On Thursday 27 November 2025, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) surrounded the Zidan family home in Jenin, killing two unarmed Palestinian men, Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmoud Qassem Abdullah, 26 and Youssef Ali Youssef Asa'sa, 37. The killings occurred amidst so-called ‘Operation Iron Wall’ launched by the Israeli occupation forces in Jenin on 21 January 2025 –– described in March by UNRWA as “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada” –– forcing the mass displacement of 20,000 Palestinians from Jenin refugee camp, in a catalogue of persecutory attacks against the civilian population, which continue to this day.
The killings are the latest acts under an Israeli shoot to kill policy motivated by institutionalised dehumanising racial discrimination, with blanket categorisations smearing Palestinians as “terrorists” who are ostensibly “killable”. Israel’s Minister for National Security, Ben Gvir set out the State position on his social media account, stressing that he “[p]rovided full backing to the Border Guard fighters and IDF soldiers who fired at wanted terrorists who emerged from a building in Jenin. The fighters acted exactly as expected of them - terrorists must die!”. On Friday Ben Gvir informed the commander in charge of the unit that shot and killed the two Palestinian men, that he would be promoted.
I. Facts
1. IOF Infiltrate Jabal Abu Dhahir Neighbourhood in Jenin
According to Al-Haq’s field documentation, around 1:00 PM on Thursday, 27 November 2025, an Israeli special forces unit infiltrated the Jabal Abu Dhahir neighbourhood in Jenin using two vehicles with Palestinian license plates. Israeli special forces in military uniform, armed and mostly masked, spread out across the area, imposing a military cordon on several houses and residential buildings. Israeli military reconnaissance flights were heard flying overhead at low altitudes in the sky, followed by the arrival of a military helicopter which circled the area at varying altitudes. Minutes later, a number of military vehicles which had been positioned inside and around Jenin Camp, arrived at Jabal Abu Dhahir. Other vehicles carrying the IOF came from the direction of Jalameh, via Nazareth-Jenin Street, through the northern entrance. Additional IOF troops arrived from the southern Jenin-Nablus entrance. The IOF completely closed off the targeted area in Jabal Abu Dhahir, deploying soldiers in the streets leading to the neighbourhood, as well as raiding and occupying several houses with snipers.
2. IOF Force Local Palestinian Man to Act as Human Shield
One eyewitness described to Al-Haq how the IOF targeted the house of a local man, who lives nearly by Zidan family in Jenin, and calling out his name the IOF requested that he leave his house. The man received a phone call from his wife informing him that the IOF were outside his house calling his name. The man was not at home at the time, but at his workplace elsewhere. He then received a phone call directly from the Israeli intelligence service demanding that he leave his workplace, and threatening that the IOF would raid his workplace if he refused to comply. Upon his arrival home, he was reportedly used by the IOF as a human shield to evacuate several homes opposite the commercial warehouse belonging to the Zidan family. Residents who were forced to evacuate were held together in the courtyard of a nearby house. One witness recalled IOF snipers stationed on the roof of the house, and on the roofs of several other houses, and a heavy deployment of IOF soldiers stationed nearby behind walls and vehicles. The man was ordered to act as a human shield and open the windows and doors of the evacuated homes, under the surveillance of Israeli snipers. He was accompanied throughout by a military surveillance drone which flew overhead and was used to enter and inspect the houses, to ensure they were empty. After residents were evacuated from their homes, witnesses described hearing several gunshots consistent with IOF gunfire from the direction of the evacuated houses, but this did not appear to be from clashes. In the courtyard the evacuated residents, including children were subjected to IOF questioning.
3. IOF Target a Warehouse Owned by the Zidan Family in Jenin
Al-Haq’s preliminary field investigation identified the targeted house as belonging to the Zidan family, with a commercial warehouse, used as a storage facility for their shawarma restaurant in Jenin. The storage facility can be accessed through an “electric roll up door” located on the main street at the eastern side of the house.
One witness recalled to Al-Haq hearing gunshots at the site immediately after the IOF arrived. It is unclear whether there was an armed clash, but the gunfire was sporadic and not intense. Israeli forces were also stationed on the roofs of the houses surrounding the Zidan family home. At around 1:45 P.M., a D9 Israeli military bulldozer loaded onto a military truck designed to transport heavy machinery, left the Israeli Dutan camp south of Jenin, accompanied by several military jeeps, and crossed Jenin Street, accompanied by IOF soldiers. Another bulldozer with rubber wheels and a front shovel, left from Jenin camp and headed towards Jabal Abu Dhahir neighbourhood, located approximately 500-600 metres away. Heavy gunshots were fired from a military aircraft away from the buildings, at unspecified open areas.
At 2:40 P.M., news crews and journalists arrived at the Al-Marah neighbourhood across from Jabal Abu Dhahir, within view of the Zidan family home, and began live broadcasting. A D9 military bulldozer arrived at the front door of the commercial storage room, of the Zidan family. At around 3:30 P.M., journalists' cameras recorded the bulldozer using its front blade to strike the metal door of the storage room, causing it to open. The bulldozer blade pushed the metal door inside the warehouse, leaving the door open, at the bottom. IOF soldiers surrounded the warehouse on both sides. A small Israeli military jeep remained located in front of the warehouse. After a short period of time, journalists' cameras documented two unarmed young men coming out of the warehouse through the bottom of the door.
The two unarmed men were seen lifting their upper clothing, indicating they were carrying nothing dangerous (likely in response to instructions from soldiers positioned a few meters away). Immediately upon their exit, several soldiers attacked the young men, knocking them to the ground and kicking them while pointing their weapons at the men from close range. By then, the soldiers had completely subdued the young men without any resistance or threat.
According to several eyewitnesses, there was no armed clash between the two men who were killed and the IOF, and no gunshots were heard. Footage recorded by the press also shows that the two men were unarmed when they surrendered.
4. The Killing of Al-Muntasir Abdullah and Youssef Asa'sa
Shortly afterwards, the two unarmed young men calmly got up and started to move away from the soldiers, one walking and the other crawling inside the warehouse, which was no more than a meter away. As the two young men entered the warehouse, several IOF soldiers opened fire on them from a distance of between one and two meters, at close range. Media cameras captured the moment the direct shots were fired. Reports indicate that the gunfire was intense and lasted for several seconds.
The soldiers then moved back slightly, while the bulldozer removed the metal door of the warehouse, which had fallen completely to the ground. The bulldozer then pushed the metal door slightly outward, resulting in the body of one of the young men being pulled out of the warehouse. The other body remained inside the warehouse, at the entrance. The soldiers then entered the warehouse, and one of them pulled the body of the other young man slightly outside the warehouse. After that, a number of soldiers were seen entering the warehouse while firing shots into the depths of the warehouse, the traces of which appeared on some of the walls and the contents of the warehouse.
After about 10-15 minutes, soldiers were seen carrying two bodies into a large military jeep known as a “Boz al-Nimr,” which arrived near the described warehouse, where the soldiers placed each body inside a white cloth. The large jeep then left the site, while the IOF remained present and deployed at the site until around 6:15 P.M., that day. During this time the soldiers raided more houses. After the IOF withdrew from the area residents were able to reach the scene of the incident and reported heavy bloodstains on the floor of the warehouse. Witnesses described the stains as two large spots, the first directly at the entrance to the warehouse and the other half a meter inside the warehouse. Bullet marks were seen scattered across a large part of the contents and walls of the warehouse. The bodies were taken into custody by the IOF, and their identities were later announced, around 7:30 P.M., through the Palestinian liaison office and the Palestinian Ministry of Health, as Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmoud Qassem Abdulla, 26 and Youssef Ali Youssef Asa'sa, 37.
II. Legal Analysis
1. Law Enforcement Operations
Israel is maintaining a regime of institutionalised racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, to maintain and expand its settler colonial enterprise entrenching Israeli Jewish domination. Since 1967, Israel has been administering the Palestinian territory, including Jenin as an Occupying Power –– a presence which the International Court of Justice in the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem has held to be unlawful and which Israel must end “as rapidly as possible”. Israel’s unlawfully present IOF soldiers in Jenin remain bound by the provisions of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Outside of active hostilities, and during a prolonged belligerent occupation of territory, Israel’s forces are operating under a law enforcement or policing paradigm governed primarily under international human rights law.
Israel’s mass forcible transfers of the Palestinian population in Jenin and across the Northern West Bank, its arbitrary arrests and detentions without due process, and inhumane treatment and torture of Palestinians under its effective control, are acts of persecution and apartheid, amounting to crimes against humanity carried out with knowledge against the civilian population. Israel is further carrying out acts intended to destroy the Palestinian people amounting to genocide.
2. Extrajudicial Killings are Wilful Killings and Inhumane Acts of Apartheid
During belligerent occupation, the right to life is guaranteed under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which provides that “[e]very human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” According to General Comment Number 36, the notion of arbitrariness is interpreted broadly to “include elements of inappropriateness, injustice, lack of predictability and due process of law, as well as elements of reasonableness, necessity and proportionality”.
Even under considerations of necessity, recourse to lethal force can only be used as a last resort, and not where a threat can be otherwise neutralised with non-lethal alternatives. In the case of Al-Muntasir Abdullah and Youssef Asa'sa, the IOF took no steps to apprehend the men. They chose to not arrest or detain them, or use other non-violent alternatives when the men were under their immediate control, but instead beat and physically assaulted the men. When the beaten unarmed men retreated into the storage unit, again they were not called on to stop, followed or apprehended, but instead shot to death. Even when force was resorted to, it was not a proportionate response –– there was clearly no threat or risk to the lives or bodily integrity of the IOF from the beaten, unarmed, retreating Palestinian men.
As such the arbitrary killings not only breach Article 6 of the ICCPR, they further amount to wilful killings and grave breaches of the Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 8(2)(a)(i) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The racially motivated killings to maintain Israeli-Jewish domination over the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, amount to persecution and inhumane acts of apartheid as crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
3. Inhuman and Degrading Treatment
The IOF’s beating of Al-Muntasir Abdullah and Youssef Asa'sa is proscribed under international human rights and international humanitarian law. In November 2025, the UN Committee Against Torture in its Concluding Observations to Israel, highlighted Israel’s “de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” expressing “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings”. The IOF attacks on Al-Muntasir Abdullah and Youssef Asa'sa, kicking them while pointing their weapons at the men from close range, amounts to acts in breach of the Convention Against Torture.
Further, Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment as grave breaches giving rise to individual criminal responsibility, and Israeli perpetrators may be prosecuted accordingly. Notably all High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, have obligations to prosecute persons before their national courts, including Israeli perpetrators who have committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Carrying out acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment against Palestinians for the purpose of establishing and maintaining the domination by one racial group over another and systematically oppressing them, further amounts to acts of apartheid, prohibited under customary international law and Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
4. Prohibited Use of Human Shields
Notably, the IOF’s use of a Palestinian civilian as a human shield to evacuate and search houses under threat of snipers and drones, are acts expressly prohibited by Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Article 28 provides that “[t]he presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations”. Article 51(7) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, further provides that “[t]he presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.” According to the ICRC Pictet Commentary, Article 51(7) “explicitly confirms the customary rule that innocent civilians must be kept outside hostilities”.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Despite the IOF’s claim that it has opened an investigation into the killings, which constitutes an extrajudicial killing, war crimes and inhuman acts of persecution and apartheid under international law, this announcement appears to be an attempt to cover up the crime. This is particularly evident given that the killings have been clearly documented and widely circulated without ambiguity. We emphasize that deliberate unlawful killing is a systematic policy practiced by the Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory with impunity. We also note that the policy of extrajudicial killing is carried out in a clear and systematic manner, including against children, and is implemented in the Gaza Strip as part of the ongoing military campaign, which includes acts of genocide and other international crimes. We also remind that there are hundreds of Palestinians who have been forcibly disappeared from the Gaza Strip, with no information regarding their fate or the locations of their detention, nor whether they are still alive or have been killed in the same manner and executed in the field.
Al-Haq calls on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the killings and international crimes across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the killings of Al-Muntasir Abdullah and Youssef Asa'sa in Jenin, and to hold Israeli perpetrators to account including Israeli government ministers greenlighting apartheid policies for the unlawful indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. Third States must place diplomatic, economic and military sanctions on Israel for its continuing breaches of jus cogens norms of international law against the Palestinian people, implement the recommendations of the 2024 Palestine Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, and hold Israeli perpetrators in their jurisdiction to account.