Awdah Hathaleen stood filming events with his mobile phone, when Yinon Levi fatally shot him from about 30 meters (98 feet) away – Hathaleen captured the shooting on his phone.
Reposted from Al-Haq, July 28, 2026
On 28 July 2025, Palestinian human rights defender Awdah Hathaleen was killed by a 9mm bullet wound to the heart when Israeli settler Yinon Levi fatally shot him while Hathaleen was documenting a settler attack on privately owned property belonging to residents of Umm Al-Kheir. His killing was not an isolated incident, but occurred against the backdrop of years of violence and restrictions targeting the village’s residents and their property. These practices have created a coercive environment, harsh living conditions, and have threatened the community’s continued presence on its land.
Awdah’s killing must therefore be understood within a broader context that extends well beyond the immediate circumstances of the incident. It reflects a systematic pattern of structural violence, one that Awdah himself had described just a day before his killing during a meeting with the Green Olive Solidarity Network. This pattern is sustained by Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime, which affords settlers protection and institutional support, enabling their violence to serve as an instrument for consolidating control over Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
This investigation’s purpose extends beyond identifying Awdah’s killer, whose identity was known within hours of the incident. Instead, it was guided by a broader question: How does this system enable settler violence and deploy it as a means of dispossessing Palestinians and erasing their presence from the occupied West Bank?
Since Israel’s far-right government took office in 2022, the occupying power has accelerated its settler-colonial policies in both scale and intensity. Agricultural outposts have emerged as a central mechanism for seizing and controlling land, accompanied by organised violence perpetrated by settler groups, which has produced tangible shifts in Palestinian demographics. These practices have intensified amid the genocidal campaign against the Gaza Strip since October 2023. This systematic pattern is coordinated through interconnected networks of Israeli institutions, organisations, and individuals.
Al-Haq’s Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit (FAI) uses the killing of Awdah Hathaleen by settler Yinon Levi as a point of departure for examining how settlers’ systematic everyday practices intersect with the broader institutional apparatus advancing and entrenching settler-colonial apartheid and annexation in the occupied West Bank.
*The full report in pdf format can be found here*
Al-Haq is a non-governmental organization that monitors and documents human rights violations by parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Founded in 1979, it is based in Ramallah and has international affiliations and recognition.
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