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west bank
Mourning a Friend Killed by the Israeli Occupation
I did not get the chance to respond to his text that morning. A few hours later, Awdah Hathaleen was dead, shot by a settler.
The lives of Palestinians are extremely precarious. I grasped the gravity of this fact during my time in Israel-Palestine, but subconsciously, I made myself forget it: Awdah and his community faced injustices and violence all the time, but simply because he was my friend, I never thought that he would die.
The heartbreak from this single death, in other words, puts into perspective how the scale of atrocity in Palestine is truly unfathomable.
When I first met Awdah, he was describing life under the Israeli occupation to our group, which was mostly comprised of Jews from the U.S. who were visiting Umm Al Khair. He shared in vivid detail his first sighting of a demolition by the IDF when he was in the fourth grade—how he ran from school, stood shivering in the cold, and watched multiple homes being reduced to rubble, his relatives screaming and weeping. He explained how his uncle Haj Suleiman was run over and killed with a vehicle by the IDF in 2022. The Haj, an elderly man at the time, was a revered figure of nonviolent resistance and a community leader, and thousands came to his funeral. As Awdah spoke that night, the settlement of Carmel was visible behind him, and a mural commemorating the Haj was on the left.
Over time, I noticed that Awdah had unlimited energy to share his stories and political vision with visitors. I also felt that in these conversations, his childhood trauma from the demolition and the recent loss of his uncle always surfaced in one way or another, like wounds that would not heal.
That first night, Awdah shared something that he would say often, "To survive under the occupation, you need two things: patience and hope." Patience because justice would be very slow, and hope because without it, "There is no light." We were sitting on a small basketball court, where perhaps only football was ever played. Awdah would eventually be killed right there.
Alaa Hathaleen, Awdah's cousin, mourns at the spot where Awdah was shot by the settler Yinon Levi in Umm Al Khair, the Occupied West Bank, on July 29, 2025. (Photo: Oren Ziv)
Although Awdah introduced himself as an English teacher and an activist, I also saw in him a remarkable political educator who helped countless visitors understand the occupation. Awdah would say that he wants all humans to have dignity and live in peace; he wants Palestinians to be equal with others; and he wants his three young children to have a better life than his own, free from fear and violence. His words and hospitality helped make his village one of the centers for anti-occupation activism in the region. International and Israeli anti-occupation activists regularly pass through, volunteer, intervene during the incursions from settlers and the IDF, rest, share Iftar meals, and play with children.
He created a community as he resisted. His friends are scattered across the world and are mourning on video calls and group chats. It is difficult to believe that when we visit Umm Al Khair next, Awdah will not be there, saying, "welcome, welcome," addressing us as "friend" or "habibi," and chastising us for visiting Umm Al Khair after so long.
Awdah's death pierces the hearts of so many of us because it is layered with atrocities. First, this is a quintessential case of settler violence and there is unlikely to be justice. Yinon Levi, the settler who killed Awdah, was immediately released on house arrest by Israeli authorities, despite many witnesses and the shooting being filmed. In fact, Levi was telling IDF soldiers who to arrest right after he killed Awdah. Within a week, Levi returned to the village to intimidate residents. The reason for all this is simple: Israel does not prosecute settler violence because it serves the official policy of removing Palestinians from their land.
Further, there was no opportunity to grieve following Awdah's killing. The IDF raided Umm Al Khair over the following days and detained about 15 Palestinians, assaulting many of them. Then, the Israeli authorities refused to return Awdah's body unless the funeral was limited to 15 people and the body was buried miles from the village. In response, around 60 women in Umm Al Khair went on a hunger strike, and there were demonstrations across cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, London, and Chicago. Ten days after the killing, the authorities finally felt pressured to return Awdah's body, allow the burial in the village, and release the Palestinian detainees. But many people were still prevented from attending the funeral.
There is nothing unusual about Awdah's killing or how his village was targeted; such incidents occur regularly in the Occupied West Bank. The heartbreak from this single death, in other words, puts into perspective how the scale of atrocity in Palestine is truly unfathomable. After all, he is but one among the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the live-streamed genocide.
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