Israeli forces kill teenage girl during raid on Jenin

Mariam Barghouti

Mondoweiss  /  December 12, 2022

Israeli forces killed Jana Zakarneh, 16, during a search-and-arrest operation in the West Bank city of Jenin. Zakarneh was standing on the roof of her family’s home when she was shot.

A Palestinian teenage girl was shot and killed on Sunday evening during a military invasion of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank by Israeli forces. 

Jana Majdi Zakarneh, 16, was shot with a single bullet to the head, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The teen was reportedly killed while on the roof of her family’s home in Jenin in the eastern part of the city. Following an autopsy, the young girl was buried in Jenin on Monday afternoon.

According to WAFA News Agency, at least three other Palestinians were injured with live ammunition during the raid, while three Palestinians were arrested during the raid.

Zakarneh is the 15th minor to be killed in Jenin since the start of the year, and the 17th Palestinian woman or girl to be killed in 2022. 

Last month, Israeli forces also shot and killed 15-year-old Fulla Masalmeh in Ramallah. Since the beginning of December, 11 Palestinians were killed bringing the number of Palestinians killed this year alone to 224, 166 of whom were killed in the West Bank. 

Israel’s lethal arrest raids

The raid began at approximately 10 p.m. on Sunday evening, when undercover Israeli border police from the Duvdevan Unit — created in 1986 to target the West Bank through infiltration by undercover Israeli agents posing as Palestinians — raided the eastern part of the city of Jenin.

Footage from CCTV cameras in Jenin show that Israeli forces entered in a white van, which resembled a civilian vehicle, before the van’s back door opened and soldiers came spilling out of it and immediately began opening fire in the area. 

Local journalists in Jenin reported intense armed confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, which attempted to thwart the invasion by responding with live ammunition.

Israeli forces arrested Thaer Hathnawi, 40, and his brother,  Mohammad Hathnawi, 33, who were both wanted under the pretext of engaging in armed resistance activities. A third Palestinian, 30-year-old Hasan Mir’i, was also arrested during the raid, which resulted in the killing of the teenage Zakarneh. 

Israeli snipers were positioned between residential areas, a practice common for Israeli forces raiding Palestinian cities and towns or when accompanying and escorting settler invasions to areas in the West Bank. 

Within an hour of the raid, Israeli forces injured three others with live ammunition in the lower parts of their bodies, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Jenin refugee camp, known as the “Wasps’ Nest” by the Israeli intelligence community, had closed off all entrances to the camp within the first half hour of the raid, according to local journalists on the scene. 

Israeli media reported that both of the Hathnawi brothers were transferred to interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, known for their coercive interrogation and torture techniques, which are routinely used on Palestinians detainees.

By Monday morning, December 12, a total of nine Palestinians were arrested across the West Bank, most of whom were from the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year has hit record numbers — the highest since the UN began documenting such killings in 2005. Many of the killings this year occurred during search-and-arrest raids, a near nightly occurrence in the West Bank, or in cases of extrajudicial assassinations by Israeli undercover units and military forces.

Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for Mondoweiss