Yousef Muhaisen, 23, was killed without posing a real danger to the Israeli army

Yousef Muhaisen, 23, was killed without posing a real danger to the Israeli army
: Israeli soldiers seen aiming at the Palestinian protesters during the demonstration against Israeli settlements in the village of Beit Dajan near the West Bank city of Nablus.
4 min read
Jerusalem
20 February, 2023
: Israeli soldiers seen aiming at the Palestinian protesters during the demonstration against Israeli settlements in the village of Beit Dajan near the West Bank city of Nablus. [Getty]

Around 3:30 in the afternoon, Manal received a phone call. Her son Yousef had been hit in the leg and was at a hospital in Ramallah. 

It was the deadliest Israeli army attack against Jenin in over a year. Nine Palestinians, including an older woman, were killed in the refugee camp during what Israel described as a counter-terror operation against members of the Islamic Jihad organisation. 

As the news spread, protests flared across cities and towns in the occupied West Bank, including al-Ram near Jerusalem. 

Yousef Muheisen, a young man in his early twenties, popular by many accounts, had been working as a delivery man in a sandwich restaurant in al-Ram.

"He had been working hard preparing to get married," his mother, Manal, said in a quiet voice. 

But on the day of the "massacre" in Jenin, the young "patriot" from al-Ram was urging shopkeepers to observe a call for a general strike, a gesture to honour the killed during the Israeli army raid in Jenin. 

Throughout the day, young men confronted the Israeli army in al-Ram as in other places in the occupied West Bank.

A video showed several young men taking cover behind a dumpster and shooting firecrackers towards Israeli soldiers who, in turn, were firing live ammunition. At least three young men were hit, including Yousef Muhaisen. 

Wearing a locket necklace with her son's photo, Manal remembered Yousef as a "free young man, hard-working, gentle and well-mannered."  

Yousef was hit in the side of the abdomen, and according to his uncle Khaled Hitawi "the bullet tore his intestines, kidney and bladder" before exiting his body. 

He was first rushed to a medical centre in al-Ram, unfit to treat cases of bullet injuries before an ambulance took him to a hospital in Ramallah, where efforts to resuscitate him did not succeed. 

Abdel Rahman said he arrived at the medical centre in al-Ram while his older brother Yousef was still conscious. 

"He uttered al-Shadatain thrice (the Muslim declaration of faith) ... he knew he was seriously hit."

When Manal arrived at the hospital, she sensed her son's injury was more severe than what had been conveyed. 

"He was already dead," she said. 

Yousef had arrived at the hospital with no pulse and was pronounced dead shortly after, according to a three-line hospital note that Yehya, Yousef's father, showed. 

Yousef Muhaisen's parents Manal and Yehay and brother Abdel Rahman
Yousef Muhaisen's parents, Manal and Yehya, and brother Abdel Rahman at the family home in al-Ram near Jerusalem, 16 February 2023. ​Yousef was shot dead by the Israeli army on 26 January 2023 during protests that followed the killing of nine Palestinians in Jenin. [Ibrahim Husseini/TNA]

Yousef was buried the next day as Palestinians were still reacting to the news. 

"They brought him here the next day and stayed with me for two hours," Manal recalled. 

"I wanted to have my fill of him... to say the last goodbye", she added. 

Yehya said he had received several phone calls recently from someone claiming to be from the Israeli army's investigation unit. 

The person on the line asked him about the day Yousef was shot and if he had spoken with witnesses, but Yehya, sceptical of the motive, declined to cooperate.

"What good this would bring?...nothing in our favour for sure," he said. 

Yousef's early departure left an emptiness in the lives of his parents, siblings, relatives and friends. They say they are consoled by the fact that he died as a "martyr for the homeland."

An investigation by Fadi Arouri of B'tselem found that Yousef was at least 90 meters away from the Israeli soldiers when he was shot, strongly implying that he posed no danger to the officers. 

When asked if the violence and killing would stop, Yehya said he didn't have the faintest hope it would. 

The killings, Yehya said, push people to respond. 

Israel's separation wall between al-Ram and occupied East Jerusalem. Ibrahim Husseini/TNA 15 February 2023
Israel's separation wall between al-Ram and occupied East Jerusalem on 15 February 2023.
[Ibrahim Husseini/TNA]

A day and a half after the attack on the Jenin refugee camp, Khairy Alqam, a Palestinian man, drove to the settlement of Neve Yacov in occupied East Jerusalem and opened fire. Seven Israelis were killed, and several others were wounded.  

An investigation by Amer Arouri of B'tselem, the Israeli Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,  found that Yousef was at least 90 meters away from the Israeli soldiers when he was shot, strongly implying that he posed no danger to the officers. 

Yousef Muhaisen, 23, was killed without posing an imminent threat to the Israeli army.