Executed in their sleep: How Israeli forces assassinated three Palestinians in a West Bank hospital
The scene at Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, the moring of 30 January 2024
Shatha Hanaysha reports in Mondoweiss on 30 January 2024:
Abeer Al-Ghazawi went to sleep last night feeling reassured, knowing that her son, Basel, was lying in Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital, accompanied by his brother, Mohammed. For her, the hospital represented the safest place in their hometown of Jenin. For months, the Israeli army has stepped up its operations in the northern West Bank city and its refugee camp, conducting violent raids and drone strikes that have killed dozens.
Basel, 19, was receiving treatment for a critical injury he sustained last October when an Israeli drone strike rendered him paraplegic, bound to a wheelchair. Accompanying him in the hospital were his older brother, Mohammed, 24, and their friend, Mohammed Jalamneh, 28. According to witnesses, in the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 30, the three young men were asleep in Basel’s hospital room when an undercover unit of Israeli special forces entered their room on the third floor of the hospital and executed them at point-blank range, with silenced firearms.
A dozen Israeli special forces disguised as Palestinian hospital workers and civilians – including soldiers dressed as veiled Palestinian women, one carrying a baby carrier and hospital workers, and another disguised as a patient in a wheelchair – infiltrated the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, assaulting the on-duty nurse.
The floor and pull-out chair of the room where Israeli forces executed three Palestinians smeared with their blood, 30 January 2024
Captured on CCTV footage, the disguised Israeli soldiers can be seen moving through the hospital ward with their assault rifles drawn. While some of the soldiers put down their baby carriers and other disguises, at least one soldier can be seen holding up a civilian man at gunpoint. The civilian is down on his knees with his hands up behind his head. The Israeli soldier pulls off the man’s jacket and then places it on his head.
Out of the frame of the CCTV footage, which was released by the Ibn Sina Hospital, the special forces made their way to Basel’s room. There, they entered the room where the three young men were sleeping. The soldiers fired five shots, killing Basel, his brother Mohammed, and their friend Mohammed while they were asleep. Within 10 minutes the forces had withdrawn from the scene.
An eyewitness and patient at the hospital, who requested anonymity, informed Mondoweiss that he heard screams on the floor and went out to see three armed individuals in front of him. One of the soldiers, the witness recounted, was holding the on-duty nurse and “continuously beating her on the head.”
The soldiers yelled at the man to get back into his room. He told Mondoweiss that when he attempted to exit his room again to see what was happening, the forces fired live shots toward his room.
He continued, stating that after the forces withdrew he rushed into the room the soldiers had been in only to find the three martyrs “lying in their beds, blood flowing from their heads.” He said the operation inside the room lasted no longer than three minutes, and that he realized that the individuals he saw were “musta’ribeen”, the Arabic term for the special unit of Israeli forces who disguise themselves as Palestinians to carry out abductions and assassinations in the occupied Palestinian territory, when he heard them speaking Hebrew.
The witness described what he saw as “the most harrowing scene” he had witnessed in his life. When he tried to lay his head down and rest after the attack, he said he was unable to sleep, as the horrific scenes of bloodied hospital beds played through his mind.