Family members of a
Palestinian-American teenager, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, who was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank,
demanded Saturday that authorities find the killer of the 17-year-old, who was
hit by a barrage of gunfire, his cousin said, as the two were setting out to
have a picnic near their village.
اضافة اعلان
The death of the
teenager came as tensions have been rising between Israel and the
US. The State Department confirmed that an American was killed in the West Bank on Friday
without releasing identification and called on Israel to provide more
information about the death.
Without identifying the
teenager or confirming his death, Israeli police said in a statement Saturday
that they were investigating the shooting. Police said an Israeli civilian and
an off-duty police officer had fired at “individuals purportedly engaged in
rock-throwing activities.”
The
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) are investigating whether a soldier was also involved in the
shooting, according to an IOF spokesperson. The military and police did not
respond to requests for comment beyond their initial statements.
A distant cousin,
Mohammad Ejak, 16, said Tawfic was shot while driving to a grove of olive trees
owned by the family, about a 15-minute drive from their village of Al-Mazra’a
Al-Sharqiyeh, near Ramallah in the
West Bank.
“We did not throw any
rocks at anyone’s car, and we did not even get out of our own car before the
shots were fired at us,” said a visibly shaken Mohammad, who attended Tawfic’s
funeral on Saturday. Mohammad said he did not know where the gunshots came from
and ducked below the dashboard when he heard the gunfire.
Tawfic was born to
Palestinian parents and raised in a suburb of New Orleans, where he attended
the
Muslim Academy Gretna Islamic School. The family, who have four other
children, decided to return to live in the occupied West Bank when Tawfic was
16, about a year and a half ago, family members said.
“Where is my son’s
killer?” asked Hafeth Abdel Jabbar, Tawfic’s father, during the funeral. “He is
an American citizen who was shot in cold blood, and as an American, he should
be protected.”
Nabil Abu Khader,
principal of the Muslim Academy in Gretna, Louisiana, and the head of the local
mosque the family attended said the teenager had hoped to improve his Arabic
while in the
West Bank.
He described him as a
quiet, polite, and “very respectful” teenager who helped his father with his
shoe and clothing stores and often took his siblings to school. The young man
was planning to study business administration at the University of New Orleans
to help grow his father’s businesses, said Abu Khader, who spoke with The New
York Times from New Orleans.
The West Bank has been
increasingly on edge, as violence and IOF raids have spiraled since October 7.
More than 340 Palestinians in the territory have been killed in clashes with
IOF soldiers and civilians since
October 7, according to the UN. A two-day raid
by the IOF killed at least eight people this past week.
John Kirby, assistant to
the secretary of defense for public affairs, said in a State Department
briefing on Friday that the US had extended its condolences to relatives of the
American who was killed without directly naming the person and was “working to
understand the circumstances of the incident.”
“We are seriously
concerned about these reports,” Kirby said. “The information is scant at this
time. We do not have perfect context about exactly what happened here.”
“But,” he added, “We are
going to be in constant touch with counterparts in the region to get more
information.”
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