Latest news with #TurmusAya
The National
14-07-2025
- The National
'So much hatred in their hearts': Family of US-born Palestinian killed by Israeli settlers tell of pain
Mourners gathered in the town of Turmus Aya in the occupied West Bank to receive the body of Sayafollah Musallat, a Palestinian-American man who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in a violent attack near the town of Sinjil, north-east of Ramallah. Mr Musallat, originally from Tampa, Florida, had travelled to the West Bank to visit family and help protect their land from increasing settler incursions. He is the latest Palestinian-American to be killed in the territory, only weeks after the death of an American teenager left the community reeling. At his family home, dozens of women lined the driveway early in the day, awaiting the arrival of the body. As the morning progressed, men gathered outside under the blazing sun, offering condolences. An ambulance arrived playing verses from the Quran, and when Mr Musallat's body was finally brought out, mourners erupted in religious and political chants. The presence of many American voices in the crowd was striking. Friends and relatives had flown in from Tampa, where Mr Musallat was born and raised. Among the mourners was a teenage boy who wept continuously, from the family home to the local cemetery. After a mass prayer held at a nearby school, the boy was heard crying into a friend's shoulder, whispering, 'I can't breathe.' Kamal Abdel Jalil Al Hijaz, a senior member of the Musallat family, stood outside the house, welcoming mourners. Dressed in a traditional keffiyeh and leaning on a walking stick, he directed younger relatives to fetch water for the guests. 'The whole town feels the pain,' he said, his voice breaking. 'I'm crying in front of you so that God hears us.' He recalled that Mr Musallat had gone with a group of people, many of them US passport holders, to prevent settlers from encroaching on Palestinian land. 'They thought the American passport might offer some protection,' he said. 'But they attacked him. Now he's a martyr.' Jama'a Hijaz, 23, a close friend of Mr Musallat from Tampa, spoke of their years growing up together. 'We used to hang out every day. He loved going to the shooting range. He ran an ice cream shop, and that's where we'd always meet – he couldn't leave because he worked so hard.' Mr Hijaz described his friend as devout, kind, and committed to his faith. 'He never missed a prayer. He was on the right path.' He said the attack happened after Friday prayers, when news spread that settlers were targeting nearby land. 'At first they said someone died. Then they said no. Then they said Saif was passing out. I texted him to ask if he was OK. Everyone said he was fine. Two hours later, we found out he died on the way to the hospital.' According to Mr Hijaz, Mr Musallat was left injured in the sun for three hours before help arrived. Another man, Hussein Al Shalabi, was also killed – first beaten, then shot by the settlers as they left. Others were reportedly tied up and had their limbs broken. 'The settlers have so much hatred in their hearts,' Mr Hijaz said. 'Humans don't do this. They have compassion. They get scared when they see a dead body. I don't know what we're dealing with – these are evil people.' He added that the shock of Mr Musallat's death reached far beyond the West Bank. 'Everyone I know in the US is devastated. A friend of mine from high school met Saif only once – he still cried when he heard the news. That's the kind of person Saif was.' 'I'm still in shock. I didn't believe it until I saw the picture,' Hijaz said. 'But we're going to keep coming back. This is our land. This is our home. Saif died for it.'
The National
13-07-2025
- The National
Tributes paid to Palestinian-American killed by Israeli settlers in West Bank
Mourners gathered in the town of Turmus Aya in the occupied West Bank to receive the body of Sayafollah Musallat, a Palestinian-American man who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in a violent attack near the town of Sinjil, north-east of Ramallah. Mr Musallat, originally from Tampa, Florida, had travelled to the West Bank to visit family and help protect their land from increasing settler incursions. He is the latest Palestinian-American to be killed in the territory, only weeks after the death of an American teenager left the community reeling. At his family home, dozens of women lined the driveway early in the day, awaiting the arrival of the body. As the morning progressed, men gathered outside under the blazing sun, offering condolences. An ambulance arrived playing verses from the Quran, and when Mr Musallat's body was finally brought out, mourners erupted in religious and political chants. The presence of many American voices in the crowd was striking. Friends and relatives had flown in from Tampa, where Mr Musallat was born and raised. Among the mourners was a teenage boy who wept continuously, from the family home to the local cemetery. After a mass prayer held at a nearby school, the boy was heard crying into a friend's shoulder, whispering, 'I can't breathe.' Kamal Abdel Jalil Al Hijaz, a senior member of the Musallat family, stood outside the house, welcoming mourners. Dressed in a traditional keffiyeh and leaning on a walking stick, he directed younger relatives to fetch water for the guests. 'The whole town feels the pain,' he said, his voice breaking. 'I'm crying in front of you so that God hears us.' He recalled that Mr Musallat had gone with a group of people, many of them US passport holders, to prevent settlers from encroaching on Palestinian land. 'They thought the American passport might offer some protection,' he said. 'But they attacked him. Now he's a martyr.' Jama'a Hijaz, 23, a close friend of Mr Musallat from Tampa, spoke of their years growing up together. 'We used to hang out every day. He loved going to the shooting range. He ran an ice cream shop, and that's where we'd always meet – he couldn't leave because he worked so hard.' Mr Hijaz described his friend as devout, kind, and committed to his faith. 'He never missed a prayer. He was on the right path.' He said the attack happened after Friday prayers, when news spread that settlers were targeting nearby land. 'At first they said someone died. Then they said no. Then they said Saif was passing out. I texted him to ask if he was OK. Everyone said he was fine. Two hours later, we found out he died on the way to the hospital.' According to Mr Hijaz, Mr Musallat was left injured in the sun for three hours before help arrived. Another man, Hussein Al Shalabi, was also killed – first beaten, then shot by the settlers as they left. Others were reportedly tied up and had their limbs broken. 'The settlers have so much hatred in their hearts,' Mr Hijaz said. 'Humans don't do this. They have compassion. They get scared when they see a dead body. I don't know what we're dealing with – these are evil people.' He added that the shock of Mr Musallat's death reached far beyond the West Bank. 'Everyone I know in the US is devastated. A friend of mine from high school met Saif only once – he still cried when he heard the news. That's the kind of person Saif was.' 'I'm still in shock. I didn't believe it until I saw the picture,' Hijaz said. 'But we're going to keep coming back. This is our land. This is our home. Saif died for it.'
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Israeli Forces Said They Killed a ‘Terrorist.' He Was 14 Years Old.
The clothes were strewn on a ridge dotted with olive and almond trees, perched above a highway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. On rust-colored earth sprinkled with wildflowers were a torn black T-shirt, black Converse socks and a pair of Nike Air white sneakers. Nearby lay a pair of bloodied, gray Nike sweatpants and a black hoodie perforated with holes. Here, on April 6, near Turmus Aya, a village in the West Bank where most of the residents have U.S. citizenship, Israeli soldiers gunned down Amer Rabee a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy who was born in New Jersey. The military handed over his naked, bullet-ridden body a few hours later in a blue body bag, according to his family. The Israeli military has accused Amer and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians. It described the boys as 'terrorists,' and said its soldiers had 'eliminated' one and shot the two others. Amer's family and one of the surviving boys deny the accusation, saying that they were picking almonds. Amer was shot multiple times in his upper body, according to photographs his family shared with The New York Times. Amer's killing has added to accusations that the Israeli military uses excessive force and operates with impunity. It came amid a sharp spike in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out raids and tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation. Rampages by extremist settlers against Palestinians have also increased recently. Amer's death has also raised questions about the American response to helping its own citizens. Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey have called for an American-led investigation into Amer's death, but the Trump administration has remained largely noncommittal. Last month, the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said at a press briefing that the Israeli military believed it was stopping an act of terrorism. 'We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground,' she added. American officials did not respond to a request for further information. More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mostly by the Israeli military and some by settlers, since the Hamas-led offensive against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations. Roughly 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank during that period. From 2018 to 2022, less than a third of complaints that soldiers had harmed Palestinians in the West Bank resulted in an investigation, according to a recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization. Only a fraction have led to legal action. A Hail of Gunfire The three young boys had gone out to pick green almonds, a seasonal delicacy, in a terraced orchard between Turmus Aya and Route 60, a busy north-south artery linking a patchwork of Palestinian towns and Jewish settlements, one of the friends, Ayoub Jabara, 14, told The Times at his home in Turmus Aya. He denied that they had thrown stones, saying that they had merely been throwing dried almonds at each other. Ayoub, who is also a Palestinian-American, described reaching a point very close to the main road, and finding a tree with dried-up nuts. 'Amer picked one up and was joking that it was like a stone and threw it at me. I threw it back,' he said. Amer was shot at least 11 times, according to his father, Mohammed Rabee. Photographs taken on the cellphone of a family friend who accompanied Mr. Rabee when they picked up Amer's body appeared to show several entry wounds, including one in the center of his forehead and others in his neck and upper torso. Hours after the shooting, the Israeli military issued a 10-second clip of blurry footage without a time stamp that shows three unidentifiable figures appearing to gather things from the ground. One of the figures appears to fling something in a downward motion, though no object is visible. The video cuts out as all three appear to turn and run. The military said that its footage was filmed from a military post and that the soldiers were lying in ambush in what they described as a counterterrorism operation in the area. Four days after Amer died, reporters for The Times searched the ridge where he was killed for any signs of the shooting and came across the clothes. Garments that appeared to have been cut off by soldiers and blue surgical gloves were scattered around a bloodstained rock. The military said it was standard procedure to remove clothes to ensure the body was not booby-trapped. The clothes were later identified by the family as Amer's, when the reporters returned them to the family at their home. Even if the boys did throw stones, said Mr. Rabee, Amer's father, the soldiers could have fired warning shots to scare them away, or could have chased and detained them. 'He was 14 years old,' he said. 'It takes no special training to catch a little kid.' Instead, the soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at family believes they wanted to kill him. The military declined to confirm or deny that it has a shoot-to-kill policy for stone throwers. Ayoub, Amer's friend, suffered 'multiple gunshot wounds,' according to medical records from the Istishari Arab hospital in nearby Ramallah, where he spent three days in the intensive care unit. Both Dr. Mohammad Qneibi, a physician at a local clinic where Ayoub was first taken, and Ayoub's father, Ahed Jabara, told The Times that the boy was shot at least three times in the groin area. The family of the third boy, Abdulrahman Shihada, 15, declined to be interviewed. Hopes of Living in America In Turmus Aya, Amer's parents were still reeling from their loss in the days after the shooting, and Amer's siblings and cousins from the United States had flown in to mourn him. Mr. Rabee and his wife, Majed, left the West Bank for New Jersey in 2001. They moved back to Turmus Aya in 2013, when Amer, the youngest of their five children, was a toddler. The parents wanted their children to be schooled in Arabic and to absorb Palestinian identity and culture. Amer's four older siblings had moved back to the United States after finishing high school. He had dreamed of joining them, and the night before he was killed, he had been texting in English with his siblings about his future business plans to market mini cotton candy machines. Villagers first started moving to the United States more than a century ago and relatives followed. Now, about 85 percent of Turmus Aya's residents are dual Palestinian-American citizens. Many, like the Rabee family, come and go. The evening Amer died, he left the house without saying goodbye, his mother, Majed, said. 'He didn't think he was never coming back.' Amer's father, Mr. Rabee, got a call from a friend at 6:41 p.m. saying there had been a shooting. Word had been spreading in the village that Amer was involved. Mr. Rabee called his son's phone several times but got no reply. At 6:58 p.m., he called the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem's hotline and said his son needed immediate help. He said American officials did not respond with any practical assistance. The embassy did not respond to a request for comment. At about 9:30 p.m., a Palestinian official called to say that Amer had been killed. Mr. Rabee went to an Israeli military base in the northern West Bank where, shortly before midnight, Amer's body was transferred to a Palestinian ambulance. 'I said, 'Praise be to God,' and I kissed him,' Mr. Rabee said. Mr. Rabee said that he did not trust any of the authorities to investigate and that Amer had been buried a day later, without an autopsy. 'Only God can judge; I have sent the case to God for judgment,' Mr. Rabee said. .
