TEHRAN – The execution-style killing of two unarmed Palestinian men in Jenin — shot at point-blank range after they surrendered with their hands raised — has triggered international outrage and renewed scrutiny of Israel’s entrenched culture of impunity. For Palestinians, however, the atrocity is tragically familiar, another chapter in a long narrative of unchecked state violence.

The victims, Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah and Youssef Asasa, followed every command. They raised their arms, lifted their shirts to show they carried no weapons, and crawled back toward the building as instructed. None of this saved them. Israeli soldiers shot both men at close range. The moment, captured clearly on video, spread across the world and forced Israeli officials to announce an investigation.

Yet far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made the government’s stance unmistakably clear. The soldiers, he declared, had acted “exactly as expected.” In his view, and increasingly in Israel’s security doctrine, any Palestinian — armed or unarmed — is treated as a legitimate target.

Human rights defenders inside Israel warned that such killings are not anomalies. The deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights–Israel noted that the violence stems from decades of occupation, segregation, and the systematic erasure of Palestinians from the Israeli public’s moral horizon. 

The Jenin killings fit a long and painful pattern. In Gaza, two unarmed men attempting to surrender were shot in March 2024, another incident caught on camera. In 2018, Israeli soldiers in Tulkarem fatally shot Mohammed Habali, a mentally disabled man, as he walked away. In 2020, Eyad al-Halaq, an autistic Palestinian man on his way to his special-needs school, was killed in Jerusalem (al-Quds). Even three Israeli captives in Gaza were shot dead by soldiers in December 2023 as they attempted to surrender, one waving a white flag.

Israel routinely announces investigations, yet meaningful accountability is virtually nonexistent. Between 2018 and 2022, its army received hundreds of complaints about violence against Palestinians. Only a small fraction resulted in criminal investigations, and indictments were even rarer. Out of more than two hundred fatal cases brought to the army’s attention, only one led to an indictment. These numbers reflect a system in which Palestinian life is treated as disposable.

The latest incident comes as another major alarm sounds at the international level. A United Nations panel recently reported evidence of what it described as a “de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” of Palestinians, a warning that has taken on heightened urgency since 7 October 2023. The report, based in part on submissions from Israeli human rights groups, documented Palestinians being shackled and blindfolded even during medical treatment, subjected to deliberate starvation, and in some cases forced to wear diapers because they were denied access to toilets. Israel denied all allegations, but international concern continues to grow.

Following the Jenin killings, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the incident as an “apparent summary execution” and called for a credible, independent investigation. Palestinian authorities described the shootings as a war crime, urging the international community to intervene. Human rights organizations across the world described the video as clear evidence of an extrajudicial execution, part of a long-standing system of systematic violence, apartheid, and state-sanctioned brutality.

The deaths of Abdullah and Asasa in Jenin are not the start of anything new. They are a warning of how far the system has already deteriorated. The world saw their final moments only because a camera happened to be recording. Countless other Palestinians have been killed far from any lens — in late-night raids, on roadsides, in interrogation sites, in prisons, in bombed homes, and in fields patrolled by armed settlers.

What happens next depends on whether the international community finally chooses to confront Israeli impunity as a crisis demanding decisive action. The alternative is clear: more bodies, more videos, more investigations that lead nowhere, and a system that continues to treat Palestinian life as expendable.