Yesterday evening, an Israeli settler shot dead the Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in his community of Umm Al-Khair, in the southern occupied West Bank. Known to many international solidarity activists and foreign diplomats for his steadfast non-violent resistance to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian communities of Masafer Yatta, the 31-year-old was critically wounded by a bullet that penetrated his lung, and he died before reaching the hospital. 

Hathaleen’s suspected killer, Yinon Levi, is also well-known to Palestinians and solidarity activists in the region. The founder of the Meitarim Farm outpost and owner of an earthworks company regularly contracted by the Israeli authorities to demolish Palestinian property, Levi has been documented carrying out violent attacks in Palestinian communities with the aim of driving them off their land — including Khirbet Zanuta, one of several villages whose residents were expelled by settlers in the first weeks of the Gaza war.

Levi has been sanctioned by the EU, the UK, France, and Canada; the Biden administration also sanctioned him last year, but U.S. President Donald Trump rescinded all sanctions on Israeli settlers soon after returning to office.

Levi claimed he opened fire in Umm Al-Khair because he had been assaulted by “dozens of rioters” throwing stones, and Honenu, a far-right organization providing him with legal support, described the incident as an attempted “lynching.” A spokesperson for the settlement of Carmel, on whose behalf Levi was likely carrying out excavation work, said it “could have ended in the murder of a Jew if he had not defended himself.”

However, an examination by +972 and Local Call of around 20 videos from the incident makes clear that it was the settlers who attacked the Palestinian residents, not the other way around.

Metadata from the video footage shows that the shooting occurred at 5:29 p.m. Four minutes earlier, Levi entered privately-owned Palestinian land in Umm Al-Khair, accompanied by an excavator driver. The driver plowed through olive trees, destroyed the village’s fence and main water pipe, and attempted to run over Hathaleen’s cousin, Ahmad, striking him in the head with the excavator’s arm and knocking him unconscious. Only then did several other residents begin throwing stones at the excavator.

“The excavator didn’t drive on the paved road, it entered our family’s private land, which we had fenced off and planted with olive trees,” Alaa, Hathaleen’s cousin, told +972 and Local Call. “We tried peacefully to tell them to stop, but they didn’t listen to us. Some residents tried to stand in front of the excavator to block it, but it ran over the fence and used the [arm] to hit Ahmad. People [threw stones] to defend themselves.”

According to the footage, the stones thrown by Palestinian residents did not hit Levi, who was standing several meters away from the excavator. But shortly afterward, Levi ran toward the residents, struck a Palestinian who was filming him in the head with the butt of his pistol, and fired two shots in the direction of the village’s homes.

Six eyewitnesses confirmed to +972 and Local Call that Levi was the shooter; apart from him and the excavator driver, who did not fire a gun, there were no other settlers present.

An analysis of the videos — which capture the moment of the shooting from three different angles — cross-referenced with a visit to the scene earlier today indicates that Levi’s first shot struck Hathaleen, who was standing 35 meters away on the basketball court inside the village’s community center, as he attempted to document what was happening. His second shot was aimed at a large group of people, including at least four small children, but did not hit anyone.

An Israeli settler just shot Odeh Hadalin in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta. Residents identified Yinon Levi, sanctioned by the EU and US, as the shooter. This is him in the video firing like crazy. pic.twitter.com/xH1Uo6L1wN

— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) July 28, 2025

“Three-quarters of the people he fired at were children,” Connor Reese, an international volunteer who currently lives in the area and witnessed the attack, told +972 and Local Call. “He was shooting toward the playground.”

Tynan Kavanaugh, another international volunteer and a medical student at the University of Limerick, ran to where Hathaleen was hit and tried to administer first aid. “I saw he’d been shot directly in the chest,” he recounted. “He’d lost his pulse, so we performed CPR.”

“We brought Awdah to the entrance of the settlement and begged [the settlers] to evacuate him in an ambulance,” Alaa explained. An ambulance did arrive, and Hathaleen was driven to Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. 

After the incident, according to four eyewitnesses as well as video footage from the scene, Levi remained in the area as Israeli soldiers arrived and he pointed out which Palestinians he wanted them to arrest. According to Haaretz, an Israeli-American activist at the scene said that “Levi told him that he’s ‘happy’ he killed [Hathaleen].” The soldiers arrested five residents of Umm Al-Khair, four of whom remain in Israeli detention at the time of writing.

Levi was also detained and brought before a judge today in Jerusalem, not on suspicion of murder but rather of reckless manslaughter. In court, his lawyer argued that there’s no proof the shots he fired hit Hathaleen, and that the latter was standing too far away (he claimed, incorrectly, that the distance was more than 50 meters) to have been struck by a bullet from Levi’s gun. The judge decided to release Levi to house arrest, pending further proceedings. 

‘For a human like Awdah, we should all cry’

Hathaleen had been a contributor to +972 Magazine since 2021, and footage he filmed appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.” The three authors of this article, two of whom co-directed the film, all knew him personally. Basel, also a resident of Masafer Yatta, thought of him like a brother, and is struggling to believe he’s gone.

In addition to being an activist, Hathaleen was an English teacher and a father of three young children. Earlier this year, he was invited to speak to several synagogues and other Jewish organizations in the United States, but had his visa revoked upon arrival.

“There’s so much to say about Awdah,” Alaa, Hathaleen’s cousin, told journalists in Umm Al-Khair today. “He has the kindest, most generous heart you’ll ever know in your life. He’s a person who served his community greatly — more than anyone else. Every single day he worked for our rights. He paid for that service with his blood, and now with his life.

“His most famous saying was, ‘I want to live in peace. I want to raise my children in peace. I don’t want them to experience the occupation. I don’t want them to suffer like I do.’ We just want to live with our dignity, freedom, and rights, without suffering. When will this stop?”

In 2022, Hathaleen’s uncle, Haj Suleiman, was crushed to death by an Israeli police tow truck that had entered Umm Al-Khair to confiscate unregistered cars. An icon of non-violent resistance in the region for several decades, his killing was mourned not only by the entire village but by thousands who came from all over the West Bank for his funeral.

“We live in the midst of constant danger,” Hathaleen wrote while his uncle was still clinging to life after the hit-and-run. “At any time while going about our daily routine, we could end up losing a limb or paralyzed for life.” After Haj Suleiman died of his wounds a few months later, Hathaleen helped paint a mural in his honor that now adorns the front of the village’s community center.

Earlier today, residents set up a mourning tent outside that same community center to honor Hathaleen. The pool of blood that spilled out of Hathaleen’s chest after he was shot was encircled with stones and hidden behind chairs, but some of his relatives sat facing it, their eyes filled with tears.

This afternoon, the Israeli army came and ordered residents to dismantle the tent, and threatened to remove it by force. Like all Palestinian villages in this part of the West Bank, Israel refuses to authorize building permits for Umm Al-Khair and routinely demolishes any new construction.

It appears that the army has now decided that this total ban on construction extends even to erecting gravestones; soldiers told Hathaleen’s family today that they will not release his body until they agree not to bury him inside the village. Some time later, soldiers used tear gas and stun grenades to expel friends and activists who had come to Umm Al-Khair to offer their condolences.

Hathaleen’s cousin, Eid, who traveled to the United States with him earlier this year before they had their visas revoked, described him as a committed advocate of non-violent resistance as well as an outstanding soccer player. “I feel so sad about losing my friend, the kid who grew up with me,” he said. “I’m 42, he was 31. I’ve known him since I was a child. He was a human rights activist, a person who loved everyone.”

Last year, after a particularly brutal wave of Israeli demolitions in Umm Al-Khair, Hathaleen reflected on how the occupation condemns Palestinians to multigenerational trauma. “Amid all of this injustice, we often feel forgotten, lost, or hopeless,” he wrote. “Sometimes we wonder: why do Israelis see us as terrorists and enemies? Why is the world not acting to achieve justice for Palestinians?

“But most of the time, we feel tired,” he continued. “The attacks, the raids, the demolitions: we think about them all the time. I always say that I wish fate hadn’t brought us to this point. But now we are stuck here; there’s no way to leave.”

“They shot Awdah, the peaceful resistance man,” Alaa lamented today. “A teacher, a father, a cousin, a husband. Three sons left without a father. This is what we’re suffering every day.

“For Awdah, the men should cry with the women,” he continued. “For a human like Awdah, we should all cry. We lost Awdah. A more humane person than anyone. The most peaceful person. More peaceful than you could imagine. May God accept him.”

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.