to such an extent that the West Bank is now home to more than 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Since Hamas’s deadly attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, many settlers have actually been armed by the state and recruited into what Israel has called regional defence units, which international, Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say have been getting bolder and more violent every day.
On Thursday, the UK and its allies said the number of attacks had reached “new heights”. There were 264 attacks in October, according to the UN’s humanitarian office, which said this was “the largest number of settlers’ attacks in a single month since the United Nations began recording such incidents in 2006”.
“We, ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, call on the government of Israel to abide by its obligations under international law and protect the Palestinian population of the occupied territories,” the statement added.
The UK has also imposed sanctions on individual settlers.
A representative of B’Tselem has previously told The Independent that not only does the Israeli military support violent settler behaviour, but the settlers themselves have access to state-supplied weapons and are “actually part of the army now”.
“They get total impunity,” the person added at the time.
A stark example is an incident that took place in July in Umm al-Khair, which is part of Masafer Yatta, in the south of the occupied West Bank. The plight of Palestinian communities there, who face relentless attacks from settlers, was featured in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land.
open image in galleryBasel Adra, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘No Other Land’, is pictured beside a damaged car after a settler’s attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills, on 25 March 2025 (AP)There, Awdah Hathaleen, 31, a Palestinian activist who had worked on the documentary, actually appeared to film his own murder by a UK-sanctioned settler, Yinon Levi.
Despite the video footage, and despite there being multiple Palestinian and international witnesses, Levi was only briefly held under house arrest before being freed. He has since been filmed continuing to harass the families in Umm al-Khair.
There can be no miracle “peace” in Palestine, Israel or the region if these wanton acts of violence are not only able to continue with impunity, but normalised.
In order for there to be an actual ceasefire peace deal, the occupied West Bank must also be included in any text.
There must be accountability for violations of international law – to allow peace and security to prevail in a way that is fair for all.
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