This week, a video appeared on social media that showed twelve Israeli special forces troops dressing like Palestinians and going inside the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, the West Bank city, and killing three Palestinian men, two of whom were brothers.
They also harassed and attacked other patients as well as hospital employees throughout the operation. They can be seen holding up a gun to force an onlooker to kneel in the video.
Witnesses maintain that the guys were shot while they slept, not that any attempts were made to capture them. After being rendered paralyzed in an Israeli airstrike on a Jenin cemetery in November, one of the men was receiving treatment for a spine injury. Although the hospital has had numerous attacks in the past, this was the first assassination to occur on hospital property, according to a hospital representative.
But similar incidents have occurred in the West Bank before. 2015 saw an incursion into a Hebron hospital by Israeli special forces undercover personnel who took an injured Palestinian prisoner, shot and killed his relative, and threatened hospital employees with guns.
The Arabic term “mustara’bim,” which literally translates to “those who live among Arabs,” is a popular term for these undercover agents. Here, it refers to Israeli operatives who pose as Palestinians or infiltrate Palestinian neighborhoods in order to gather intelligence or carry out operations.
Since 1948, this team has consisted of agents who are educated to speak Palestinian Arabic, comprehend Palestinian customs, and blend in through clothing. The agents are mostly of Jewish-Arab descent. Though they sometimes take part in special operations like as the one in the Jenin hospital, they most frequently infiltrate protests to create confusion and a sense of paranoia.
