Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and community leader who worked on Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was murdered by an Israeli settler on Monday (July 28).

Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist and one of No Other Land’s co-directors, shared a photo of himself with Hathaleen, 31, on Twitter with the caption, “I can hardly believe it. My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening. He was standing in front of the community centre in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us – one life at a time.”

Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist and another of No Other Land’s four co-directors, posted footage on Twitter which showed an Israeli settler brandishing a gun and shooting at Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages in the occupied West Bank, which is the subject of the documentary. This video appears to show Yinon Levi, a known extremist who has been sanctioned by the European Union, the UK and the US for attacking Palestinians, threatening them at gunpoint and destroying their property (although Trump lifted these sanctions earlier this year). Residents have identified Levi as the shooter.

According to activists from Umm al-Khair, one of the villages which make up Masafer Yatta, the events took place after a settler began destroying their property and trees with a bulldozer. When a resident asked him to stop, the driver knocked him down with the blade of the bulldozer. Residents began throwing stones and Levi allegedly started firing at them, which is when Hathaleen was shot.

No Other Land documents the decades-long struggle of the residents of Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 villages in the Southern West Bank, to resist settler violence, ethnic cleansing and displacement. This is not the first time that people involved have been targeted by Israel. The documentary ends with the murder of Zakaria al-Adra, Basel Adra’s cousin, at the hands of a settler, and Hamdan Ballal, one of the film’s directors, was abducted and assaulted by the IDF this March.

These are far from being isolated incidents. Settler violence has been a problem in the West Bank for as long as it’s been occupied, but it has increased dramatically in recent years: at least 1,009 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank since October 2023, but the upward trend was already underway by that point. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “Israeli settlers have assaulted, tortured, and committed sexual violence against Palestinians, stolen their belongings and livestock, threatened to kill them if they did not leave permanently, and destroyed their homes and schools under the cover of the ongoing hostilities in Gaza,” with the result that many Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes. Israel’s military is either failing to protect Palestinians or actively taking part in the violence against them, the report concludes. 

While the Israeli police have taken Levi in for questioning over Hathaleen’s death, there is rarely any accountability for settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians. According to the UN, in 81 per cent of communities affected by settler violence, residents had filed complaints with the Israeli police — but only six per cent of community representatives were aware of any follow-up actions being taken. Israeli settlers can quite literally get away with murder.

The last message Hathaleen posted before he was killed urged people in the international community to save Umm al-Khair from ethnic cleansing: “The settlers are working behind our houses and they tried to cut the main water pipe for the community. If you can reach people like the Congress, courts, whatever, please do everything.”

Tributes have poured in for a man who, as well as being an activist, was an English teacher, writer and football player. He is survived by his wife and three young children.