Yesterday, just a week after fatally shooting Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, Israeli settler Yinon Levi was back at the scene of the crime, in the Palestinian village of Umm Al-Khair in the occupied West Bank. Levi was calmly directing his earthworks crew on the same private Palestinian land where he had pulled the trigger. It was as if nothing had happened.

Last Monday, Levi was briefly taken into custody and then placed under house arrest. But by Friday, he was freed: in the court hearing over his arrest, Judge Chavi Toker at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled that Levi had “prevented an event involving dozens of [Palestinians] throwing stones,” while police claimed the bullet that pierced Hathaleen’s lung was never recovered. That was enough for the court to order Levi’s immediate release.

“The killer came and stood right next to our homes to oversee the continuation of the work [that was happening when he shot Awdah],” said Tariq Hathaleen, Awdah’s cousin. “It makes me feel nauseous. This is the height of oppression, something we’ve never experienced before.

“If Yinon had killed a dog, he would’ve faced harsher consequences,” he added.

A day after the shooting, the family set up a mourning tent in front of the community center where Hathaleen was killed. But soldiers stormed the tent, expelled mourners, activists, and journalists, and arrested two of the activists. Meanwhile, 20 Palestinian villagers have been arrested over the past week — including Hathaleen’s brother Aziz, who was detained immediately after the shooting when Yinon Levi pointed him out to  soldiers — and three still remain in detention.

As if the killing itself, the harassment and arrests, and Levi’s return to the village weren’t enough, Israeli authorities have refused to release Hathaleen’s body for burial. The decision has plunged the entire village into a surreal state of mourning without closure.

On July 31, some 60 women of the village — ranging in age from 13 to 81 — announced a hunger strike to try to force Israeli authorities return Hathaleen’s body; the Israeli Supreme Court is also hearing a petition from the family this week. “They are demanding humiliating conditions for its release — that only 15 people attend the funeral and that he be buried in Yatta instead of [his home village of] Umm Al-Khair,” explained one of the women.

“Since the killing, they have only compounded our pain,” said Hanady Hathaleen, Hathaleen’s wife. “We will not end our strike until the body is released and we can hold a proper funeral worthy of Awdah.”

Iman Hathaleen, a neighbor and former classmate of Hathaleen, also spoke to +972 about the hunger strike. “Awdah was the one who told the world the stories of Umm Al-Khair and the violations we face. Now, he has become the story.

“The occupation forces are arresting local activists and expelling journalists and solidarity supporters from the village to continue the repression,” she added. “That’s why we decided to highlight our role as women and to protest this oppression in the hope that someone hears our voice, whether journalists or international organizations. We also feel a responsibility toward Awdah’s children; their father was our voice in the village. Now, it’s our turn to stand with them and support them.”

Anyone who sees these women each day knows that most had stopped eating even before the strike began. They simply cannot eat — from grief, from fear, from the sickening knowledge that the man who gunned down Hathaleen walks free. And they have been paralyzed worrying for their sons, brothers, and husbands in Israeli detention. 

Meanwhile, their mourning is punctuated by the constant, grinding noise of the settlers’ excavator, the source of this latest nightmare. Villagers have learned that Israeli settlers intend to establish a new outpost adjacent to Umm Al-Khair’s community center, where Hathaleen was killed.

Unbearable nights

During the day, the women of the village sit on floor mattresses arranged in a rectangle, quietly reciting the names of Allah. Unrelenting grief hangs in the air. They speak of His will, trying to comfort one another, but every day brings the same unanswered questions: What is happening in court? When will we be able to hold the funeral? When will the detainees return?

Relatives, neighbors, and friends arrive in steady waves, their hugs and condolences nearly too much to bear. Hanady, Hathaleen’s mother Umm Salem, and his sisters repeatedly retreat to their beds, desperate for a moment to cry and be alone. His niece sits on the couch, watching old videos of him on repeat. He smiles, laughs, speaks, and she cries back at the screen. Hanady clutches his shirts, still carrying his scent.

But it’s the nights that are truly unbearable. Each evening brings the same dreaded debate: whether to sleep fully clothed, headscarves on, just in case Israeli soldiers and settlers raid the village again without any warning.

It was Tuesday night when armed soldiers first burst into Hanady’s home — just one day after she lost her husband, the father of her three young children. According to tradition, only first-degree male relatives are permitted to see a widow during the first four months of mourning. But that meant nothing to the soldiers.

So better to sleep ready, the women explained. Any noise could signal another raid or another wave of arrests. The only question is: who will it be this time?

By Wednesday night, there weren’t many young men left in the village — 12 were being held in Israeli detention by that point. So when small military surveillance drones began to circle overhead and the army gathered at the gate of the adjacent settlement, the women’s fearful whispers grew louder.

Hanady’s 19-year-old brother, Ijdia’a, said goodnight to her before she finally managed to fall asleep, the first time in days. An hour later, word came that he had been arrested. Those of us staying with the family didn’t know whether to wake her or let her rest.

By morning, it was confirmed: the Israeli army had detained three of Hanady’s brothers and a cousin that night. The wife of one of them paced inside the house in a panic, trying to figure out how to get her ID card in the middle of the night — which was on the other side of the village, adjacent to the settlement fence — so she could send her husband’s information to the lawyer.

‘They tied us up and put us in a military vehicle’

One of the Palestinians arrested last week was Eid al-Hathaleen, Hathaleen’s cousin and a well-known artist and community leader in Umm Al-Khair, who was taken from his home by Israeli soldiers in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“At 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I was asleep,” Eid told +972. “Four soldiers banged on the door and asked, ‘Are you Eid? Bring your phone and ID.’ When we reached the military vehicles, my older brother Adel, and my brother Mu’tasim were there. They tied us up and put us in a military vehicle.”

Along with four other men from Umm Al-Khair, they were taken to the nearby settlement of Otniel, before being transferred by bus further north to a police station in the Gush Etzion settlement block. “We sat outside for 10 hours, blindfolded. If anyone spoke a word, the soldiers would yell: ‘Shut up!’” Eid recounted. “From morning until afternoon, we told them we were hungry, but they said, ‘There’s no food.’ Only around 6:30 p.m. did they bring us a little bread and yogurt, and told us to eat while still tied up.”

Eid testified that he and the other men were told that they would be released after the interrogation, where they were accused of attacking settlers and throwing stones on the day Hathaleen was killed. But the worst was yet to come. “They put us on a bus and took us to Ofer Prison,” he said. “There, the guards came onto the bus, tied our hands behind our backs with metal cuffs, and forced us to lower our heads. If we didn’t, they beat us with sticks and insulted us: ‘Walk, you dog! Son of a bitch! Are you Hamas? Are you Fatah? Are you Hezbollah?’

“When we got off the bus, they shackled our feet and blindfolded us, before they took us into a room and forced me to strip completely, even my underwear. They threatened to bring a dog if I didn’t comply,” Eid continued. “I heard them in Hebrew telling each other to prepare the laser device. Then they made me squat naked while they laughed — maybe they were recording. They told me to cough. Then they gave me prison clothes, underwear, and slippers. I don’t know if the clothes were clean.”

Eid spent the night in a cell with 11 other detainees, and the next day, they were brought into another room to attend a remote court hearing. The judge ordered them released on a bail of NIS 500 per person, and prohibited them from coming within 100 meters of the Carmel settlement — adjacent to Umm Al-Khair — or discussing the incident for 60 days.

‘What will they remember of their father?’

Back in Umm Al-Khair, Thursday night was perhaps the worst of all. Again, rumors spread of another round of arrests. Again, everyone went to bed clothed, exhausted, wondering who would be next. But this time, it wasn’t the army that woke Hathaleen’s family. It was the voice of little Mohammad Awdah Hathaleen.

He is not yet three years old, and he has already witnessed his father take his last breath. “Daddy! Daddy!” he wailed again and again. His mother, shattered and sleepless, held him and asked softly what he needed, what she could do.

“I want my daddy!” he screamed. His aunt tried to distract him by offering him some juice. “Not you!” he said through his tears. “My daddy will bring me juice!” He continued to cry for 20 minutes until sleep finally overtook him.

The next morning, he woke up the same way, screaming for his father. Beside him, his older brother Watan lay silently, watching him with a gaze of both helplessness and understanding — the kind no child should have. Not yet five, Watan already knows that his father will not come back, and that for his mother’s sake, he cannot break down and scream like his little brother.

Eventually, Mohammad calmed down. By daylight, in the mourning tent, he sat playing pick-up sticks with the other children. To a casual observer, he might have looked like any other boy his age. But those who watched closely could see how the other boys treated him: the older ones getting him ice cream whenever he asked, the younger ones never fighting with him over toys.

“What will they remember of their father?” Hanady asked, cradling Kinan, her seven-month-old son. We can only hope that the sound of their crying, and of children like them, will keep us awake and fighting in their father’s memory. That is what he would have wanted us to do.

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