fetalThe last hours were very tense in the Jenin camp in the northern West Bank, which had already been on fire for nearly 3 weeks due to clashes between members of the Palestinian Authority’s security services and the resistance fighters holed up inside, whom it described as “outlaws.”
Last night, Saturday, the new victim of the security campaign launched by the authority was a Palestinian journalist, who was killed after being shot in the head with live bullets while she was with her family in front of their house on Mahyoub Street deep in the camp.
According to her family, Shatha Al-Sabbagh, 21 years old, was heading with her sister’s children to a grocery store near her home when an authority sniper surprised her and began shooting at her.
In his conversation with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, her brother, Musaab Al-Sabbagh (20 years old), explained the details of her targeting, and said that authority security personnel have been present in the neighborhood in which they have lived for about two weeks on a daily basis, and they use high-rise houses as a positioning position, and their snipers are deployed there.
He added, “Last night, we were staying up at home normally, accompanied by my sister Umm Hamza’s children, who asked Shatha to buy them some candy and sweets from a small nearby shop. So Shatha went out with the two little ones, and headed to the shop, and when she returned, the sniper began shooting intensely at her. It was The shooting was intense, very intense, and for a long time. Shatha was injured, and the sniper did not stop shooting.”
Premeditated murder
The neighborhood residents came out to the sound of gunfire and the screaming of children, “and asked the security officer to stop shooting, so that they could pull Shatha out after it was confirmed that she was injured, but he did not respond and continued shooting for 15 minutes,” according to Musab al-Sabbagh.
Shatha’s brother says, “The shop owner was initially unable to protect the young children from the density of bullets, then she pulled the first one from his head and the other from his ears. The situation was very difficult and dangerous for children whose eldest was no more than 3 years old.”
Although our neighbors, who were volunteering to help the camp, tried to approach Shatha and help her, bullet fragments hit one of them in the leg, according to Al-Sabbagh.
The family believes that the targeting of Shatha was deliberate, with the intention of intimidating people, especially women, after they went out in protest demonstrations more than once to demand an end to the security campaign and an end to the siege on the camp and its residents.
“It was enough time for the sniper to see Shatha and distinguish that it was a girl from her dress, with two children with her, and the street was fully lit. He knew it was a girl. The authority’s goal is to frighten people and silence them by killing. This is the real goal of the campaign,” Al-Sabbagh says.
Shatha’s family confirms its intention to prosecute their daughter’s killer and file a lawsuit against him, after the results of the scheduled autopsy of her body were issued by the Forensic Medicine Center at Al-Najah Hospital in Nablus on Sunday.
Questioning the security narrative
Speaking to the media, Umm Moatasem, the mother of journalist Shatha, said that she was confident that the authorities “deliberately” killed her daughter, especially after Shatha met the mother of the young man Majd Zakarneh, “who was killed last week by the Palestinian security services,” in addition to an interview with “one of the Families whose house was burned by security forces.”
She said, “Palestinian security claims that Anwar Rajab (the spokesman for the Palestinian security forces) called me and explained what happened, and that I understood that the incident was carried out by the resistance fighters. I confirm that this is a slander, as no one from the authority has contacted me yet, and I am certain that… Shatha was killed by the Palestinian security forces.”
Although the family’s account was consistent with eyewitnesses from the camp’s residents, the spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, said – in a statement published shortly after the incident – that journalist Shatha Al-Sabbagh “was killed by the bullets of outlaws.”
Rajab added, in the statement, a copy of which was received by Tel Aviv Tribune Net, that “preliminary investigations, and according to witness testimonies, indicate that security forces were not present in the same place, and we emphasize that the outlaw perpetrators of this crime will be pursued and brought to justice.”
Rajab’s statement was widely condemned in the Palestinian street, especially at the time of its issuance, less than 40 minutes after medical sources announced Shatha’s death. Activists on social media said that this statement weakens the authority’s position and came to justify the incident.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate mourned Al-Sabbagh and demanded the formation of an independent human rights committee to investigate her killing.
Shatha Al-Sabbagh studies in the Department of Digital Media at Al-Quds Open University. She used to work as a freelance journalist with a number of local news agencies, in addition to her activity in documenting and photographing the occupation forces’ incursions into the city and Jenin camp. She was active in helping her fellow journalists during their tours in the camp, and providing information and data to them on a daily basis.
Widespread anger
A large number of Palestinian journalists mourned Al-Sabbagh on social media platforms, amidst a state of denunciation and anger, as the situation of journalists in the West Bank reached the point of being targeted by the Israeli occupation army first, then the Palestinian Authority, as they put it.
Journalist Raya Arouq from Jenin published a post on her Facebook page in which she mourned Al-Sabbagh, and said, “Today Shatha, tomorrow maybe me, and after him another colleague, and the one after him and the one after that.”
A number of camp residents linked what happened last night with Shatha al-Sabagh with what happened with the martyr Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent Sherine Abu Aqla, and some compared the two crimes due to the difference in the perpetrator and the similarity of the target, as they said.
Palestinian journalist and activist Mona Hawa wrote on her Facebook page that on May 11, 2022, “the occupation assassinated Sherine Abu Aqla with a bullet that silenced the voice of the Jenin camp.”
She added that on December 29, 2024, “a member of the Authority’s security targeted Shatha Al-Sabagh, the sister of the martyr Moatasem, with a bullet in the head minutes after she filmed security personnel removing pictures of martyrs. Shatha was killed while carrying in her hands two of her sister’s children. Whose interest is all of this?” ?
With the killing of Shatha Al-Sabagh, the number of victims in Jenin camp since the start of the Palestinian Authority’s security operation, which it called “Protecting a Homeland,” rises to 11 people, including 5 members of the security services.