For two and a half hours, Sayfollah was left to die with no medical assistance, struggling to breathe, blood filling his lungs and his body broken after being brutally beaten by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
The 20-year-old, a dual US citizen who runs an ice cream shop in Florida, was only meant to be visiting family and friends in the village of Al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya, north of Ramallah, for the summer.
On 11 July, his family say a gang of armed settlers attacked him and his relatives as they stood on their own land.
Despite the fact that Sayf – as he is known – was in a critical condition, the Palestinian ambulance called to rescue him was blocked by Israeli security forces, according to his younger brother Mohammed, who was trying to help.
In a panic as Sayf’s face began to turn blue, Mohammed called their father, Kamel Musallet, who was over 10,000 kilometres away in Tampa and powerless to do anything.
Saif died exactly four minutes before the ambulance reached him and before he was finally – and futilely – placed on a stretcher.
“They tried CPR, they tried everything, but it was just too late,” Kamel tells The Independent, his voice cracking as he opens up for the first time about that moment his son was beaten to death.
“According to medical reports, Sayf was hit on his back, on the shoulders, he had head injuries – possibly made by rods. He lost all ability to breathe properly, and his heart stopped for lack of oxygen.”
Mohammed, a softly spoken teenager standing near the spot where the attack happened, says he is still haunted by that moment, kneeling helplessly by his older brother’s side.
“He had blood in his mouth, he was throwing up, he had bruises all over his back, legs, everywhere. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t reply. Then he went blue,” he adds, before trailing off.
“I started to call my dad, everyone I knew, just to do something. No one could reach us, not even the ambulance. I couldn’t do anything by myself. I was praying for someone to come help.”
Sayfollah is among nearly 1,000 people – four of them US citizens – that Israeli forces or settlers have killed in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
In fact, the death toll is so high that multiple international and Israeli rights groups say it is the bloodiest period the area has witnessed since Israel first occupied the land in 1967, over 60 years ago.
The fear is that despite a fragile ceasefire holding in Gaza, it will not be applicable here. Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” does not even mention the West Bank.
And despite the US president declaring a new “dawn” of peace in the Middle East during a visit to Israel last week, he failed to mention the US citizens killed by Israel forces and settlers or those held in Israel’s prisons.
Israel has repeatedly denied its forces have violated international law, and has blamed the uptick in violence of Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens: since October 2023, UN data shows 41 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, including 23 soldiers.
The Israeli military said its soldiers “operate to prevent violent incidents perpetrated by Israeli civilians in the [West Bank] area, and it is their duty to protect all residents — both Israelis and Palestinians.”
‘The hardest thing a father can do is to put his son in the ground’ – Kamel
They declined to comment in detail on Sayf’s murder saying an investigation is pending.
But after Sayf’s murder, the US did get involved.
Its ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee visited his family and personally vowed to investigate the matter and find the perpetrator, “calling it a terrorist act”, Kamel says.
But the family say so far nothing has been done. In desperation Kamel travelled to Washington DC in September to petition the Trump administration for help, enlisting the support of members of Congress including Pramila Jayapal, Chuy García, Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan and Lateefah Simon.
Together they held a joint press conference on Capitol Hill demanding answers for Sayf, and also nother US citizens killed including Ayşenur Eygi, a Turkish American citizen who was shot and killed by Israeli military forces during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements near Nablus last September.
At the gathering, Jayapal said there was “absolutely no forward movement” on any accountability no US-led investigation and “no insistence that the United States protect at a minimum our own US citizens against Israeli government forces”.
The Independent reached out to the State Department but has yet to receive a reply.
Back in the occupied West Bank, the family say they have received no information from the Israeli authorities either.
For Kamel, he cannot stop thinking about the last phone call he had with his son, who told him he had met a woman he wanted to marry. Kamel says his mind is also trapped on the horror of that day.
“I was in shock. I just fell to my knees and froze,” he says. “The hardest thing that a father can ever do is to put his son in the ground.”
Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war, an occupation which the International Court of Justice has deemed illegal and is in defiance of the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood.
Since then, Israel has built and expanded its settlements to such an extent that the West Bank is now home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Surrounded by these ever-expanding settler outposts, towns and even cities – illegal under international law – are three million Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in scattered enclaves.
For years there has been violence but nothing as bloody as the period since Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October in southern Israel and Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza, which a UN enquiry has since concluded is a genocide.
Israel plans to ‘cut the West Bank in half’
Israeli forces have stormed and emptied four refugee camps including Jenin, Nur Shams, Tulkarm, and El Far’a – forcibly displacing more than 40,000 people in February.
The settlers, meanwhile, have been armed by the state and recruited into what Israel has called regional defence units, which international, Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say have been getting bolder and more violent every day.
Foreign countries including the UK are so alarmed by the surge in violence they have even imposed sanctions on individual settlers.
There are deep concerns now of further bloodshed and even annexation after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme-right cabinet last month approved a major settlement project, E1, just outside Jerusalem.
Rights groups say it will cut the West Bank in half and further sever it from East Jerusalem, making it virtually impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.
In fact Netanyahu’s extreme-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has even boasted the E1 plan would “bury” the idea of Palestinian statehood and has separately released his own maps annexing more than 80 per cent of the occupied West Bank, a plan he says will take maximum land with “minimum” Palestinians on it.
The situation is so dire that UN commission of inquiry concluded last month that Israel has demonstrated a “clear intent to forcibly transfer Palestinians, expand Israeli Jewish civilian presence and annex the entirety of the West Bank”.
Shai Parnes from Israeli rights group B’Tselem said that since 2023 the Israeli military not only protects and supports violent settler behaviour, but the settlers themselves have access to state-supplied weapons “and are actually part of the army now.”
“They get total impunity. Before these attacks happened at night, they were bothered to wear masks. Now they don’t even care if it’s in broad daylight without any face covers,” he adds.
Settler violence caught on camera
In some instances, they do not seem to care that they are caught live on camera.
This happened in July in Umm al-Khair which is part Masafer Yatta, in the south of the occupied West Bank where the plight of Palestinian communities and the relentless attacks they face from settlers was featured in Oscar-winning film No Other Land.
There Awdah Hathaleen, 31, a Palestinian activist who worked on the documentary, actually filmed his own murder.
It was July 28, just a few weeks after Sayf had been killed.
In the harrowing mobile phone footage, shared with The Independent, it is clear that the father-of-three is a good 50 metres away and behind a wire fence, partially draped with tarpaulin.
This was confirmed by multiple eyewitnesses and family members who pinpointed Awdah’s pool of blood which remains on the ground at the spot where he fell.
In the video, settler Yinon Levi, who is sanctioned by the UK and the European Union, is seen waving a gun at a group of Palestinian residents, as he accompanies a bulldozer which had just injured other Palestinians present.
The Biden administration had sanctioned Levi for violence in the community in early 2024. But those sanctions were lifted by an executive order signed by Trump early on in his presidency, which also removed Levi’s name, among others, from the US “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.”
In the clip Levi, who is screaming, is seen cocking his gun, pointing and shooting directly at Awdah, who falls to the ground.
Awdah’s cousin Ahmed, 30, who was a witness, says that earlier the settlers from the nearby settlement Carmel which butts up against their village, drove across their land with a bulldozer and ignored the Palestinian residents who told them it was forbidden.
Ahmed says he was hit by the bulldozer’s multi-tonne massive claw, injuring his head and shoulder, wounds he was still suffering from. Then as the situation escalated Levi turned and shot Awdah, even though he was nowhere near the crowds.
“Awdah’s injury was fatal,” he continues, sitting next to the dried pool of blood. “We called for an ambulance. Even though the Israeli ambulance was only two minutes away and could have arrived, it didn’t. Still, Awdah’s wounds were critical and deadly. About an hour and a half later, we were informed that Awdah had been martyred.”
B’Tselem says that Levi was put under house arrest but that was lifted a few days later on 1 August. On 4 August, he was once again filmed invading Umm al-Khair land, accompanied by another armed settler, unimpeded.
Awdah’s brother Khalil says the Israelis meanwhile arrested multiple members of his community and withheld Awdah’s body for 11 days.
When the body was finally released, Israeli forces temporarily turned the area into a closed military zone so no one could enter to attend the funeral.
“It’s impossible to describe how we feel,” he says, his voice faltering.
In late August, families in Umm al-Khair said seven new settler caravans installed themselves directly next to residents’ homes.
Later the settlers also cut the community’s water supply further undermining access to basic services and that Levi himself appeared with a bulldozer, cutting the electricity line. Residents said armed soldiers and settlers cut down 120 olive trees ahead of the harvest, and destroyed fences.
‘The shooter is not in jail, he can do whatever he likes’ – Eitan Peleg, lawyer
Eitan Peleg, an Israeli lawyer representing Awdah’s family says in this atmosphere of impunity, they have little hope of securing justice: “The shooter is not in jail, he is not in house custody he can do whatever he likes.”
“The last 20 years of investigations like this one end up with no body found guilty.”
The Independent asked the Israeli military (IDF) about the accusations of violence. It said the Israeli military mission was to “ensure the security of all residents in the area and to act to prevent terrorism and activities that endanger the citizens of the State of Israel” as well as to protect both Israelis and Palestinians.
They declined to directly comment on the killing of Awdah and instead directed inquiries to the police, adding that “In instances where soldiers fail to comply with IDF orders, the incidents are thoroughly investigated, and disciplinary measures are taken accordingly”.
The Independent reached out to the spokesperson for the “Mount Hebron Regional Council” an Israeli body that administers settlements in area, but was told they were “not interested” in speaking to British media.
Yishai Fleisher, an Israeli settler leader and activist, said accusations of a surge in violence by settlers were “antisemitic”.
“What’s obvious to me is the Jews are victims of jihadist violence. And sometimes violence meets violence,” he said.
He also slammed British sanctions against settlers including Levi, accusing the British government of being under “the mental control of jihadist thinking.”
Back in Al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya, Safallah’s family have still had no updates about their son’s killing, and no time to mourn him, as they are fighting a second nightmare: the continued detention of Saif’s youngest cousin, a now 16-year-old boy also called Mohammed.
In February, Israeli soldiers stormed the family home in the middle of the night, blindfolded and took Mohammed, who was then just 15, for allegedly throwing stones – something the family vehemently deny.
Mohammed’s family – who, like Sayf’s, also have US citizenship – have been unable to see the teenager, who turned 16 behind bars in Israel’s notorious Megiddo Prison, where many minors are held.
Thousands of teenager detained without charge
Despite being a child, Mohammed is among more than 3,500 Palestinians being are held in Israeli administrative detention, which can be indefinitely renewed and means he has not been charged or sent to trial.
According to Israeli rights group HaMoked, 87 percent of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are held without charge or trial – rights groups have said it amounts to arbitrary detention.
The Israeli Prison Service has denied allegations of violations of human rights in the past saying that it operates under the law.
“All prisoners are detained according to the law. All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards,” it said in a statement.
But Mohammed, a teenage school boy, has been barred family visits and phone calls and has since been moved to Israel’s notorious Ofer prison, where The Independent revealed evidence showing multiple instances of torture, abuses, sexual violence, deaths in detention and medical neglect.
Mohammed’s father Zaher said US embassy officials have managed to see him briefly and told them that Mohamed, who was already small for his age, has lost significant amounts of weight and has been suffering from scabies.
The family had hoped he might be included in a hostage exchange swap in the latest truce, but he was not included on the lists.
Kamel has also been petitioning the US government for any assistance or answers – for either the killing or the jailing – to no avail.
“We’ve sent emails. We spoke to the embassy, we have tried to speak out everywhere. We’re going through so much as a family, my son getting murdered, my nephew at prison at 15 for allegedly throwing a rock. And the US has done nothing,” he says in desperation, as he stands by his son’s grave, a Palestinian flag waving in the wind.
Kamel says there is still no movement on Saif’s case either, he explains, adding that with armed settlers around, they “fear for their lives”.
“As a father, you always think you’re going to grow old, your son’s going to get married, he’ll have kids and then he’ll put you in the ground when you die. You never imagine this,” he says his hand on his son’s plaque.
“I don’t want to see this ever happen again. I don’t want any more fathers to put their sons in the ground. And so my message is we need justice.
“We need the settlers to finally stop somehow… stop terrorising us, stop taking lands, stop the killing. I worry that the world will stay silent.”
