A 2024 shooting incident that left four members of a Palestinian family dead, including two young children, in the occupied West Bank is on the verge of being closed without accountability, an Israeli news outlet has confirmed. The deadly encounter unfolded in March in Tammun, a northern West Bank town, when undercover Israeli special forces opened fire on the vehicle carrying 37-year-old Ali Bani Odeh, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and their four children. Ali, Waad, and their two youngest sons — 5-year-old Mohammad and 7-year-old Othman — were killed instantly. Two older children, 8-year-old Mustafa and 12-year-old Khaled, survived the attack but suffered severe shrapnel injuries to their faces and heads.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Israeli forces blocked Palestinian medical responders from accessing the scene. After detaining the two wounded surviving children for more than 30 minutes, soldiers finally allowed medics to reach them only on the condition that the ambulance leave the area immediately after extracting the injured boys.
An anonymous security source cited by i24News shared the military’s initial account of the incident: forces claimed they opened fire after spotting the vehicle speeding toward their position, saying officers “sensed imminent danger” and acted in self-defense.
But human rights advocates have immediately pushed back on this narrative, rejecting the military’s claim of a threat. Heba Morayef, regional director for Amnesty International covering the Middle East and North Africa, noted that Israeli military officials have failed to produce any evidence that the Bani Odeh family posed any danger to the soldiers at the time of the shooting. She described the mass killing as a horrific event that fits a wider, deeply troubling pattern of escalating lethal force used by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians, where children and entire families too often bear the deadly cost. Morayef added that witness testimonies raise serious suspicions that the attack amounts to an extrajudicial execution, an unlawful killing outside any legal process.
This pattern of justification is well-documented: the Israeli military almost always releases nearly identical claims of self-defense after its troops kill Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Independent and human rights observers have long criticized the Israeli military for rarely opening meaningful investigations into deaths of Palestinians at the hands of its troops, and for enabling a widely condemned “shoot-to-kill” policy that allows troops to use lethal force even when unarmed Palestinians pose no immediate threat to soldiers.
According to reporting from the Israeli outlet, while Israeli police launched a formal investigation into the Bani Odeh family killing, the special forces officers who carried out the shooting were never questioned as part of the probe. The investigation concluded in recent days, and the case is now expected to be formally closed by Israel’s Attorney General’s office without any disciplinary or legal action against the involved personnel.
The shooting and impending closure of the case comes amid a sharp spike in Palestinian deaths in the West Bank following the October 7, 2023, attacks. Data from independent monitors shows that Israeli military forces and illegal Israeli settlers have killed at least 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank since that date.
For the town of Tammun, which is home to roughly 15,000 Palestinian residents, deadly Israeli military incursions are a regular occurrence. Forces almost always carry out these raids under the pretext of searching for “wanted individuals,” but the vast majority of people killed in these operations are unarmed civilians and children.