American Citizen Killed In The West Bank By Israeli Forces

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Par for the course for the military industrial complex, the United State's interventionist foreign policy has done little to effectuate geopolitical stability across the globe. As Yemen now enters into the fray as the latest theater of war to emerge during the Biden administration's tenure, it does so without any such resolution to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza whose outcomes the White House has staked as the legacy of Joe Biden's foreign policy. If anything, the Biden administration's neoliberal approach to using conflicts in foreign countries as an opportunity to use foreign aid as a means of increasing its military contractors margins conveys the reason that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have only escalated since Washington's decisions to intervene in each.

Escalation and a listless plan moving forward are not the only commonalities that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza share. While the parallels are numerous, the most recent of them to emerge is the death of a United States citizen. Just like in Ukraine where US journalist Gonzalo Lira was left to rot in jail until he died, the war between Israel and Palestine has seen several US-Israeli dual citizens be killed. While Israel has been able to use those tragedies as a means of fostering US support for its war against Hamas, the most recent American citizen to die in the conflict was one who was killed by the IDF. According to Palestinian officials 17-year old Palestinian-American Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was shot and killed Friday by IDF soldiers in the West Bank.

Jabbar was a native of Louisiana whose father was president of a mosque local to his hometown of Gretna. The family chose to move to the West Bank for Jabbar's senior year of high school. Following his graduation, the deceased had planned to return to his home state of Louisiana and enroll in college at the University of New Orleans -- a dream his death in the West Bank allegedly at the hands of the IDF has shattered.

Like with the imprisonment and eventual death of Gonzalo Lira in Ukraine, the US State Department has done little more than merely acknowledging Jabbar's death. "We extend our deepest condolences to the family," the State Department said. "We are working to understand the circumstances of the incident and have asked the Government of Israel for further information. Out of respect to the family during this difficult time, we have no further comment."

John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, also spoke at the State Department briefing acknowledging Jabbar's death. Kirby's remarks did little to provide clarity, instead echoing his oft-used remark about a lack of available information to insulate Israel from any culpability, stating “We’re seriously concerned about these reports...The information is scant at this time. We don’t have perfect context about exactly what happened here.”

Israeli officials have done little more than Kirby to provide any context as to how an American citizen fell into the IDF's crosshairs. Reports from Israeli police indicate several simultaneous investigations. The Israeli Army is investigating the claims an IDF soldier was involved in the shooting of Jabbar. Israeli police have also disclosed their own internal investigation regarding the shooting, stating that an Israeli civilian and an off-duty solider had fired at “individuals purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities.”

Despite the lack of Hamas' control of the West Bank amidst the war in Gaza, hostilities in the former of those Palestinian territories have only increased since the events that unfolded on October 7th. IDF forces have been involved in fatal shootings of West Bank residents as  recently as the date of this article's writing when according to the IDF an armed terrorist was shot dead near the Israeli settlement of Psagot.

That settlement represents the tensions fomenting in the West Bank as the Israeli expansion into the territory which has long been a catalyst for the growing conflict in the region. West Bank residents fear they're doomed to the same fate as their Gazan counterparts as the war proves to be fodder for continued illegal expansion into the territory, a promise made by the Netanyahu administration to settlement developers who are some of the most radical of its supporters and most fervent Zionists hellbent on making Israeli an entirely Jewish state devoid of any Palestinian territories.

Since October 7th, 319 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank while over 1,000 have been displaced from their homes due to the spread of Israeli settlements. With the war in Gaza forecast to last for longer than a year and the United States' unbridled support for Israel, it appears that the amount of civilian casualties will only continue to grow. While US officials have been critical of Israel for its apparent lack of concern for those innocent deaths, the fatal shooting of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar shows that the Biden administration cares just as little for the lives of any of its own citizens whose lives are lost as a result of its misguided foreign policy.