Lagos, May 8, 2024 – Israeli security forces have unlawfully used lethal force in fatal shootings of Palestinians in the West Bank, Human Rights Watch said today, based on documentation of several cases.
Research into eight deaths in four incidents between July 2022 and October 2023 concluded that Israeli forces wrongfully fatally shot or deliberately executed Palestinians who posed no apparent security threat.
Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups have long documented the unlawful and excessive use of lethal force by Israeli forces in the West Bank and the Israeli government’s failure to hold those responsible to account.
According to the United Nations, Israeli security forces killed more than twice the number of Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023 than in any year since systematic data collection began in 2005, and the rate of killings was even higher during the first quarter of 2024.
“Israeli security forces are not just unlawfully killing Palestinians in Gaza, but have been killing Palestinians without a legal basis in the West Bank, including deliberately executing Palestinians who posed no apparent threat,” said Richard Weir, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“These killings are taking place at a level without recent precedent in an environment in which Israeli forces have no need to fear that their government will hold them accountable.”
Between May and November 2023, Human Rights Watch interviewed 14 witnesses and 6 family members of victims of fatal shootings by Israeli security forces in the West Bank.
Human Rights Watch also spoke to medical personnel in the West Bank and reviewed medical records, verified videos posted on social media, and news reports.
Human Rights Watch wrote to the Israel Defense Forces on August 8, 2023, and April 23, 2024, with questions about the eight fatalities and the military’s rules regarding the use of force, but has not received a reply to either query.
Human Rights Watch has also released a question-and-answer document on the international legal framework applicable to violence and the use of force in the West Bank.
In one case that Human Rights Watch investigated, Israeli forces in Jenin repeatedly fired upon Sidqi Zakarneh, who was crawling injured on the ground, killing him. Videos showed that he was not participating in violence and did not appear to have weapons.
In another case, in the northern West Bank, family members said Rafiq Ghannem went out apparently unarmed early one morning to investigate loud noises. He encountered Israeli forces, who fatally shot him when he tried to flee.
Israeli forces in 2023 killed 492 Palestinians, including 120 children, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
That figure is more than twice as many as in any other year since the UN began systematically documenting fatalities. About 300 were killed in the nearly three months following the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, though the increase in killings dates back to 2022. Between January 1 and March 31, 2024, Israeli forces killed 131 Palestinians in the West Bank.
In 2023, Palestinians killed 25 Israeli civilians in the West Bank, the highest figure in at least 15 years, and 5 members of the Israeli armed forces, according to OCHA.
Palestinians have been at risk of being killed by Israeli security forces throughout the West Bank, whether traveling to and from work or in their own neighborhoods.
Children on their way to school have been fatally shot, as Human Rights Watch documented in August 2023. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that in 2022, in only 45 percent of incidents in which Palestinians were killed did the Israeli military even allege that the victims were armed or that there were “clashes in which there was an exchange of gunfire.”
Between October 7, 2023, and March 18, 2024, Israeli forces conducted a monthly average of 640 search-and-arrest and other operations in the West Bank, nearly double the 340 such operations during the first nine months of 2023, according to OCHA.
These operations resulted in the killing of 304 Palestinians, out of a total of 409 killed by Israeli forces during this period.
During a search-and-arrest operation near the West Bank city of Tulkarem on October 19, Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Taha Mahamid and, minutes later, wounded his father, Ibrahim, who went to retrieve his body. Video and other evidence shows no sign that either was carrying a weapon.
Ibrahim Mahamid died of his injuries four months later. Witnesses said, and video footage supported, that the shootings occurred at a time when there were no active confrontations in the area and neither Taha nor his father posed any imminent threat to Israeli forces.
Israeli security forces in the West Bank are bound by international human rights law.
The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials provide that the “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”
Israel does not make public the rules on the use of force that it applies to the army. However, in the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, Israeli military personnel engaged in law enforcement used lethal force when it was not strictly unavoidable to protect life, including firing on people who were fleeing or were considered to be linked to clashes or possible violent acts.
Repeated unlawful killings and endemic impunity are among the inhumane acts that make up the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities commit against Palestinians, as Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have documented.
Governments should suspend arms and other military support to Israel because of the risk of complicity in grave abuses in Palestine, take action to ensure accountability including supporting the International Criminal Court’s probe into serious crimes committed in Palestine, and impose targeted sanctions against those responsible for grave abuses.
“The Israeli government’s permissive and discriminatory practices on the use of force and endemic impunity are one facet of the apartheid and structural violence Palestinians face every day,” Weir said. “The unlawful killings in the West Bank will continue so long as the Israeli authorities’ systemic repression of Palestinians continues.”
