Palestinian journalist killed amid death threats neglected by Israeli authorities

A Palestinian journalist has been shot dead outside his home in the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories after receiving repeated death threats that were neglected by the Tel Aviv regime’s authorities.

Local Palestinian eyewitnesses said Nadal Ijbaria was killed by two gunmen who approached his car and shot him in the head at close range before fleeing the scene.

The incident occurred on Sunday evening after he performed the Maghrib prayer in a mosque and went to his car outside his house in the Kina neighborhood of Umm al-Fahm city.

An Israeli medical source reported earlier that the 44-year-old journalist was critically wounded in the upper part of his body.

Paramedics provided resuscitation operations for him before he was urgently transferred to Ha’Emek Medical Center in the northern city of Afula for treatment. However, his death was confirmed shortly afterward despite attempts to save his life.

The journalist’s family held Israeli authorities responsible for the incident, given that their son had lodged a complaint about receiving death threats.

In June 2021, armed men fired nearly 50 bullets at Ijbaria’s house where he narrowly escaped injury.

The journalist posted several pictures on his Facebook and Instagram accounts at the time, documenting the attack on his house. 

“Unfortunately, the police are unexpectedly inactive. They always accuse the victim’s families of not cooperating in the investigation to evade responsibility, but we gave them all the evidence and all the threats that Nadal and the family were exposed to,” Mohammed Ijbaria, Nadal’s father, said. 

“Despite the increase in crimes in the Arab community, there is no Israeli action to stop it. This crime will not be the last because we have kept silent about all these calamities,” he added.

Alaa Ijbaria, Nadal’s cousin, said everyone’s life in the community is under threat.

“We all feel fear and anxiety. If someone like Nadal with his good morals was killed, we are all liable to be killed. We walk the streets and count the victims as numbers,” said Alaa.

“We are shocked and cannot believe what happened in the horror of the tragedy. What is happening is very painful. How will we tell his daughter about what has happened?” he said.

Ijbaria was a founder and editor-in-chief of Bldtna website, which provides news regarding Palestinians in the 1948-occupied areas.

His colleagues accused the Israeli police of failing to protect journalists in particular and the Palestinians of the occupied territories in general from the mass killings. 

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A video reportedly from the scene and posted on Bldtna showed journalist Hassan Shalan shouting at the police, “You should be ashamed of yourselves because you do not want to work. You come to the crime scene and take pictures without doing anything.”

Spiraling levels of crime and violence against the Palestinian communities and the Israeli police’s inaction in the face of the violence have outraged Arab citizens in the Israeli-occupied territories, prompting tens of thousands of them to stage mass demonstrations.

Back in March last year, protesters took to the streets in the city of Umm al-Fahm in what some reporters described as the largest rally against violence and organized crime in the Israeli-occupied territories since the 1980s.

The demonstrators said Israeli forces refused to crack down on powerful criminal organizations in the occupied territories.

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