A Video Shows an Israeli Settler Shooting a Palestinian Point-Blank. 10 Months Later, No One Has Been Arrested
How generations of extremist settlers have terrorized Palestinians with impunity.
Jewish settler Yitzhak Nir does not deny shooting Zakaria al-Adra, a 28-year-old Palestinian father of four, on Oct. 13, 2023.
Nir, armed with an Israeli military-issued assault rifle, and at least one other settler left the illegal Ma’on Farm outpost in the occupied West Bank late that morning, walked 350 meters down a rugged hillside, and entered the neighboring village of At-Tuwani, according to court documents.
Al-Adra had been praying at the local mosque when he heard a commotion outside, prompting him and several others to go out and investigate.
What happened next was captured on video. Nir emerges from behind a large boulder and strides aggressively down the road toward al-Adra, striking him in the chest with the barrel of his rifle. Al-Adra raises his arm and then quickly lowers it, at which point Nir fires. Al-Adra collapses immediately, stands up, and then falls again, clutching his abdomen as blood begins to pool on the road. Screams can be heard in the background. Nir retreats slowly up the hill, his gun still trained on al-Adra.
“Everything turned very dark,” al-Adra said months later. “I felt the blood pouring out of my body, as if all of it was leaving me, and I was becoming lighter. I thought of my children, and I was sure, ‘This is the last moment of my life.’”
An Israeli military checkpoint prevented an ambulance from reaching the village, so al-Adra’s cousin drove him to the hospital while he hemorrhaged blood in the backseat. What should have been a 10-minute drive turned into a 40-minute journey due to Israeli roadblocks, al-Adra and his cousin said. He nearly bled to death before reaching the hospital, where he would spend the next 82 days.
Zakaria al-Adra in the hospital after the shooting. Photo provided by Shoug al-Adra
Within a day of the shooting, the video of it went viral. A police investigation, according to court documents, named Nir as the shooter. Nir later claimed self-defense: Al-Adra, he said, intended to throw a stone. Ten months after the shooting, the police have made no arrests. Al-Adra and his family continue to live as neighbors with the man who shot him.
"I am not surprised, only ashamed," said al-Adra’s attorney, Eitan Peleg, an Israeli Jew. “This happens here every day.”
Decades Under Siege
Many At-Tuwani villagers bear the scars of beatings by violent settler mobs. The small farming community is one of 12 in Masafer Yatta, a windy region in the South Hebron Hills classified as Area C, placing it under full Israeli control. The area has been under a brutal siege for many decades: settlers and soldiers have cut off the town’s water and electricity, demolished critical infrastructure, annexed its olive groves, and harassed its sheep.
In the 1980s, Israel designated much of the area as an active military training and firing zone, with the goal of reserving the land for Jewish settlement. The Israeli government has forcibly evicted hundreds of households on the grounds that they were "illegally living in a military training area" – a move upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court in 2022 when it rejected a petition against the forced transfer of more than 1,000 Palestinians. This May, Zakaria al-Adra’s wife, Shoug, watched the military bulldoze her family home.
Israel demolishes a Palestinian’s home in At-Tuwani in May 2024. Photo by Emily Glick / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Masafer Yatta was home to approximately 1,150 residents, though a yet unknown number of villages have been abandoned due to escalating settler violence. Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed more than 500 Palestinians across the West Bank under the cover of the war in Gaza. Dozens of armed Israeli settlers went on a rampage in the Palestinian village of Jit last week, reportedly killing a 23-year-old Palestinian man, wounding several others, and setting fire to Palestinian property. The UN has recorded more than 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the war in Gaza began, but even before Oct. 7, the rate of violence was at an all-time high.