Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli military forces during raids overnight on Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, including two brothers.
The three Palestinians were identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as Jawad Rimawi, 22, Thafer Rimawi, 19, and Mufid Ikhlayel, 44. Earlier reports stated Thafer’s age to be 21; a ministry of health representative confirmed to Mondoweiss, however, that he was in fact 19.
The Rimawi brothers were killed when Israeli forces raided the Ramallah-area village of Kufr Ein, in the central West Bank. According to the health ministry, Jawad was shot with live ammunition in the stomach and pelvic area, and Thafer was shot in the chest.
Local sources from Kufr Ein told Mondoweiss that confrontations erupted during an Israeli raid on the nearby town of Beit Rima. The boys were reportedly shot while the soldiers were pulling out of Beit Rima, passing through the neighboring village of Kufr Ein.
On Tuesday morning, videos of the two boys’ parents mourning their deaths at the hospital were circulated widely on social media, as Palestinians grieved the loss of the two young men.
Israa Rimawi, the mother of the two slain men, was shown in a widely circulating video saying “we are giving our souls, we are giving our souls,” and a woman trying to console her as they left the hospital, saying “just imagine them in heaven.”
According to local media reports, Jawad had recently graduated from Birzeit University in Ramallah with a business administration degree, while Thafer was studying technology at the same university. A general strike was declared in Ramallah on Tuesday in mourning over the two brothers.
The martyr of Beit Ummar
Mufid Ikhlayel was killed after he was shot in the head by Israeli forces while they were raiding the town of Beit Ummar, in the southern West Bank district of Hebron. According to local news reports, the raid began shortly after 10 p.m. on Monday night, and lasted several hours into the early hours of Tuesday morning.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, 22 Palestinians were injured in Beit Ummar, six with teargas, five with rubber bullets, two others while running, and nine with live ammunition, including Ikhlayel. He was declared dead shortly before 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
Ma’an News Agency also reported that Israeli forces attacked medics in the town as they attempted to treat the wounded.
Palestinian officials and political factions condemned the killing of Ikhlayel and the Rimawi brothers on Tuesday. The office of President Mahmoud Abbas released a statement calling for international intervention and for the U.S. government to assume responsibility for the continued killing of Palestinians by the Israeli military, which the U.S. provides with billions of dollars of funding each year.
Police kill Palestinian after car ramming
Separately, a Palestinian was shot by Israeli police on Tuesday morning on a highway outside Ramallah after carrying out a car-ramming that injured one Israeli. Israeli media reported that the woman, 20 years old, was being treated in an Israeli hospital for a head injury, but was reportedly in stable condition. Palestinian media outlets reported the woman to be an Israeli soldier, and images of the woman after the ramming dressed in an Israeli army uniform have been circulated on social media.
Israeli media reports said that the Palestinian man, who was shot after a brief police chase, was also taken to an Israeli hospital where he was declared dead.
Israel’s Kan Public broadcaster identified him as 45-year-old Rani Mamoun Fayz Abu Ali, a father of five from the Ramallah-area town of Beitunia. At the time of publication the Palestinian Ministry of Health had not yet confirmed his identity.
2022 has been one of the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied territory in recent years. The killing of the Rimawi brothers, Ikhlayel, and Abu Ali brings the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers this year to 210.
Of the 210 Palestinians killed in 2022, 154 were killed in the West Bank, 20 of whom were from the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate.
Tragedies of immense proportion. Lives in their prime! A father of five!!
Something has to give.
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What Is Happening In Israel?. The situation has gone from steady… | by Matthew Gindin | Nov, 2022 | Medium
“What Is Happening In Israel?” by Matthew Gindin, Nov. 29/30
“In the last month, according to Combatants For Peace, there were over 100 attacks by Jewish settlers in the occupied territories against Palestinians — & these attacks occurred in just over 10 days. These settlers, who are rarely brought to account by the Israeli state, & in fact receive support in both tacit & proactive forms, poisoned olive groves, terrorized shepherds, & brutally assaulted activists. “Five days ago, a young boy named Ahmad was killed by the IDF — the 55th child killed this year. Two weeks ago a 15 year old Autistic Palestinian teen was shot to death by the IDF while apparently catching a ride home with a 26 year old Palestinian man. Although the IDF originally claimed he drove his car at them, he was subsequently released for lack of evidence against him, suggesting that there was no reason for her death — although fatal ammunition is not the only way to react to vehicular assault in any case. “As I write this 5 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF in the last 24 hours. Last Friday, An IDF soldier was filmed attacking a left-wing activist in the West Bank city of Hebron. Another soldier can be heard telling one of the activists that ‘Ben-Gvir is going to bring order, you’ve had it,’ in reference to the Kahanist lawmaker who has been named National Security Minister in the recently elected government. “Kahanism, the doctrine propounded by the late Meir Kahane, states that Israel should be a state in which only Jews have voting rights, & others may live as ‘resident strangers’ with no political rights or be forcibly expelled. Previously banned in Israel as a racist doctrine, it is now making its way into the halls of government.
“The brutality of the state’s relationship with Palestinians is at this point getting hard to believe, or even describe.”(cont’d)
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Excerpt: “The brutality of the state’s relationship with Palestinians is at this point getting hard to believe, or even describe. Schools are demolished, journalists shot, children imprisoned and killed, torture routinely used, and Palestinian prisoners treated with a shocking inhumanity- as in the case of a schizophrenic Palestinian prisoner who was incarcerated at age 14 & is currently being kept in solitary confinement with the assent of the court. The sheer evil of such a decision is hard to put into words, other than to straightforwardly describe it as it is: evil. “For comic relief, I suppose one could turn to the recent case of a Palestinian resident in Gaza who won 13 million dollars in an Israeli lottery. That’s Gaza — you know, the area defenders of Israeli government policy are always saying is no longer part of Israel or under its control, despite Israel controlling its borders, airspace, sea-access, imports/exports, electricity & resources, & keeping a census of every Palestinian resident? Anyway, Israel just ruled the Palestinian owes 30% of his winnings in taxes- to Israel! “But I digress. ‘What is happening’” is the question I began with. How did all of this come to be? “Some will say that the originally benevolent dream of Zionism has degenerated under pressure from warfare with Palestinians & the Arab world. I argue here that this view romanticizes the realities of early Zionism & the settlement of Palestine, & does not take responsibility for what has been done dating back to the 1890s in the name of Jewish survival, & more recently in the name of Judaism. “Here is my view: Statist Zionism, from its early to current form- is arguably a betrayal — even a rejection — of Judaism, and it has long been on a trajectory towards Jewish supremacy & a quagmire of militarism, nationalism, & fascism. What is happening now is the fruit of a rotten tree, & saving Israel as a Jewish vision would require a radical revision of the country as a multi-ethnic, truly democratic state that gave Palestinians full human & political rights, one very much like the binational state envisioned by Martin Buber decades ago…”