Israeli forces killed a prominent Palestinian father of two martyred resistance fighters early on Friday morning. Fathi Khazem, 58, also known as Abu Raad, was at home with his 12-year-old son, Adam, when Israeli soldiers raided his home in the al-Masarwa neighborhood of Jenin in the northern West Bank. The soldiers had forcibly recruited a young man from the neighborhood to accompany them as a human shield, after which they blew open the front door and stormed inside.
According to the family, Adam witnessed what they described as the execution of his father by Israeli forces, and has remained in a state of shock ever since.
Speaking to Mondoweiss, the 12-year-old recounted how they ordered his father, Fathi, to raise his hands, remove his clothes, and kneel before them. Adam said that his father refused to comply with their orders or submit to their attempts to humiliate him, asking, “Who are you that I should kneel before you?”
According to Adam and the young man who was used as a human shield, a verbal confrontation broke out between Khazem and the soldiers. Other family members told Mondoweiss that what followed was a summary execution, saying that after the soldiers began beating Khazem inside his home, he tried to defend himself before they shot him at point-blank range.
Such orders are part of a broader pattern of humiliation employed by the Israeli military during the detention or arrest of Palestinians. These practices include severe beatings during arrests and forced strip searches. A similar incident took place two days earlier in the town of Qabatiya, where Israeli soldiers conducted field interrogations and reportedly wrote numbers on the bodies and clothing of the detainees.
Adam added that a soldier had initially shot Khazem in the hand before other soldiers fired seven more rounds at him. They did not provide him with medical assistance, leaving him to bleed to death. The Israeli army has withheld his body to date.
During the raid, the soldiers confined Adam and the young man who had been used as a human shield in the bathroom and forced both of them to strip completely. The young man, who understands Hebrew, said he overheard the soldiers discussing whether they should kill the two of them as well.
In a statement, the Israeli army said it had killed a Palestinian armed with a knife who it claimed had attempted to carry out a stabbing attack against one of its soldiers in the Jenin area. The military added that none of its forces were injured.
Earlier, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that a Palestinian had been killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, saying the shooting followed what it described as an attempted stabbing attack.
By contrast, Khazem’s son said his father had acted in self-defense in response to the soldiers’ continued attempts to humiliate him.
Amin Khazem, Abu Raad’s brother, and who is himself the father of the martyred Nidal Khazem of the Jenin Brigades, told Mondoweiss that the incident was a “premeditated crime” and a “deliberate assassination,” arguing that the claim that Khazem had threatened soldiers with a knife was used to justify the killing. He said eyewitnesses present at the scene saw him being shot even after he had already been wounded.
Speaking about Adam’s condition, another member of the family, Adam’s maternal uncle, told Mondoweiss the 12-year-old remains in severe psychological distress. “Imagine a 12-year-old boy watching his father being killed before his eyes, then stripped of his clothes and locked in a bathroom with a man he doesn’t even know,” the uncle said. “Up until this moment, Adam hasn’t cried or shed a single tear.”
He added that Adam was deeply attached to his father and accompanied him everywhere. When he saw Israeli soldiers assaulting his father and opening fire, he ran toward them and held up his father’s ID card, hoping they would stop. Instead, they shot his father in the chest and head in front of his eyes.
The downfall of a symbol of resistance
Fathi Khazem was the father of two martyred sons. His son, Raad Khazem, carried out a shooting attack on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street in April 2022 and was later killed in Jaffa after an hours-long manhunt. His other son, Abdul Rahman Khazem, was killed by Israeli forces in September of the same year after being pursued for months in the Jenin refugee camp. Meanwhile, his daughter, Shaimaa Khazem, has been held under administrative detention in Israeli prisons for more than a year.
Following the killing of his son Raad, Fathi Khazem became an icon of Palestinian resistance and a symbol of steadfastness. He appeared on Palestinian and Arab television channels delivering speeches that urged people to remain steadfast and resist the Israeli occupation. In the aftermath, Israeli forces called on him to turn himself in, but he refused. He went on to become a prominent public supporter of the armed Palestinian resistance groups that had taken hold in Jenin refugee camp and beyond between 2021 and 2023. Israeli forces pursued him for months and repeatedly attempted to arrest him.
As Khazem was a retired colonel in the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Security Forces, according to Amin Khazim, PA officials sought to resolve the situation through an understanding with Israel in 2023. Under the proposed arrangement, Israeli authorities would stop pursuing Abu Raad on the condition that he leave the Jenin refugee camp.
Abu Raad disappeared from public view after that, until Israeli forces killed him in the early hours of Friday while he was staying in a modest one-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen.
Amin Khazem told Mondoweiss that the PA-brokered understanding with Israel supposedly guaranteed that Abu Raad would no longer be pursued or arrested, provided that he stayed out of the public eye and refrained from making public statements. He said that the family is still trying to understand what happened.
Amin Khazem believes that his brother’s killing was an act of revenge driven by longstanding resentment. He says that the attempt to arrest him was merely a pretext to kill him. As evidence, he pointed to Israeli settlers’ social media accounts, which he said were filled with celebrations describing the killing as “settling the score” and punishing the Khazem family.
In 2022, the Israeli military demolished the family’s apartment on al-Madaris Street in Jenin, as well as a small house in the town of Deir Ghazaleh, east of Jenin, where Fathi Khazem had been living. Their home on Mahyoub Street inside Jenin refugee camp is also believed to have been destroyed during the Israeli army’s ongoing military occupation of the camp, which has leveled dozens of homes along the same street.
