Killing of Awdah Hathaleen

Killing of Awdah Hathaleen
Part of Israeli settler violence during the Gaza war
Hathaleen in 2025
Location	Umm al-Khair, West Bank, Palestine
Coordinates	31°25′30″N 35°11′46″E / 31.42500°N 35.19611°E / 31.42500; 35.19611
Date	July 28, 2025 (2025-07-28)
Attack type	Homicide by shooting
Weapons	Firearm
Deaths	1
Victim	Awdah Hathaleen
Perpetrator	Yinon Levi
Convicted	None
Judge	Chavi Toker

On July 28, 2025, Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and consultant on the 2024 documentary No Other Land, was shot and killed by Israeli settler Yinon Levi in the village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills, West Bank. The killing was filmed by several of the village's residents and Hathaleen himself, showing Levi opening fire on the community.^[1][2] The killing was widely condemned by the international community and human rights groups amidst continuing settler violence in the occupied territory since the start of the Gaza war.^[1]

Odeh Muhammad Khalil al-Hathalin^[3][4] (Arabic: عودة محمد خليل الهذالين, romanized: ʿAwdah Muḥammad Ḫalīl al-Haḏḏālīn; born 1994 in Umm al-Khair),^[5] more commonly known as Awdah Hathaleen or sometimes as Odeh Hadalin, was an English teacher and activist against Israeli settler violence.

Born and raised into a Bedouin tribe from Beersheba who was expelled by Israeli forces in 1948,^[5] Hathaleen received his primary education in local schools, despite inadequate facilities and hindered access from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deployed in the West Bank. Developing an interest in foreign languages since an early age, he pursued a bachelor's degree in English from Hebron University in 2016, going on to become a teacher at Al-Saray'a Secondary School in Badia, which he had attended himself.^[5] After becoming an activist at age of 17,^[6][7] he emerged over the time as a recognizable spokesperson for the people of Umm al-Khair, often receiving foreign diplomats, journalists and fellow activists.^[5][7] From 2019–2023, he collaborated to the filming of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, centered on the threats Israeli expansionism and settler violence pose to the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta, located near Hathaleen's hometown.^[3][5][8] He was a volunteer with Israeli human rights association B'Tselem.^[9] Hathaleen had also been a contributor to +972 Magazine since 2021.^[10]

Hathaleen was also a soccer fan (particularly of Real Madrid),^[7] and played with the local Masafer Yatta and Susiya amateur clubs, believing sport to be a means to foster peaceful resistance against the Israeli occupation.^[5] He had been married since 2019 to 24-year-old Hanady, and had three children – Watan (5 years old), Muhammad (4 years old) and Kinan (7 months old).^[5][7][8] In 2022, his uncle Suleiman was run over and killed by an Israeli police tow truck. No one was convicted for his murder.^[6]

The month before his death, Hathaleen and his cousin, Eid Hathaleen, had been scheduled to speak in a number of cities in the Bay Area for an interfaith speaking tour, but were not permitted to leave San Francisco International Airport. They were then both deported to Qatar by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.^[11][12] During the last three years of his life, he was also involved with an Italian foundation for youth education, taking part in camps in Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany.^[4]

On July 28, 2025, No Other Land director Yuval Abraham stated on Twitter that Hathaleen had been fatally shot in the lungs by an Israeli settler^[3][6] in his village of Umm al-Khair.^[13][14]

According to local activists, the killing took place after earlier clashes that day, when settlers from the Havat Meitarim outpost near Khirbet Zanuta had begun earthworks in a "state land" area with water and electricity pipelines for Umm al-Khair, and village residents demanded that they move to another site. Upon finishing the works, a settler drove his bulldozer through a private olive grove in Umm al-Khair, damaging property and land. After the settler knocked unconscious villager Ahmad al-Hathaleen, who had intervened, with the excavator's hammer, other residents began to throw stones at him, prompting a second Israeli settler to come forth and start shooting; Hathaleen's cousin Alaa, who witnessed the murder, claimed that the settler "immediately started firing randomly at everyone" despite being warned that children were present, and that he slapped Hathaleen's mother to the ground after she protested the shooting.^[1][9] Israeli-American activist Mattan Berner-Kadish, who was also present at the scene, recounted that the shooter immediately commented "I'm glad I did it," and that three IDF soldiers wished it had been one of them to fire at Hathaleen.^[6] The IDF described the incident as "terrorists … hurling stones at Israeli civilians near the area of Carmel in Judea."^[13]

The perpetrator was identified by Abraham and the village's residents as Israeli settler Yinon Levi,^[13][15] the founder of Havat Meitarim, who was under sanctions by the United Kingdom and European Union and had previously been sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration for repeated attacks at local Palestinian communities; the latter sanctions were lifted by the Trump administration.^{[6][9][14][15][16]} A video captured on July 28 showed Levi wildly firing his gun at the village's residents at the time of Hathaleen's killing, confirming the witnesses' account.^[1][17][18]

Hathaleen was rushed to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, where he arrived without pulse and was pronounced dead of his wounds.^[9][17][18]

The day following the murder, an Israeli court upheld Levi's claims that he was acting in "self-defense" and put him on house arrest for three days, after which he was released. Concurrently, Israeli police forces, presenting a closed military zone order, stormed what was set to be Hathaleen's funeral ceremony and snatched his body, as well as throwing stun grenades, raiding family homes multiple times, conducting fourteen arbitrary arrests and beating residents, according to testimonies.^{[6][9][19][20]}

The police's rationale for the withholding of Hathaleen's body was that the family refused to sign a document with 10 conditions for his funeral, which included limiting the ceremony to a maximum of 15 attendants – a number lower than that of his closest relatives – and burying him outside his village.^[6][9][19] Israeli authorities maintained that such conditions were necessary to preserve public order, while family friend Karin Wind commented that the purpose was to make it seem "like it never happened and nobody [would] come."^[19] The corpse was ultimately released on August 7, with the IDF agreeing for its burial in Umm al-Khair instead of Yatta or Hebron, as they had requested earlier. However, in violation of the agreement, the army barred non-residents from attending the funeral, placing checkpoints around the village; notwithstanding that, several dozen people were present.^[9][21] The last Palestinian detainees were also released on August 7.^[9]

At the same time of the body snatching, Judge Chavi Toker from the Jerusalem Magistrates Court (the first Haredi woman in Israel to serve as a magistrate)^[22] rejected a request from the police to extend Levi's house arrest until August 9, on the grounds that testimonies from local activists against Levi actually "strengthened" his claims that he had not fired from a short distance^[23] – it has been reported that Hathaleen was 10–15 metres (33–49 ft) away;^[7] the police appealed the decision,^[23] to no avail. As of 4 August 2025,^[update] Levi was already at large doing earthworks in his settlement of Carmel, while some of Hathaleen's relatives remained imprisoned and his body was not returned until three days later.^[9][21][24]

An American nurse who had attempted to help Hathaleen after being fatally wounded by administering CPR was detained by Israeli authorities alongside Italian citizen Micol Hassan for 24 hours after the shooting. After being ordered to report to another police outpost, she was deported to Jordan. The nurse also claimed that while several village residents sat on the station's floor blindfolded and with their hands zip-tied, Levi was freely walking around and sharing cigarettes with the police officers.^[7][25] Hassan was also deported upon release.^[9]

On August 5, settlers ultimately cut off a water pipe under the protection of the Israel Border Police, forcing around twenty families from Umm al-Khair to go without water supply for five days.^[9]

Several activists who were friends with Hathaleen publicly mourned his death, including Yuval Abraham, Mattan Berner-Kadish, Rabbi Lev Taylor, Danielle Bett, Andrey X and Giacomo Mininni. Many of his friends remembered him as an advocate for nonviolence in spite of increasingly widespread and systematic Israeli settler violence, which forces Palestinians in the West Bank to leave their hometowns.^[4][6] It has been noted that Israeli prosecutors rarely hold settlers accountable for their violence.^[6][18]

The French foreign ministry denounced Hathaleen's killing as an act of murder and settler violence as "a matter of terrorism", and called on the Israeli authorities to hold the perpetrator responsible.^[1] Amnesty International denounced the killing, writing that it was "a devastating tragedy and a brutal reminder of the relentless violence faced by Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank", and that the "deliberate failure of Israeli authorities to conduct genuine and impartial investigations into settler attacks against Palestinians demands immediate and independent international investigations into this killing and other such attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem."^[26] Jewish Voice for Peace also denounced Hathaleen's killing on Instagram, writing it was as a result of "brutal settler violence", and that as an organization they would "reject settler violence and expansion" and recommit themselves "to the courageous, loving resistance that Awda embodied – a spirit that inspired all who had the privilege of knowing him."^[11] On August 10, B'Tselem released a video, filmed by Hathaleen himself, documenting his last moments before being hit by Levi's bullet and falling to the ground; the group denounced the impunity of settlers and the systemic violence inflicted on Palestinians.^{[2][27][28][29]}

After the kidnapping of Hathaleen's body by Israeli troops, around seventy local women – including his wife Hanady, mother Khadra and sister Sara – went on a hunger strike until the body was returned and the Palestinian detainees were released.^[8][19][20] This pressured Israeli authorities to agree to return the body by August 7.^[21] With some of its members still detained, Hathaleen's family proclaimed three days of mourning, calling for international solidarity to enforce accountability;^[30] all detainees were released within that date.^[9]

• Israeli apartheid
• Israeli war crimes in the Gaza war
• Racism in Israel
• Zionist political violence