By V.E.K.Madhushani, Jadetimes News
Mounting Tensions Threaten to Ignite Further Unrest
When a white van pulled up next to the office of the Palestine Customs Police in Tubas, a town in the Israeli occupied West Bank, Abdel Nasser Sarhan had no reason to be suspicious. According to his colleagues, the van’s driver stepped out and greeted him in Arabic.
It was early morning, and the 24 year old uniformed policeman had just started his shift. CCTV footage shows him casually walking past a guard post with his rifle slung at his side. Moments later, a man in jeans and a dark T shirt emerges from the direction of the white van, with uniformed Israeli soldiers behind him. The man raises a handgun and fatally shoots Abdel Nasser.
Soon after, the street is filled with Israeli soldiers. They retrieve Abdel Nasser's rifle, and as his colleagues attempt to recover his body, the soldiers continue shooting actions all captured on CCTV.
When we visited Tubas the following morning, in late July, a makeshift memorial of stones and wilting flowers marked the ground where Abdel Nasser fell. The guard post and nearby walls were riddled with bullet holes, each marked with a yellow tag. Fading bloodstains smeared the ground and doorway.
In a statement released on the day of the incident, the Israeli army claimed the shooting occurred during an operation to detain two wanted men. Abdel Nasser’s colleagues in Tubas said these arrests took place at a nearby house. The army stated that soldiers had “encountered armed terrorists” and that “a customs officer of the Palestinian Authority was killed during exchanges of fire.” However, CCTV evidence suggests this account is inaccurate.
An Israeli security official, contacted two weeks later, described the incident as “one of hundreds, if not thousands of special activities that are planned and carried out very precisely." He admitted that this particular operation was under review “because it didn’t go as planned.”
It appears that this was an operation gone wrong. No one has suggested that Abdel Nasser or the customs office were the intended targets. The young officer seems to have had the misfortune of stumbling upon an undercover Israeli operation, during which he was shot and killed.
For Abdel Nasser’s colleagues in the customs police, this tragic episode is part of a broader pattern of actions that are increasingly hampering the Palestinian Authority's ability to maintain security in areas not under direct Israeli military control. “This rings a warning bell, especially for us in the security services,” said Lt. Ibrahim Ayyash, spokesman for the Palestine Customs Police. “How can we enforce law and order, offer services to the people, and protect them while you’re obstructing my work and killing my officers?”
Customs officers, he explained, are now increasingly hesitant to stop suspicious vehicles for fear of encountering undercover Israeli soldiers. “It now falls on you, as a customs officer, to decide whether to stop a vehicle or not,” he said. “If you stop it and it has Special Forces [inside], they could kill you.”
Undercover operations were already a regular occurrence in the West Bank long before the Gaza war erupted last October, as viewers of the Israeli TV show Fauda would know. Recent evidence indicates that the frequency of such operations has increased, with numerous instances of CCTV footage showing Israeli units, disguised as civilians or even medics, capturing wanted Palestinians from city streets and hospital beds.
But these clandestine operations are only part of a larger, more complex situation. With global attention focused on Gaza, another conflict is intensifying in the West Bank, where the Israeli military is cracking down on armed groups it claims are funded by Iran.
“The situation on the ground is very, very complicated,” said an Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You might say that it's on the verge of an explosion.”
The emergence of a new generation of local armed groups, primarily in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank, dates back to around 2021, with the first group appearing in Jenin. The war in Gaza has since fueled rebellion in other cities, including Tulkarem, Qalqilya, and more recently, Tubas.
Israel’s security crackdown, combined with actions by violent groups of Jewish settlers and the perception that the Palestinian Authority is powerless to protect its people, has created an atmosphere of mounting tension. “They’re very frustrated with Israel, they’re very frustrated with the Palestinian Authority, and they’re looking for an outlet for this frustration,” the Israeli security official said.
According to the PA health ministry, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since last October. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reports that as many as 10,000 people have been arrested. At least 17 Israelis, including 12 security personnel, have also been killed in the West Bank, according to a UN tally.
Some veteran observers fear that armed clashes could escalate into a full scale uprising, or intifada. “If it goes into an intifada, this is a much, much bigger problem,” said Gen. Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Division. “Militarily, we handle things better or worse. But when it goes into an intifada, it’s a totally different story. And it might go there.”
With the Israeli military still focused on the war in Gaza and its simmering conflict with Hezbollah along its northern border, Gen. Ziv warned of the danger much closer to home. “It’s a huge problem that can blow up in our face in a more sensitive area, [close] to the centers of population in Israel,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus, Abdel Nasser’s family is still grieving. They’ve watched the CCTV footage from Tubas and drawn their own conclusions about the actions of the Israeli army. “He came to kill, just to kill,” said Abdel Nasser’s uncle, Ismail Mohammed Sarhan.
Abdel Nasser’s father, Mohannad, struggles to comprehend the loss of his son. When asked to describe him, he said, “Ambitious, kind, always smiling,” unable to hold back tears.
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