The events unfolded last week when a group of settlers, accompanied by army forces, raided Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, uprooting trees and cutting water and electricity lines. When residents protested, they were met with brute force.
Among those resisting was al-Hathaleen: an English teacher, father of three, and tireless advocate for his community who was recently featured in the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land.
During a confrontation in which settlers drove a bulldozer through village land, al-Hathaleen was killed.
Eyewitnesses say settler Yinon Levi—who had previously been under US sanctions lifted by the Trump administration—fired the fatal shot.
Video footage appears to show Levi shooting wildly as villagers scream.
Al-Hathaleen, standing in the village square near the community centre, collapsed.
“Returning home, he was on his way to help us when the bullet hit him,” his cousin, Alaa al-Hathaleen, told the BBC. “The first shot missed. The second struck him in the heart.”
After the shooting, Israeli forces stormed the village, seized his body, and arrested five young men, including a doctor who had tried to save him.
A Jerusalem magistrate’s court later released Levi.
'Even in death, they pursue us'
For more than a week, Israeli authorities have withheld al-Hathaleen’s remains.
The family says they were offered strict conditions for his burial: transferring the body to Hebron or Yatta, but not allowing him to be laid to rest in his home village.
Even if buried in Umm al-Khair, the proposed terms were harsh—no funeral, no mourning tent, and a midnight burial under heavy military presence, with no more than 15 attendees.
In protest, 60 women from the village went on a hunger strike, demanding Israel release his body for a dignified burial.
When the family attempted to erect a mourning tent, Israeli forces raided the village again. They dismantled the tent and forcibly removed mourners, activists, and journalists from the area.
“Even in death, they pursue us,”Alaa al-Hathaleen said.
Dreams of annexation
Anti-settlement activists say Levi has led attacks that displaced more than 300 Palestinians from four nearby hamlets since establishing a settlement outpost known as Meitarim Farm in 2021, as reported by the Associated Press (AP).
In an interview last year, after the sanctions were imposed, Levi claimed the land was his and that he was defending it from “encroachment” by Palestinians.
While over 500,000 Israeli settlers in the occupiedWest Bank hold full citizenship rights, the territory’s 3 million Palestinians live under military rule. The Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises limited autonomy in certain towns and cities.
Rights groups say Israeli security forces frequently ignore settler violence or intervene on the settlers’ side during confrontations with Palestinians.
Umm al-Khair lies within Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli control, and sits just below the Israeli settlement of Carmel.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, are illegal under international law.
The killing of al-Hathaleen is part of a broader pattern of violence against Palestinians, reflecting increasingly overt plans to annex West Bank land and impose new facts on the ground.
In late July, the Israeli Knesset passed a non-binding resolution to apply Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians have expressed concern that the declaration could pave the way for accelerated settlement construction, demolitions, and forced displacement.
Since the outbreak of the war on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli military has conducted major operations across the West Bank, killing hundreds and displacing tens of thousands. In tandem, settler attacks on Palestinians have surged.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least 1,010 Palestinians and injured over 7,000 in the occupied West Bank since the outset of the war on Gaza, according to local health authorities.
Al-Hathaleen’s killing prompted a wave of international condemnation. The French foreign ministry issued a statement urging the Israeli government to hold the perpetrator accountable and labelled settler violence “a matter of terrorism”.
'A victim of a decades-long project to uproot Palestinians'
Al-Hathaleen’s death now marks a tragic coda to the story he helped tell in No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary that captured the daily struggle of Masafer Yatta’s native Palestinian population to remain on their land in the face of escalating violence, forced displacement, and illegal settlement expansion.
His presence in the film—calm, defiant, rooted—reflected a life shaped by resistance. In death, he has become a symbol of the very project the documentary sought to expose, sparking an outpouring of grief from family, international activists, and rights groups.
In an interview with the BBC, No Other Land's Palestinian co-director, Basel Adra, said Odeh believed that a camera could expose what voices, trapped and silenced in this land, could not.
“Odeh was not merely killed by a settler’s bullet,” added Israeli journalist and human rights activist Andrej Krasnowsky, a close friend to al-Hathleen. “His death is the result of a decades-long project aimed at emptying this land of its people.”
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