A 68-year-old Palestinian woman is dead after being violently beaten by Israeli soldiers during an early-morning incursion into her family home in the town of Jayyous, located in the northern sector of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in an incident that underscores the mounting danger facing Palestinian civilians amid a sharp escalation of Israeli military raids across the territory.
The incident unfolded around the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, when Israeli forces stormed the residential property of Sabriya Shamasneh to carry out what they described as a targeted search operation, breaking into the home and interrogating members of the extended family on-site. Sabriya’s husband, Walid Shamasneh, recounted the chaotic moments leading up to the military incursion to local reporters: his daughter-in-law had first raised the alarm after spotting suspicious activity outside, believing intruders or thieves had entered the property after forcing open the front garden gate and generating unidentifiable noises.
Before the family could react, Israeli soldiers breached the home’s locked front door, sending the entire household into immediate panic. According to Walid’s account, the commanding Israeli officer began demanding he provide identities of people Walid did not recognize, before the entire family was forced into a single corner of the main room while soldiers ransacked the residence’s other bedrooms in their search.
The confrontation turned fatal when Sabriya tried to shift position and called out to her son Hassan, who she feared was being taken into custody by the raiding party. In response, soldiers violently shoved the elderly woman with the butts of their rifles, throwing her to the hard floor and screaming commands for her to stay silent. Sabriya’s head crashed into a nearby wall during the fall, and she immediately lost consciousness. A panicked Walid shouted for help and begged soldiers to provide medical assistance, but their requests were ignored by the Israeli forces.
Once the military operation concluded and soldiers withdrew from the property, Walid and his son rushed Sabriya to the nearby Darwish Nazzal Governmental Hospital in Qalqilya. An ambulance could not reach the scene of the incident due to the heavy deployment of Israeli military vehicles blocking access to the area, forcing the family to transport her on their own. Upon arrival at the medical facility, medical staff pronounced Sabriya dead from the blunt force injuries she sustained during the raid, leaving her relatives and the broader local community reeling from sudden shock.
The family has delayed Sabriya’s funeral to allow her daughter, who currently resides in Jordan, to travel to the West Bank to pay her final respects before burial. The entire town of Jayyous has joined the Shamasneh family in mourning over the killing.
The fatal assault on Sabriya was not the only violence recorded during Tuesday’s raid on Jayyous, which sits east of Qalqilya. A young Palestinian man was also attacked by soldiers during the incursion, leaving him with multiple bruises and broken bones.
Local Palestinian observers and residents have documented a sharp recent escalation in Israeli military incursions into Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, alongside marked increases in the level of aggression soldiers display during house searches and raids, including routine physical assaults on civilian residents. These frequent incursions have also been paired with widespread mass arrest campaigns carried out by Israeli forces in Qalqilya and surrounding areas over recent weeks, which have targeted dozens of Palestinian people, including multiple women.
The day before the fatal Jayyous raid, on Monday, Israeli forces arrested multiple relatives of Palestinians who had previously been killed by Israeli forces in the Qalqilya area, including the mothers of the deceased. The move has been widely condemned as an intentional act of collective intimidation that punishes family members even after their relatives have been killed.
Just last month, the Israeli military detained 15 women from Qalqilya and its neighboring rural areas, including the wives of imprisoned Palestinians and local political activists. While most of the detained women have since been released, one remains held in Israeli administrative detention, a policy that allows Israeli authorities to hold prisoners indefinitely without formal charges or trial.
This killing also marks the second death of an elderly Palestinian woman during an Israeli house raid in less than two months. Back in November, 80-year-old Haniya Hanoun died after Israeli soldiers stormed her family home in al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya, a village north of Ramallah, beat her severely in front of her family members, and arrested her grandson during the incursion.