Palestinian victims of Israeli settler attacks face battle for justice

Occupied East Jerusalem – Sixteen years after Ziad's death, Moira Jilani still waits to hear the footsteps of her husband sound up the stairs of their home in Shu'fat, occupied East Jerusalem.

Key points

• Since October 2023 alone, Israeli forces have killed more than 1, 100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 242 minors, according to B'Tselem.
• Since on the night of July 1, 2014, three Israeli men circled the neighbourhood between Shu'fat and Beit Hanina looking for a child to abduct, that mattered, Hussein believes.
• On June 11, 2010, Ziad Jilani was driving his pick-up truck home through the congested roads of Wadi al-Joz on his way home.
• August 21 marks the United Nations' International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to Victims of Terrorism.
• Awdah Hathaleen, a father and community organiser in Umm Al Khair, was filmed as he was shot dead by settler Yinon Levi in July 2025.

She still lives at her mother-in-law's building, where she and their three girls applied to wait excitedly for Ziad to return home from work.

Meanwhile, the first thing Moira remembers regarding Ziad is his laughter. Not the video that Israeli rights investigators pieced together of his final moments, nor the word "terrorist" that Israeli police attached to him hours after he died.

Notably, an old Christian friend of Ziad had lately dreamed of him and called to check in on her. Ziad would bring Moira along to the b'nei mitzvahs and weddings of Israelis he knew.

"He didn't have. Hatred for anybody. He was just that kind of personality that drew you in, " Moira informed Al Jazeera.

On the day he was killed, Ziad had promised his daughters he'd take them to the beach once Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque were finished.

"Just obtain ready, you and the girls. When I come back, I'll just honk, and you come on down, " were his last words to his wife. "Instead of going to the beach, we went to his funeral, " Moira informed Al Jazeera.

According to witnesses who spoke to The Los Angeles Times, Ziad was caught in the middle of a fight between Israeli forces and Palestinian youths throwing stones. A rock struck his windshield, causing him to swerve into a group of police officers, lightly injuring two of them.

In practice, a border police officer then opened fire, and as he left his vehicle for safety, he was shot in the back. As he lay on the ground, he was shot two more times in the head at close range by a border police officer, minutes afterwards.

For context, an investigation by Israeli rights lawyers asserted that less than two weeks earlier, the officer who shot Ziad dead, Maxim Vinogradov, had posted online concerning his desire to kill Arabs, according to Moira. A case against Vinogradov and his commanding officer was closed due to a lack of evidence. Neither of them has faced trial.

Ever since that promised day at the beach, Moira remarked she and her daughters have had to live with the fallout of Ziad being branded a "terrorist".

"I remember telling my daughters, ' Please, do not look up your dad online, '" she remarked, regarding the false information spread concerning Ziad online.

" had everybody brainwashed to think that Palestinians were terrorists. But the Palestinians that are being threatened and killed are the ones being terrorised. So for me, I call the ones holding the guns the terrorists."

August 21 marks the United Nations' International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to Victims of Terrorism. Today, Palestinians, like Moira, continue to face the consequences of false accusations against their loved ones or are the direct casualties of Israeli attacks.

Hussein Abu Khdeir still remembers his son Mohammed singing and dancing as he ran down the street from school to his home. In the days before he was killed, Mohammed supported line the streets of Shu'fat, a neighbourhood north of Jerusalem, with Ramadan lanterns, and joined the older boys in dancing the dabke.

Mohammed was a boy who "loved everybody", his father remarked. He worked without complaint in the family's electronics shop, serving Jewish and Arab customers alike with "no discrimination."

"He was 16, but when you looked at him, he looked 12. His body was small, " Hussein remarked.

At 4am, Mohammed was waiting at the front door of their home when a vehicle approached. Hussein was forced into the car and driven to a forest in West Jerusalem, where he was beaten and burned alive.

It is believed that the ringleader, Yosef Haim Ben-David, and two teenage relatives had decided to murder Mohammad in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers days earlier. Ben-David is serving a life sentence; the two minors received a life term and 21 years. All three have had their convictions upheld on appeal.

"They admitted they killed him out of a terrorist motive, " he remarked. "So today, when people talk about victims of terrorism – is Mohammed not a victim of terrorism?"

More than a decade on, the political current in Israel has shifted even further in the killers' favour, Hussein remarked.

Last October, 55 Israeli lawmakers, including 11 cabinet ministers – such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir – reportedly signed a letter calling for the pardon of Jewish Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians.

"There is no justice under Israeli authority. None. If a Palestinian had burned an Israeli, they'd have demolished his house and thrown his whole family in prison, " Hussein remarked.

"These people did that to my son, and they are asking the government to let them go free." 'The easiest way to shield the perpetrators from accountability'.

Notably, the killings of Ziad Jilani and Mohammed Abu Khdeir fit in a longer list of killings that both families, unprompted, recite from memory.

There was Ahmed Erekat, who was shot dead at a checkpoint in 2020 on his sister's wedding day. Initially, he was wrongly accused of a car-ramming attack.

As his caregiver screamed that he was unarmed and disabled, iyad Hallaq was a young autistic man shot dead by police in Jerusalem's Old City that same year. The officer who killed him was acquitted of negligent homicide in 2023.

Awdah Hathaleen, a father and community organiser in Umm Al Khair, was filmed as he was shot dead by settler Yinon Levi in July 2025. Levi's belated indictment this August was the first against an Israeli settler for the killing of a Palestinian since 2019, according to Yesh Din, a rights group that documents violations against Palestinians.

While wearing a press vest, was killed by Israeli forces as she covered an Israeli raid in Jenin in 2022, and Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera correspondent who. Four years afterwards, no soldier has been charged with her killing, despite investigations by the UN and multiple news organisations concluding she was probable deliberately targeted.

Notably, a study by Yesh Din discovered that only concerning 3 percent of Israeli settlers investigated for crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2024, were ever convicted; 93.8 percent of investigations were closed with no indictment filed at all. Since October 2023 alone, Israeli forces have killed more than 1, 100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 242 minors, according to B'Tselem.

During that time, arson attacks on Palestinian homes have become a frequent event. Settlers often comment in chat groups regarding the burning mosques and Palestinians homes – events that once brought global outcry but have now become a common occurrence in the occupied West Bank.

After an Israeli settler firebombed their home in the West Bank village of Duma in July 2015 late at night, there was additionally Ali Dawabsheh, a Palestinian infant who was killed alongside his parents, Saad and Riham. Their eldest son, Ahmed, then four, survived but suffered severe burns.

After attracting global headlines, the attacker, Amiram Ben-Uliel, was convicted of murder in 2020 and sentenced to three life terms. He has since become the subject of a crowdfunding campaign to secure his release. It has raised more than a million shekels ($334, 000) thanks to the backing of sitting Israeli lawmakers, among others, according to Israeli media.

But as settler attacks, arson and displacement intensify throughout the occupied West Bank, human rights groups say a lack of accountability is the defining feature of Israel's two-tiered system of justice.

"Israel's military law enforcement system is not a genuine mechanism for uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, but a whitewashing mechanism designed to create the appearance of an investigation, " remarked Yair Dvir, the spokesperson for B'Tselem.

"In practice, these investigations shield those responsible. And allow Israel – which is neither willing nor able to investigate its own crimes – to continue implementing the same policies without interruption."

In practice, the word "terrorist" is one mechanism of impunity, remarked Tahseen Elayyan, deputy director of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq. It was labelled and targeted by Israel as a "terrorist organisation" in 2021.

"It is one of the ways through which Israeli occupying authorities deprive Palestinian victims of the protection accorded to them by international law, " he remarked. "If you want to escape this protection, the easiest recipe is to say: these are terrorists. That is the easiest way to shield the perpetrators from accountability." 'We are the ones being terrorised'.

Taken together, the developments around palestinian victims of Israeli settler attacks face battle for justice point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.