New investigation shows how an Israeli settler escaped justice

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports that Palestinian rights organization Al-Haq has released an investigation into the July 28, 2025, killing of Awdah Hathaleen, a 31-year-old Palestinian activist and father of three from Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, in the southern occupied West Bank. Hathaleen, who had assisted with production on the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” was filming on his phone as armed settlers entered the village, according to the report published on July 29, 2026.

Al-Haq said it reconstructed the incident using videos, photographs, witness testimony, geospatial work and open-source analysis. The group concluded that Israeli settler Yinon Levi fired the shot that killed Hathaleen and disputed Levi’s account that he acted in self-defence. According to Al Jazeera’s summary of the findings, Al-Haq said Palestinians present were unarmed, Hathaleen posed no imminent threat, and forensic details from the autopsy were consistent with the handgun Levi carried.

The investigation also alleged that Israeli forces did not treat settlers at the scene as criminal suspects. Al Jazeera reported that Levi was filmed near Israeli forces pointing out Palestinians and international activists who were later detained, and that after he was eventually detained following international attention, an Israeli court released him to three days of house arrest. Al-Haq further alleged that settlers blocked an ambulance trying to reach Hathaleen while soldiers and police were present.

The case matters because Al-Haq frames the killing as part of a wider pattern of settler violence and settlement expansion in the West Bank, rather than an isolated incident. Al Jazeera notes that the United Nations has reported rising settler attacks in recent years, a trend Palestinians say contributes to displacement from their land.