An Israeli force kills a Palestinian family
23/3/2026 -The Union for Justice Foundation
On a Ramadan night that was supposed to be filled with joy, the father Ali Bani Odeh went out accompanied by his wife Waad and their four children from the town of Tammun, south of Tubas in the northern occupied West Bank, heading to the markets to buy Eid clothes. The car was filled with the laughter of the children and their repeated kisses to their parents, in a simple family scene that encapsulates the warmth of the family and their joy at the approaching Eid, a scene that is repeated everywhere.
But the short journey turned within moments into a bloody tragedy, when a vehicle belonging to a special unit of the Israeli occupation army intercepted the family’s path and opened heavy and direct fire at the car.
Within seconds, the laughter turned into screams; the mother Waad (35 years old) was struck and was martyred while trying to protect her children, and the child Khaled tried to protect his brother Othman to no avail.
The shooting resulted in the martyrdom of the father Ali Bani Odeh (37 years old) and his two children Othman (7 years) and Mohammad (5 years), while the two brothers Mustafa (8 years) and Khaled (11 years) were injured by bullet shrapnel in the head and face, according to what the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced in its statement dated 14/3/2026.
According to the testimony of the child Khaled Ali Bani Odeh, the eldest among his siblings and a sixth-grade student, detailing the final moments of the massacre committed by the occupation against his family, he said: “We were returning from Nablus, and suddenly direct gunfire began against us, and when the shooting started I hid my head under the seat, and we did not know its source. Everyone who was in the car was martyred except me and my brother Mustafa, then a soldier pulled me out of the car and began to beat me, then they pulled out my brother Mustafa and tried to beat him, and when I stood in front of him, they knocked me to the ground and beat me with boots on my back, and one of the soldiers said after the shooting: “We killed dogs”, noting that his father was breathing his last, while his mother screamed before silence prevailed.”
Thus, the family’s journey on that Ramadan night ended in heavy silence, after the town of Tammun lost four of its members in an incident that shook the Palestinian street.
The Union for Justice Foundation affirms that this crime constitutes a fully-fledged war crime in accordance with Article Eight of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as the deliberate shooting at the heads and chests proves intent of deliberate killing and the liquidation of an entire family outside the law, which is a flagrant violation of Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions that protects civilians in occupied territories.
What happened in Tammun is not an isolated incident, but rather a practical replication of the systematic “genocide” policy that began in the Gaza Strip and is now extending to include the cities and villages of the West Bank and Jerusalem, in implementation of the doctrine of killing and displacement adopted by the extremist occupation government. Al-Ittihad for Justice also stresses that preventing Red Crescent crews from providing aid to the wounded and leaving them to bleed constitutes a compounded crime and a violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, affirming that the occupation’s flimsy claims of targeting “armed cells” are refuted by the blood of children, which confirms the falsity of the Zionist security narrative and its direct targeting of the Palestinian presence.
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