Clues to a targeted killing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
An open-source investigation into an undercover Israeli raid in Jenin
On 16th March 2023, several videos and images emerged of a group of armed men shooting four Palestinian men dead, including a teenage boy. The men, in an assortment of plain clothes and wearing baseball caps, carried out the killings in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets in Jenin, a Palestinian city located in the north of Palestinian territories which have been under Israeli occupation since 1967. Pistols and rifles in the hand, the Israeli squads made their escape in two silver cars and fled the scene.
The targeted killings on Yahiya Ayyash Street had been completed. A man in a khaki green top and jeans — Nidal Khazem— lay on the road next to a motorbike face down in a pool of blood, his brains spattered across the concrete. Youssef Shreim was also dead as was Louay Khalil Al-Zughair. A teenage boy, 14-year-old Omar Mohammed Awadin — who would quickly succumb to his wounds — lay under his bike on the road being tended to by locals. 20 Palestinians were reported wounded by mainstream media.
The escape was on for the Israeli gunmen, the first squad made its escape via Abu Jihad Street but the second hit squad escaping along Haifa Street ran into trouble. Battered by stones thrown by locals, lodged behind cars in the packed roads and crippled, allegedly, by shots fired by Palestinian militants operating in the city they were forced to pull over. Unable to escape, the squad exited the crippled vehicle being mobbed by Palestinian civilians.
After exiting the vehicle they retreated to Falesteen restaurant on Almalek Fysal Street, around the corner from the main commercial district on Abu Bakr Street where locals threw objects, screaming and yelling. Gunshots dispersed the crowd and the squad taking refuge in the restaurant opened fire on anyone who approached the restaurant. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) moved in. A convoy of armoured jeeps and trucks arrived on the scene to allow the besieged squad to make an escape and leapt into an armoured vehicle. With the broken-down vehicle in tow, the convoy and the second hit squad made their escape.
The Israeli army initially said its soldiers had “neutralised” two suspected militants, accusing them of terrorist activities. An army spokesperson announced that: “Armed gunmen fired at the forces and the forces responded with live fire.” One of those killed, Louay Khalil Al-Zughair, “was neutralised after attempting to attack the forces with a crowbar”. The Palestinian health ministry said 23 others had been wounded in the raid, five seriously.
So what happened on 16th March 2023? Who was involved? Where were the videos and photographs taken? When and why were they captured? What does this raid mean within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Background: ‘The martyrs’ capital’
Jenin, a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, is where the targeted killing took place. It has a long history of resisting Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank. In 1967, local teachers from both Jenin and the city of Nablus spearheaded petitions and protests criticising the Israelis in the opening months of the military occupation. They were angry that their new occupiers were changing textbooks they used under Jordanian rule to suit the Israeli government’s version of events since the 1948 war. By the second intifada, which erupted in 2000, the town had become a significant thorn in the side of the IDF. It was the second-largest refugee camp in the West Bank, home to over 14,000 refugees and a nerve centre of Palestinian militancy. The Israelis dubbed Jenin ‘the martyrs’ capital’ as twenty-eight suicide attacks had been launched from there between October 2000 and April 2002.
The IDF cracked down hard on the city conducting multiple raids in the early 2000s but in April 2002 matters escalated when Israelis invaded Jenin in full force. Journalists and observers who entered the city in the wake of the fighting found thousands of Palestinians displaced and large parts of the refugee camp flattened. The Palestinians and their supporters accused the Israelis of perpetrating a ‘massacre’, an allegation fiercely denied by the Israelis and their supporters (the UN would later conclude that no massacre took place — this was fiercely disputed once again). What was indisputable is that the battle was vicious. At least 4,000 were displaced and over seventy people were killed in the bitter fighting with the Palestinian fighters lacing the town with explosives and the IDF utilsing armored bulldozers to carve up the camp.
The tales of death and horrific scenes had a strong impact on Palestinians, particularly on the younger generation. In Arab and Palestinian media, the memories of the draconian response of the IDF in Jenin are vivid. “We cannot allow anyone to forget the past and airbrush the victims of Israel’s occupation from history, not least those who were killed in Jenin, 1–11 April 2002,” Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist and author, wrote during covid-19. Mondoweiss, a pro-Palestinian newspaper, described the battle of Jenin as a “symbol” on the 20th anniversary of the battle:
Many Israelis on the other hand have dismissed the myth of “Jeningrad”, a phrase coined by the Palestinian Authority’s former leader, Yasser Arafat to describe the battle. History in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters, and it is in the context of this fiercely contested history that this targeted killing took place.
In 2023, two decades on from the second intifada, Jenin and Nablus have once again reemerged as a hotbed of Palestinian militancy resisting military occupation. The deadly raid on 16th March 2023 is one of many being conducted by the IDF, which have steadily escalated since 2022 targeting the various armed groups emerging in the two cities, most notably the Jenin Brigade (Katibet Jenin) and the Lions’ Den (Areen al-Usud).
The Jenin Brigade, according to The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, came into existence in September 2021 and is affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and serves as a quasi-branch of the Jerusalem Brigades, the PIJ’s military wing, lacking an official hierarchy. According to Al Jazeera, the members of Lions’ Den (formed in 2022) are young men in their early 20s who have individual ties to the four main traditional Palestinian political parties: Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Both organisations have ‘no commonly accepted ideology or political or organisational structure, and is largely dominated by local leaders, employing a decentred organisation and interdependence that utilises social media.’ Other brigades also formed in 2022 including the Nablus Brigades, the Balata Brigades, the Tubas Brigades and the Yabad Brigades.
In 2022, the IDF, Israeli Security Agency (ISA), and Border police forces have stepped up counter-terrorism activities, launching Operation ‘Break the Wave’ to stem the rise of new Palestinian militant groups such as Lions’ Den and the Jenin Brigade in the West Bank. The joint operation was announced after a stabbing on a bus at Neve Daniel junction on Route 60, south of Jerusalem and a shootout between the IDF and Palestinian militants in Jenin. In a tweet, the IDF described Jenin as “a stronghold for the world’s deadliest terrorist groups” and described 2022 as a ‘Wave of Terror’ as attacks increased. The Lions’ Den and Jenin Brigade are in the cross-hairs of the IDF for attacks against Israeli checkpoints, soldiers and settlements built on Palestinian land.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 170 Palestinians were killed and over 9,000 wounded in 2022 across the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist working with Al Jazeera drawing considerable international condemnation. In a statement in December, UN officials also condemned violence perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians which rose for a sixth consecutive year and to the highest level since the second intifada ended in 2005. For the Israelis, the price has also been high. Twenty-seven Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed by Palestinians in 2022, the highest number since 2008 including a brutal shooting on Holocaust Memorial Day which killed seven shocking the international community. The attack came a day after one of the deadliest raids in years killed nine Palestinians in Jenin.
The cycle of violence has deepened in 2023. This year over 80 Palestinians have been killed already, the highest rate for perhaps two decades. Fiery rhetoric from right-wingers, including government ministers, has poured fuel on the fire, catalysing violence in the West Bank which culminated in a devastating pogrom in the Palestinian village of Huwara on 26th February.
Site of the targeted killing
It is against this backdrop of spiralling violence that the raid on 16th March 2023 took place in Jenin. On 7th March and 9th March, the IDF had already killed 9 Palestinian fighters from the Jenin Brigade and Islamic Jihad. The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu said the first raid had been a response to the killing of two Israeli brothers (settlers from Har Bracha) in Huwara on 26th February. One of the fighters to allegedly escape the raid on 7th March was Nidal Khazem, a Jenin battalion commander. He would be killed a week later on 16th March.
The four people killed in the raid on 16th March were Nidal Khazem, 28, Youssef Shreim, 29, Louay Khalil Al-Zughair,37, and 14-year-old Omar Mohammed Awadin. Locating the killing required several different angles. The first information leaked about the killings from online media and social media said the shooting began in Jenin’s commercial centre. Two media outlets, Arab 48 and Oman Observer said the incident occurred on Abu Bakr Street (Figure 4).
This is close but incorrect on closer inspection. The killing took place on Yahiya Ayyash Street, a street close to Abu Bakr Street. The two hit squads and the wake of the killings were captured from seven angles (see below) by mobile phones and surveillance footage during and after the assassinations.
Google Maps does not have ‘Browse Street View’ availability in the occupied Palestinian territories. The best option for street view in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - as Bellingcat demonstrated in its investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh — is Mapillary. The key clue is a restaurant called Panda (Figure 10) and a jewellery store (Figure 10 and Figure 12) captured in surveillance camera* — *Please note the surveillance camera footage time is incorrect, it hasn’t been set correctly by the shop owner — and mobile footage.
The Arabic مجوهرات on the shop sign translates to ‘Jewellery’, and the diamond sign on the front of the shop also helps identify it as a jewellery store. The Panda Restaurant can also be seen in the first camera angle (Figure 5) in mobile footage from a shoe shop.
In the surveillance footage, the shutters of the shop also begin to close after the attack and are seen shut in mobile footage from camera angle six in the wake of the killings. The white car is slightly jutting out away from the pavement at an angle.
There are also two cars, a dark grey car parked behind a white car in front of the shop that can be seen from several different angles (Figure 15, 16, 17, 18, 19).
On Mapillary, there is a jewellery store along Abu Bakr Street which is distinct on Google Maps (Figure 21) at 32.462026, 35.299021, but it does bear the same large diamond symbol in the centre of the sign (Figure 22). There is also no ‘Panda Restaurant’ heading towards Haifa Street (Figure 23).
Further up the street and turn right onto Yahiya Ayyash Street and there is a jewellery store with an identical name, sign and diamond centred in the middle with an older version of ‘Panda Restaurant’ opposite the store. The restaurant has since been redesigned.
There is also a shoe shop (DAF Shoes) where mobile footage originally emerged of the undercover operation in Jenin. Furthermore, there is a sign in Mapillary that correlates with that seen in mobile footage captured from a balcony (Figure 26, Figure 27, Figure 28). The coordinates of two of the victims seen in the footage can be pinpointed.
The first body under the sign can be geolocated at 32.462705, 35.297022 (blue arrow) The second body in the middle of the road can be geolocated at 32.462908, 35.296960 (red arrow).
But a question remains, what happened to the third and fourth bodies? The surveillance footage offers vital clues to the third casualty of the raid. Between 00:30–00:34 in the surveillance footage from the jewellery shot, we can see 14-year-old Omar Mohammed Awadin falling from his bike after being shot (Figure 30, Figure 31 below). According to a witness, he was “not involved in anything. He worked at a family business” and was killed while cycling outside his parents’ shop. Where he falls correlates with where he lies just outside the jewellery store and Panda Restaurant angles from several different mobile footage angles captured from the street and balconies.
After Omar Mohammed Awadin was shot and fell from his bike, surveillance footage captures people running by the shop in panic and then two men sprint by, with Israeli operatives in close pursuit. One in a dark jacket with a jet-black beard seems to be holding his side as he stumbles in front of the shop before getting up and running past the store (Figure 32). This is Youssef Shreim, one of the Israeli targets.
Six Israelis in civilian clothing, armed to the teeth, pursue him around the corner (Figure 33-37). In a darkly comical way, they suddenly all turn around and run back past the jewellery store. This is not a case of mistaken identity or a game of tag. They killed Youssef Shreim and, having completed the killing, are running back to their vehicles — having already gunned down Nidal Khazem. It is clear the Israelis — given the number of injuries reported, and watching Omar Mohammed Awadin get shot and fall from his bike — were spraying bullets and firing down the street to hit their target. This cross-checks with what a witness described to BBC News after the targeted killings.
They then usher the other Israelis back to run back towards their two vehicles parked nearby. Between 00:38–00:40 in the surveillance footage, the first Israeli gunman in a baseball cap to run past the jewellery store raises his rifle to take aim at a bearded man, Yousef Shreim, who ran past the store. He is closely followed by a second Israeli gunman in a baseball cap armed with a pistol.
The third body, though unseen in the footage in the aftermath of the shooting (until his funeral) is roughly around this area (green square) to the right-hand side of the jewellery store compared to the first body (red arrow) and second bodies (blue arrow) in the middle of the road and under the sign in footage from the balcony below.
After killing Youssef Shreim, the Israelis run back towards Yahiya Ayyash Street (Figure 41) where their two silver cars are there to escape the scene before the Palestinian militants and crowds block their path.
In a gruesome shot captured from the balcony, the Israeli gunmen, in a rush, double-check that the man lying face down is dead. 00:00–00:02 are the crucial part of the shot (Figure 42). An Israeli gunman can be seen pointing at the body to the right of the white van (likely saying something along the lines of “Make sure he’s dead.” This can’t be confirmed but his gesture before running off implies that he wants his associates to shoot Nidal Khazem and not tend to the Palestinian’s wounds).
The Israeli gunman in the baseball cap and armed with a rifle who killed Youssef Shreim takes aim at point blank range and shoots the motionless Nidal Khazem through the head. Blood sprays over the pavement. The woman filming and someone with her scream and the camera turns away.
At 00:05 in another street-view clip (Figure 43), you can hear two gunshots and four Israeli gunmen entering a car (00:06–00:09). The man in the jumper with the horizontal stripes is clearly captured (Figure 44).
This angle from another balcony also captures the exact moment when the Israelis shoot Nidal Khazem through the head and matches the street view shot of their escape opposite DAF Shoes and into to their vehicle.
A glimpse of the first squad entering a near identical vehicle (blue square) can be also seen in the footage from two balconies just down the road from the second squad’s vehicle (red square) and closer to the jewellery store.
Time of the killing
The precise timing of the killings on 16th March 2023 is more difficult to identify. The surveillance camera footage states 2023–03–15 at 02:09 am in the morning which is wrong. Both the dates mainstream media filed their reports online and content appearing on social indicate 16th March 2023, while the time of day and the bustling commercial centre seen in the footage suggests it took place in the afternoon, not the early hours of the morning. The rough use of SunCalc at geolocation 32.462385, 35.297117 indicates it took place sometime at around 15:00 using the car and building sitting in the sunshine (Figure 46 and 47) as the Israeli squads make their escape. Mondoweiss, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, suggests the killing took place at around 15:00 PM.
The great escape
The Israeli squad (first squad and second squad) make their escape, driving away from the scene of the targeted killings. The first squad (Figure 48) can be seen turning around in the street from the balcony and driving past the body of Omar Mohammed Awadin as Palestinian civilians move him out of the car’s way.
The car of the first squad proceeds to go north up Yahia Ayyash Street (Figure 48). It doesn’t turn right to avoid the yellow taxi and the body of Omar Mohammed Awadin.
The vehicle was later captured in mobile footage coming to a roundabout via Abu Jihad Street before turning and heading northwards onto Route 60 which leads out of Jenin (Figure 49). It is being pelted by stones in the video but escapes relatively unscathed. The geolocation of the video footage is roughly 32.463531, 35.303855 and can images of the car escaping can be cross-checked with images on Mapillary.
The not-so-great escape
The escape of the second squad is less straightforward. The second squad appears to go southwards. It can be spotted going up Haifa Street (Figure 50) with locals pounding it with stones and, allegedly, bullets. The geolocation of the video on Haifa Street is 32.461449, 35.299020. The second squad is in the car (red square in the image (not the sign)) heading east towards Route 60.
The second squad’s vehicle runs into trouble on Almalek Fysal Street, around the corner from the main commercial district on Abu Bakr Street. Mobile footage from the street and a balcony (Figure 51 and Figure 52) shows the Palestinian locals setting upon the slowing vehicle (Figure 52) which stops outside the black and yellow bannered shop. Cross-checked with Mapillary, the geolocation is roughly 32.461916, 35.301515 close to Jenin’s municipal library and Fatima Khatun School which are opposite a mosque. A new red roof has been built on one of the buildings. Gunshots ring out as the Israelis fire off rounds to scatter the Palestinian crowd mobbing the vehicle.
Another angle captured (and shared on an Israeli Telegram channel: Documenting Israel) from a few shops down shows the Palestinian locals mobbing the vehicle and restaurant. The shop on the opposite side of the square can be cross-checked with Mapillary, and three mobiles recording the event from the street and shop. Two people can be spotted in yellow jumpers, one close to the shop, the other in the mob.
The second vehicle has come to a halt and the second squad, according a pro-Palestinian Twitter account, the Israeli gunmen took cover in “Falesteen restaurant”. In 00:08 of the balcony clip, 00:02 of the shop footage and 00:07 of the street footage, gunfire erupts.
In the footage from the shop, one man is spotted taking cover behind a car. This is not the car the Israelis are in as the Israeli vehicle pulled up directly outside the building with the black and yellow banner. At 00:15 in the mobile footage, a bullet appears to hit the car and the man falls to the ground. It is unclear who this man is. It is also unclear whether the man was nearly hit, seriously wounded or killed. According to Mondoweiss, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, the Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd, fatally wounding Louay Khalil Al-Zughair but it is unclear whether this occurred on this street or another.
If he was killed it would be Louay Khalil Al-Zughair (which would bring into question the narrative that he ran at the undercover Israelis with a crowbar) However, the grainy footage and lack of clarity on who the man is and what happened to him mean he cannot be identified or the incident verified. What is known is that the Israelis were firing live rounds at the Palestinian crowd hurling stones and objects at the car. Allegedly, though it cannot be confirmed in the footage available, the Israelis used families in the restaurant as human shields. The unit called for backup for the IDF which allegedly arrived 15 minutes later.
In the video shared on Twitter, four figures can be seen jumping into the back of an armoured vehicle (Figure 54), but as the video is low-quality, it is difficult to see if they match up with the Israeli gunmen carrying out the targeted killings on Yahia Ayyash Street.
Later, an IDF convoy is captured in mobile footage leaving Jenin on Route 60 and heading northwards. One of the armoured jeeps in the convoy is towing away a damaged car behind it (Figure 55) to leave no evidence at the scene for Palestinian locals and militants to capture.
The precise location of this video can be found using Mapillary. The two buildings, a large tower block (on the left) and a white building with four windows (on the right) offer clues as to the location of the IDF convoy.
Mapillary shows an older version of the constructed tower block (Figure 55). Progress has been made on the tower block since it was last captured on Mapillary. The white building with the four windows can be spotted in the same shot on Mapillary. The geolocation of the IDF convoy leaving Jenin is 32.465516, 35.305200.
The crashed car and the second squad were retrieved as there were no reported casualties by the IDF. The map below shows the direction of the separate groups during their escape from Jenin’s commercial centre including the first squad (green), the second squad (red) and the IDF convoy (yellow) dragging along the damaged car as captured in the mobile footage across Jenin’s commercial area. The circle denotes where the second car came to a stop and the second squad had to retreat into a restaurant before it was picked up by an IDF convoy.
A glimpse into “Break the Wave”
The Israelis have escaped, and a ‘March of Rage’ takes place in Jenin. Two bodies are seen being carried in the footage. Nidal Khazem’s head is heavily bandaged (Figure 59) denoting a close-range headshot wound. The corpse on the ground also has a very similar hairstyle and bulky, strong body similar to that of photos of Nidal Khazem in previous photos taken of the Palestinian fighter.
Youssef Shreim is also seen at the ‘March of Rage’ with his family mourning him in a pink rug (Figure 58) before he is carried away by the Palestinian crowd. The long beard matches that seen in the footage before his death, as he is chased by the Israeli gunman moments before and after his death (Figure 58). Unlike Nidal Khazem, Youssef Shreim and Omar Mohammed Awadin’s faces (Figure 60) are more clear in the footage after their deaths.
Once again Louay Khalil Al-Zughair, the fourth man to be shot, has not been seen in the images and footage found. According to Mondoweiss, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, the Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd, fatally wounding Louay Khalil Al-Zughair while the Israelis said later in a statement that the Israeli gunmen killed him because he was coming at them with a crowbar. It is unclear whether it took place on Almalek Fysal Street where Palestinian civilians swarmed the second Israeli squad’s vehicle or on Yahiya Ayyash Street where the targeted killings occurred.
The open-source summary
While the wealth of open-source video evidence currently available does not detail the exact moment or exact shot that killed Nidal Khazem or Youssef Shreim, and Louay Khalil Al-Zughair, multiple witness testimonies place the blame on the Israeli undercover squad for the deaths and injuries that followed. The exact moment Omar Mohammed Awadin was shot has been caught on surveillance footage but it is unclear which undercover operative shot him. Available video evidence does show Israeli soldiers putting a bullet through Nidal Khazem’s head as he lay motionless on the ground. It is unclear whether he was dead or alive before the Israeli soldier in the baseball cap pulled the trigger. There is also evidence of Israeli soldiers chasing Youssef Shreim before he goes off-screen, and they quickly turn around moments later suggesting they killed him seconds later just off the surveillance footage.
Omar Mohammed Awadin can be seen going down on his bike on Yahiya Ayyash Street in surveillance footage from a jewellery store just moments before Israeli soldiers are seen chasing Youssef Shreim down Yahiya Ayyash Street. With at least 20 Palestinians injured, it is likely he was hit in the spray of bullets that may have hit an already incapacitated Youssef Shreim before he was finally gunned down around the corner by an Israeli soldier in a baseball cap and carrying a rifle. As the open source video evidence shows, the IDF, ISF and Israeli police were conducting an undercover raid in civilian clothing as part of Operation “Break the Wave”, following a pattern of attacks in Jenin over the last month and mirroring other deadly operations across the West Bank in 2022 and 2023.
The nature of the killings indicates it was a targeted assassination or killing (some human rights organisations such as Breaking the Silence have called it an ‘extrajudicial execution’ and the shooting of Nidal Khazem in the head as a “verification of killing.”) The Palestinians have described the act as “organised state terrorism”.
An Israeli army spokesperson did not give a clear answer when asked if an investigation would be opened but gives a clue as to who the men conducting the counter-terrorism operation were. “I know the visual is problematic. I’ll know more next week. It’s a special police force officer.” The special police force he eludes to is YAMAM: Special Police Unit of Israel’s Border Police (“יחידה מרכזית מיוחדת” or “Special Police Unit”) or could be IDF Mistaravim (YAMAS).
The use of live fire against the Palestinians mobbing the vehicle on Almalek Fysal Street is more complex given the aggression of the crowd and the threat presented to the lives of the YAMAS/YAMAN operatives when the vehicle stopped. Despite being non-combatants, the lines between the Palestinian civilians being involved in hostilities against the second squad on Almalek Fysal Street are more blurred (according to the International Committee of the Red Cross).
However, the death of 14-year-old Omar Mohammed Awadin on Yahiya Ayyash Street poses harder questions. He was captured cycling away from the scene of the targeted killings and not threatening or firing at the YAMAS/YAMAN operatives from his bike when he was struck in the head as they carried out the targeted killing of Youssef Shreim. As the Israel Supreme Court’s Summary of Ruling on Targeted Killings (published on December 14, 2006) states:
Against the backdrop of Israel’s constitutional crisis and escalating violence in the West Bank, such targeted killings and their fallout could be harbinger of the worst to come in 2023 for Israelis and Palestinians alike as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grinds on.
