Imm Moussa of Hebron holds the robes and keffiyeh that her late husband, Ziad Abu Helaiel, often wore to peaceful demonstrations against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Mr. Abu Helaiel was killed this week in what Ms. Moussa calls a 'very inhumane' encounter with Israeli soldiers.Photography by Waled Sababa/The Globe and Mail
Ziad Abu Helaiel was an icon in Hebron, a peacemaker in local disputes and a symbol of non-violent resistance to Israel’s decades-old occupation of the West Bank.
On Monday, the 67-year-old died after what his family and friends say was a late-night confrontation with the Israeli military. As bloodshed rises in the West Bank alongside the wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, there are fears that his death will convince more Palestinians that the peaceful path he pursued is a fruitless one.
Mr. Abu Helaiel had a moment of fame in 2015 when he stood weaponless – wearing his trademark red keffiyeh – in front of a row of Israeli troops in Hebron, shouting they had no right to be there. A video of the moment, which friends say he repeated every time he saw Israeli troops in his city, made international news headlines.
Mr. Abu Helaiel's family flip through photos of him and his famous standoff in 2015.
The Israeli military denies that its soldiers played any role in his death. But his wife and three of his sons told The Globe and Mail that Israeli soldiers came to the family’s home on the outskirts of Hebron before dawn Monday, apparently with the intent of arresting one of his adult sons, Mouayed.
When Mr. Abu Helaiel came out to pry his son away from them, one of the soldiers hit him in the chest with an M16 assault rifle. Then, after Mr. Abu Helaiel retreated back into his home, two of the soldiers pursued him and kicked at the metal door with such force that it knocked the old man over again. He died shortly afterward, and the family alleges the soldiers impeded the arrival of the ambulance.
“They acted in a very inhumane way,” said Mr. Abu Helaiel’s wife, Imm Moussa, showing The Globe where a window in the metal door had been shattered during the incident.
“When they saw my father collapse, they immediately left, as if they were happy, as if it was mission accomplished,” said Mr. Abu Helaiel’s 40-year-old son, Murad, a computer programmer who works for an Israeli company.
Mr. Abu Helaiel’s son Murad, a computer programmer, describes the fatal visit from soldiers who apparently meant to arrest another member of the family.
The Israeli military says none of that happened.
“After looking into reports regarding the death of a Palestinian man (resident of Dura) during a confrontation with the Israeli security forces in the area of Hebron, the IDF is not aware of any hit or confrontation with a civilian in Hebron overnight,” a spokesperson for the military, which is officially known as the Israel Defense Forces, said in a written response to a question from The Globe. Dura is a small city on the outskirts of Hebron.
The Israeli military said it had sent a request to the Palestinian Authority for more details regarding the incident but had not received a reply as of Thursday.
Political analyst Adel Shadeed, a neighbour of Mr. Abu Helaiel, says he saw the Israeli troops arrive before dawn on Monday.
The family’s version is supported by a neighbour – a political analyst who was awake at 3 a.m. being interviewed on the Al Jazeera television network – who says he saw the Israeli military park vehicles in front of his apartment building in Dura before proceeding on foot to Mr. Abu Helaiel’s home. “I heard the sounds of shouting and fighting, and then minutes after that, the Israelis withdrew,” Adel Shadeed said. “I stayed in my home until the army left. I then immediately went to the house.”
The Israeli military acknowledged to The Globe that its forces were operating in Dura around 3 a.m. Monday.
Mr. Shadeed says he arrived at the same time as the paramedics dispatched by the Palestinian Red Crescent. The local branch of the Red Crescent confirmed to The Globe that it was called at 3:45 a.m. Monday to the Abu Helaiel home. “They said they needed urgent help because soldiers were there and the army had entered the house,” said Nidal Abu Jadayl, the paramedic who arrived first on the scene.
There were no soldiers there when the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, but the family told the paramedics the same version of events. “Based on what the family told us, we put in the report that he had been beaten by the army,” Mr. Abu Jadayl said.
The body was buried Monday, in accordance with Islamic custom to conduct funeral rites as soon as possible, without an autopsy.
A poster of Mr. Abu Helaiel is set up outside his house, paying tribute to a man known in Hebron for settling conflicts peacefully.
There are few, if any, Palestinians in Hebron who believe the Israeli military’s version. “Ever since Oct. 7, they are going after Palestinian figures, anyone with influence over the Palestinian people, regardless of whether they have a violent or non-violent ideology,” said Issa Amro, another prominent non-violent activist who frequently marched alongside Mr. Abu Helaiel in demonstrations against Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which dates back to a 1967 war.
Mr. Amro said he was arrested by Israeli soldiers and beaten unconscious in a cell on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing almost 1,200 people and setting the wars in Gaza and Lebanon in motion. Since then, the 44-year-old said, he has had “almost daily” encounters with Israeli troops in Hebron.
“They beat me up, they detain me for hours, they prevent people from coming to visit me. It doesn’t matter that I’m not Hamas or that I criticize Hamas,” Mr. Amro said. “Of course they will deny it,” he said of the incident involving Mr. Abu Helaiel. “They deny what happened with me, even though I have videos of it.”
Issa Amro, a non-violent activist in Hebron, says Israeli forces beat him unconscious on the day of Hamas's attacks last Oct. 7.
Hebron, a city surrounded by Israeli military checkpoints, is a microcosm of both the occupation and the resistance. The hard line Jewish settlement of Beit Romano – built illegally, under international law – protrudes into the centre of the historic Old City and is defended by an army watchtower and concrete walls topped with barbed wire.
Mr. Abu Helaiel and Mr. Amro bucked the trend by calling for non-violent opposition to what Mr. Amro calls the “apartheid system” of one set of laws for the 700 Jewish settlers who live in Beit Romano and another for the more than 200,000 Palestinians who live in the city around them.
The city, according to Mr. Shadeed, the political analyst, is a hotbed of support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another extremist group that carries out violent attacks on Israel. The death of Mr. Abu Helaiel, he said, “will enhance the opportunities for extremists and weaken the voices that call for peace.”
Seven Israelis were killed in an Oct. 2 shooting in the port city of Jaffa that was carried out by two Hebron residents. The attack was claimed by the armed wing of Hamas, which promised more attacks on Israel “from various areas of the West Bank.”
Soldiers keep watch on a checkpoint in Hebron, a city of more than 200,000 Palestinians surrounding an Israeli settlement of about 700 people.
While the situation is still calm relative to Gaza and Lebanon, violence in the West Bank has risen dramatically since Oct. 7 of last year. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory amid a spike in attacks carried out both by settlers and the Israeli military, making it the deadliest period since the end of the last intifada, two decades ago.
Mohammad Abualrob, director of communications to Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, told The Globe that he believed the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was using the international sympathy generated by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks to prepare the ground for the eventual annexation of some or all of the West Bank. “For them, it’s the right moment to work on their old agenda of ending the two-state solution and stopping the creation of the independent Palestinian state,” Mr. Abualrob said in an interview with The Globe in the Palestinian capital, Ramallah.
Ms. Abu Helaiel had long feared that her husband’s high-profile resistance to the occupation would one day end in tragedy. “I always told him ‘You cannot continue like this – we want you alive,’” she said, recounting a conversation after he had one of his regular confrontations with Israeli soldiers in the streets of Hebron. “But he continued.”