Mona Abdel Jabbar holds a photo of her late son, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, who was killed in January. (Heidi Levine/Washington Post)
BIDDU, West Bank - Early this year, two Palestinian American teenagers were shot and killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite a U.S. push for accountability, it remains unclear who exactly was responsible for their deaths, and their cases remain unsolved.
Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was killed on Jan. 19 and Mohammad Ahmad Alkhdour on Feb. 10, victims of spiraling violence that has consumed the Palestinian territory. Families of the young men, both 17, have faced harassment from Israeli authorities but have never been contacted by Israeli police, they said.
An off-duty law enforcement officer, an Israeli soldier and a settler were identified by police as being involved in a “firearm discharge” at the scene of Abdel Jabbar’s killing. In Alkhdour’s case, an eyewitness said the fatal shot came from a driver on a road reserved for military use. The Israel Defense Forces said no troops were present at the time.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, more-radical settlers have taken up arms, operating as de facto security forces in their settlements and the surrounding Palestinian communities - creating what residents and rights groups say is a dangerous atmosphere of violence and impunity.
Last month, the killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Eygi, 26, by IDF forces in the West Bank sparked international outrage and an unusually strong response from Washington. But as U.S. officials push Israel to complete its investigation into her death and hold the perpetrator to account, relatives for Abdel Jabbar and Alkhdour are still waiting for closure.
“I am only demanding justice for my son,” said Alkhdour’s father, Ahmad, 63. “Every time we lose someone here, we say maybe this time there will be serious pressure on the Israelis.”
The Israeli police said in a statement in January that “a comprehensive investigation” had been launched into Abdel Jabbar’s killing, but have never given a public update on Alkhdour’s case. The police did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the status of their inquiries into the deaths of the two young men. The State Department said it continues “to engage the government of Israel on the two ongoing investigations,” but declined to specify who is leading them.
Israel’s Justice Ministry referred questions to the police and the Israeli military. The IDF directed inquiries back to the police or to the Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Within days of Eygi’s killing, the IDF released preliminary findings, saying she was “unintentionally” hit by fire from one of its soldiers. In response, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israeli security forces to make “fundamental changes” in how they operate in the West Bank, including their rules of engagement.
But Washington has rebuffed calls by Eygi’s family for an independent inquiry, saying it will let the Israeli investigation play out.
Some eight months after the killings of Abdel Jabbar and Alkhdour, Washington has maintained a similar wait-and-see approach. Investigations into the teens’ deaths “must be conducted expeditiously and come to a conclusion,” the State Department said in a statement. “We expect to see the findings as soon as possible, including any appropriate accountability measures.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has been in frequent contact with the Abdel Jabbar and Alkhdour families, has pressed the Biden administration to do more. “It is extremely distressing to learn that nobody in the U.S. government believes it is their responsibility to ensure that the Government of Israel is conducting a credible and transparent investigation into the killing of an American citizen,” he wrote to Blinken in a July 1 letter.
“Sadly, this is the story,” Van Hollen said when reached by phone last month. “Everyone [is] sort of passing the buck.”
‘No protections’
Abdel Jabbar had moved from Louisiana to his family’s ancestral home in the village of Mazraa al-Sharqiya nine months before he was killed. That afternoon, he had driven with a friend to an olive grove for a barbecue, his mother, Mona Abdel Jabbar, said in an interview in January.
Everything was calm before the shots rang out, according to Mohammed Salameh, 16, who was in the passenger seat. “Two bullets came in the [back windshield] and broke the glass,” Salameh said at the time. “The fourth bullet hit his head.”
In a statement after the incident, the Israeli police said an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and an Israeli settler were involved in a “firearm discharge … directed towards a perceived threat,” identified as “individuals purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities.” The statement did not say who was responsible for the fatal fire.
Salameh denied that he or his friend had been throwing rocks.
“My son was executed,” Hafeth Abdel Jabbar, Tawfic’s father, said days later. “I know nothing can bring him back, but I’m telling you this because maybe someone else’s kid can be saved.”
Reached again last month, Abdel Jabbar said he “is following up with the Americans” on his son’s case, having received no updates from the Israelis.
Less than a month after Tawfic Abdel Jabbar’s death, Alkhdour took an afternoon study break with his cousin Malak Mansour, 16, on a hilly grove near their home in the village of Biddu. The teens ate Nutella-covered waffles and took photos before getting in their car to head home.
Then they heard a gunshot and saw an armed man in a white Mitsubishi pickup truck with Israeli plates on a military-access road below them, Mansour said. A bullet struck Alkhdour in the head as the teens tried to speed away.
The IDF said its forces were not present at the time of the incident.
Israeli forces have killed at least 719 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Oct. 7, according to the most recent U.N. figures, which do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Many of them have been killed in intensifying military raids.
Extremist Israeli settlers have killed 12 Palestinians; in seven other deaths, it is unclear whether the perpetrators were Israeli forces or settlers, the United Nations says.
Twenty-three Israelis, including 16 IDF members and six settlers, have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same period.
In Eygi’s case, a Washington Post investigation found that she was shot dead more than 200 yards from the nearest Israeli soldiers, more than a half-hour after brief confrontations between Palestinian protesters and security forces and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road.
The IDF said in its initial findings that she was killed “during a violent riot.”
Since 2005, only 3 percent of police complaints related to settler violence against Palestinians tracked by the Israeli rights group
Yesh Din have resulted in a conviction. In cases of alleged violence by soldiers against Palestinians, the group says, the figure is 1 percent.
In incidents since Oct. 7, it has become “more and more difficult to differentiate between settlers and soldiers,” said Yahav Erez, Yesh Din’s international advocacy coordinator. As part of the war effort, she said, settlers can easily acquire weapons and have been posted as reserve soldiers or civilian guards in their communities.
Settlers “use these arms to harass Palestinians and become the de facto authority on the ground,” she said.
“Palestinians on their side have nobody,” Erez added. “They have no protections.”
Dead-end investigations
Representatives from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem visited the Alkhdour family and conducted interviews soon after Mohammad was killed, said his father, who had been in Miami when his son died.
Ahmad Alkhdour said Israeli investigators never came to the shooting site or interviewed the family or eyewitness. But on the evening of April 4, the father said, Israeli forces broke down the door of the family home and detained another son, 23-year-old Omar, and two of his cousins.
In a video shared with The Post, Omar is blindfolded and led away by armed soldiers. Omar’s interrogators asked him to blame the shooting on Mohammad’s friend Mansour, before releasing Omar the next day, the father said.
Asked for comment on Omar’s arrest, the IDF referred questions to the Shin Bet, which did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. representatives also visited the Abdel Jabbar family home and collected eyewitness accounts in the aftermath of Tawfic’s killing. Israeli authorities made no such effort, and in the months that followed, they imposed a travel ban on Tawfic’s father, Hafeth, which was lifted only after the U.S. Embassy intervened, according to the father and to Van Hollen’s letter. The U.S. Embassy did not respond to a request for comment. The Shin Bet did not respond to questions about why the father’s travel was restricted.
Washington has issued several rounds of sanctions this year against extremist settlers, illegal outposts and related organizations accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank - limited but unprecedented moves by the United States against Israelis .
The Israeli government has bristled at what it sees as American interference in domestic affairs. “Israel takes action against all law-breakers everywhere, and therefore there is no need for unusual measures on the issue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a February statement. In the months since, his far-right government has increased support for settlements and presided over the deadliest period in the West Bank in decades.
In Biddu, Mohammad’s family has kept his car in the grove where he went to picnic and was later killed. It is meant to be a memorial where locals can visit and pay tribute, though most residents are too afraid of the area now.
Hanan Alkhdour, 41, said she fears for her four remaining children and has considered sending them to the United States. But she will never leave.
“This is our homeland,” she said. “Even if they decide to go, I won’t go, as here is my son’s grave.”
Louisa Loveluck and Sufian Taha in Mazraa al-Sharqiya, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff in Washington and Niha Masih in Seoul contributed to this report.
