Killings near a West Bank village show even Americans aren’t immune

Most residents in this wealthy, picturesque Palestinian village hold U.S. citizenship. That has not protected them against spiking violence by Israeli settlers.

Today 

 The Washington Post
By Rachel Chason and  Heidi Levine


AL-MAZRA’A AL-SHARQIYA, West Bank — The killings of two young men from this village this month, including a 20-year-old American citizen, marked a notable escalation in the battle being waged by Israeli settlers for Palestinian-owned land in the rolling hills of the West Bank

Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, a picturesque village where most residents are U.S. citizens, had for years escaped the worst of the violence roiling the occupied West Bank. But its residents had watched as settlers toted M-16s and Israeli security forces transformed the neighboring hamlet into what its mayor describes as an “open-air prison” encircled by barricades and fences.

And in recent months, the settlers had begun appearing in nearby fields, local officials and residents said, where many people from Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya own land. Suddenly, they said, they could no longer access hundreds of acres of olive groves that during a normal summer would usually be a favorite spot for evening picnics. Settlers blocked roads and chased away those who tried to enter.

The villagers decided to resist. They began gathering after Friday midday prayers in fields between Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya and the neighboring hamlet, Sinjil, as a show of strength.

Their struggle is similar to those elsewhere in the West Bank, where the United Nations says violence by Israeli settlers this year has reached its highest point in at least two decades. And their experience shows that no place in this territory — even a relatively wealthy one populated by American passport holders — is immune from the violent advances of Israeli settlers.

On Friday, July 11, the weekly demonstration ended in bloodshed, according to local officials and residents, with settlers beating to death Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, who had recently arrived in the village from Tampa, and fatally shooting 23-year-old Mohammad al-Shalabi. Both had become separated from the main group of demonstrators amid a clash between settlers and Palestinian residents. A spokesperson for Israeli police said in a statement Friday that police were carrying out an investigation into the death of a Palestinian American that allegedly occurred following a confrontation.

Two days after the killings, as the village mourned, the usually quiet streets filled with anguished yells.

“People see the truth and know the truth, and no one is standing with us,” said Maha Halum, Musallet’s mother. “We are defending ourselves, that is it,” she said, her voice breaking. “Defending our land and our families.”

A foot in each world

Adel Abdel Jabbar holds a photograph of his cousin Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, killed by Israeli forces. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

In Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, many in the older generations had migrated to the United States, often raising families there. The five Abdel Jabbar brothers, for instance, now live part of the year in a gated community on a golf course outside New Orleans. They have built businesses in the United States, in real estate, gas stations and footwear.

But pretty much everyone from Al Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya has kept one foot here — maintaining Palestinian identity documents even as they gained U.S. citizenship — with many building American-style mansions next to the older one-story houses where they had grown up, some visiting only in summer and others staying for years at time.

Some said that returning was important because they wanted to raise children who knew their roots. But they also said it was about protecting the land their families had owned for hundreds of years.

In 2023, the middle Abdel Jabbar brother, Hafeth, moved his family back to Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya. Soon after, his 17-year-old son, Tawfic, was fatally shot. The Israel Defense Forces said that an Israeli settler, an Israeli soldier and an off-duty law enforcement officer had been involved in a “firearm discharge … directed toward a perceived threat.”

Hafeth said that after Tawfic’s death, he grew more determined to stand his ground. “This is our home,” he said. “We will die under our own trees.”

When he saw the settlers moving south in recent months toward Al Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, he helped lead the resistance. They had all seen what happened to the neighboring village of Sinjil.

An impending threat

Mutaz Tawafsheh, mayor of the West Bank hamlet of Sinjil, beside an Israeli-built separation fence. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

The Israeli settlers first arrived in 2018, said Sinjil Mayor Mutaz Tawafsheh. But settlers and Israeli forces have used the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, he said, as a justification for their campaign of intimidation and violence.

Israeli forces, he said, have blocked all the roads entering his village except for one narrow path and installed a tall metal fence around much of the village’s perimeter. Settlers have free rein to farm on most of the adjacent land, he said, blocking about 100 Palestinian families who previously relied on farming from accessing their fields. Scores of families with dual nationalities have left.

Yonatan Mizrachi, co-director of the settlements watch unit at Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy organization, said there has been near-total impunity for the settlers’ activities. The U.S. government closely tracks settler violence but has refrained from putting pressure on the Israeli government to punish the settlers, Mizrachi said. On Tuesday, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, called on Israel’s government to “aggressively investigate the murder” of Musallet.

In the past, Huckabee has championed the settler movement and said that Israelis have “a rightful deed” to the West Bank land, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war. Soon after arriving in Israel, Huckabee paid an official visit to the Israeli settlement of Shilo, home to many of the settlers who Palestinian villagers say are besieging Sinjil.

“We stand with you, and so do many around the world,” Huckabee told settlers during his visit, the Jewish News Service reported. “Those who do not stand with you do not stand with God.”
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The July 4 convoy

On July 4, a week before the double killing, Washington Post journalists observed the weekly demonstration and the unrest that ensued.

Before the villagers set out in a convoy from Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, Hafeth Abdel Jabbar handed his brother Rami an American flag alongside a Palestinian flag to put in the car. “Maybe they will protect us,” Rami said as he stuck them in his door. “Maybe they won’t.”

As dozens of cars made their way toward Sinjil, they passed the spot where a 14-year-old Palestinian American was shot dead by Israeli forces in April. (Local officials said he was picking green almonds; the IDF said he was throwing rocks toward the highway, endangering passing motorists).

Then they passed the spot where Mike Amra, a 45-year-old Palestinian American who recently moved back to the West Bank from North Carolina, said he was chased last month by settlers who beat his friend with a crowbar and ransacked his family’s house.

Then they passed the location where, in June, Rami’s 20-year-old son, Adel, said he had been driving with friends when they got in an altercation with settlers, who he said tried to beat them up as a few of his friends threw rocks. When the IDF soldiers arrived, he said, soldiers fired at the car seven times as it reversed and sped away.

“I have this American attitude where I keep hoping I have rights,” said Adel, who added that he had been hopeful when the IDF first arrived on the scene.

In a statement about the June events, the Israeli military said that “several terrorists began hurling stones at Israeli civilians and vehicles” south of Sinjil and that IDF forces that were dispatched acted “in accordance with standard operating procedures” when they fired “warning shots to distance the terrorists,” who they said had also thrown rocks at them.

As the convoy proceeded, more cars joined, as did people on foot. Rami got a call from a lookout. Ten settlers had been spotted. He turned toward his son and asked if the American flag was still in the door.

A few hundred yards behind them, a small group of settlers had appeared and had slashed the tires and smashed the windows of some of the cars in the convoy. About a dozen young Palestinian men responded, slinging rocks at the settlers, who then got in their own cars and sped away.

Hafeth made the call to turn around.

Rami shook his head. He feared that worse was still to come.

Young lives lost

The following Friday, July 11, those fears came to fruition. As hundreds of Palestinians gathered in a field between the two villages, settlers set upon them, carrying metal and wooden rods, Hafeth Abdel Jabbar later recounted. When they opened fire at the residents, everyone dispersed, he said. Musallet and Shalabi, whose sister is an American citizen living in California, became separated from the group.

Israeli police later said in the statement that police and IDF forces arrived on the scene after receiving reports of rock-throwing by residents “targeting Israeli civilians, which had escalated into a physical confrontation.” The police and IDF have “launched a proactive investigation to clarify the circumstances surrounding the circulating allegations,” the statement said.

Abdul Zaben, 22, said that he was by himself when he found his friend Musallet, who had called to say that he was injured. By the time he arrived, Zaben said, his friend was barely reacting and struggling to breathe.

Musallet’s father called from Florida, asking: “Is Saif good? Is Saif good?”

“I was trying to say, ‘Yes, yes … everything will be fine,’” Zaben said.

After more than an hour, Hafeth Abdel Jabbar and other men arrived with an ambulance, which he said the Israeli soldiers had finally let pass. Musallet died before they reached the hospital.

It would be several more hours before they found the body of Mohammad al-Shalabi, said his uncle, Samer al-Shalabi. His nephew, he said, had a bullet in his back.


Claire Parker in Jerusalem contributed to this report.