Jenin killings latest example of Israel’s ‘shoot to kill’ policy

The killing of two unarmed Palestinian men as they surrendered to Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin is the latest example of a practice that, while shocking, is not extraordinary.

The men, named as Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah and Youssef Asasa, had their arms raised and their shirts lifted up to show they had no weapons. Ordered to turn back towards the building they had come out of by Israeli forces, they crawled back. They were then shot and killed at point-blank range.

Caught on camera, the incident on Thursday has elicited international outrage, and the promise of an investigation from the Israeli military. But for Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli Minister of National Security, the Israeli forces “acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die”.

That is because Israel has long had a policy of ‘shoot to kill’ when it comes to Palestinians, even when unarmed. And while the capture of the Jenin killings on camera has made the case particularly stand out, it follows a longstanding pattern of behaviour.

“The mindset that led to this has existed for a long time,” Tirza Leibowitz, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said. “It’s the product of years of separation, subjugation and occupation. Over the years, Israeli society has just gotten used to it.”

History of violence

Leibowitz pointed to the January 2024 killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza, whose final hours were spent pleading for help over the phone with aid workers, as she sat in a car with family members who had already been killed by an Israeli attack. Rajab, along with the Palestinian ambulance team sent to rescue her, was later found dead.

Another incident from Gaza, echoing the killings in Jenin, in that it was caught on camera, was the March 2024 killing of two unarmed men, even after one of them repeatedly attempted to signal his surrender.

In 2018, there was the infamous case of Mohammed Habali, a mentally challenged man who was shot in the back of the head and killed while walking away from Israeli soldiers in Tulkarem. And in 2020, Eyad al-Halaq, a Palestinian with autism, was headed to his special needs school when he was shot and killed by Israeli police in occupied East Jerusalem.

The practice has also been deadly for Israelis. In December 2023, three Israeli captives had escaped in Gaza. As they attempted to surrender – with one of them holding a white flag – they were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Israel often announces investigations into such incidents, but in the majority of cases – particularly when involving Palestinians – the shooters are allowed to go free. The killings are often justified as a necessary response to people deemed to be threats.

After years of such incidents, and little repercussion, critics say that it is not surprising to see the killings continue.

“It takes place with impunity,” said Leibowitz. “National courts sidestep it, saying it’s a security matter so they can’t intervene. That creates an onus on the international community to put checks on [Israel’s] impunity.”

“The only difference between those [previous incidents] and this most recent incident is that this time it was caught on camera,” Leibowitz said. “Israeli rights groups, such as Yesh Din and B’Tselem, had been documenting and following up on incidents like these for over a decade with little or no response from the media or public.”

‘No one cares’

The killing of Abdullah and Asasa in Jenin is unlikely to cause a scandal in Israel. Accusations of torture, rape and the deliberate imposition of famine have previously dogged Israel throughout its genocidal war on Gaza, with little pushback from the Israeli public.

“No one cares. No one’s willing to comment,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, said.

“Two weeks ago, on the same days that the UN was considering cases of torture against Israel, I tried introducing a private members bill criminalising torture,” she said. “I was attacked viciously by a government minister who said I was trying to tie the hands of the state of Israel in dealing with ‘terrorists’.”

“Essentially, he was saying that Israel uses torture and needs to keep doing so,” she added.

Torture

Accusations of the wholesale disregard for Palestinian life extend further than just the executions in Jenin.

A report to the UN committee, compiled by a number of Israeli rights groups, included evidence of Palestinians receiving medical treatment while shackled and blindfolded. Other instances detailed Palestinians being deliberately starved and being forced to wear nappies rather than be allowed access to toilets.

All the charges were denied by Israel.

According to the rights group Yesh Din, between 2018 and 2022 the Israeli army received 862 complaints about alleged offences by soldiers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. This is in addition to land appropriation, displacement and attacks by settler groups.

Investigators opened 258 criminal probes – about 30 percent – but only 13 led to indictments, involving 29 soldiers.

Just one case concerned a Palestinian killing. That means roughly 1.5 percent of complaints resulted in prosecution, and those complaints covered only part of the incidents Palestinians reported.

For fatal cases, the rate was even lower: one indictment out of 219 deaths brought to the army’s attention, or about 0.4 percent.

Over the period since, Israel has killed almost 70,000 people in Gaza, as well as having displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Writing on Friday, the UN’s Committee on Torture noted its alarm about reports indicating a “de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment [of Palestinians] during the reporting period, which had gravely intensified since 7 October 2023”.

Most Israelis can go months or even years seeing Palestinians only through television coverage designed to stir fear and resentment, pointed out Shai Parnes, director of public outreach at the rights group B’Tselem. He described a process of apartheid and dehumanisation that accelerated after the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, before being weaponised by the government after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“A country can’t carry out a genocide without a large part of its society either supportive of that genocide or indifferent to it. And it’s true that parts of Israeli society are genocidal, you can see it in the comments on the video of the soldiers in Jenin,” Parnes said.

“Israel has never paid any penalty for this,” he said. “These crimes can only happen with impunity. Lawmakers and decision makers need to be held to account. That’s not there. Anyone who harms a Palestinian, if it’s a soldier or a settler, does so with impunity.”