Police launch manhunt after two men shot dead in East Jerusalem’s Shuafat camp

Two Palestinian men were shot dead in East Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp Thursday evening in what police characterized as a “criminal dispute,” the third multiple causality homicide in Arab society the past couple days.

Paramedics found the two men, Iyad Awaida, 42, and Muhammad Abdin, 31, sprawled out on the street and in critical condition, suffering from severe bullet wounds. Onlookers tried to treat the men before paramedics arrived at the scene.

They were rushed to nearby Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, where they were pronounced dead by medical staff.

Citing an initial investigation, police said the double homicide was spurred on by a “criminal dispute.”

Jerusalem District and Border Police officers were working to “trace the identity of the suspect who fled the scene,” law enforcement added. Both victims were known to police, Hebrew outlets reported.

Deputy Commissioner Avshalom Peled, who recently began serving as the Jerusalem District police chief, toured the scene of the shooting and instructed the local investigative unit to probe the incident.

Earlier in the day, three men — all from the same family — were shot and killed in northern Israel, with the shooting coming on the heels of an earlier triple-homicide Tuesday night outside the central town of Tira, bringing the number of Arab homicide victims in the past two days to eight.

Last year, Arab society saw 252 homicide deaths, the highest toll on record, though this year stands to be deadlier if current trends continue. That said, only three of these 252 victims were East Jerusalem residents. The vast majority of deaths were among Arab citizens living in northern and central Israel.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees law enforcement in his role, called an emergency situation assessment with senior police brass following the deadly shooting in Shuafat.

During the late night meeting, he blamed Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for the rise in crime and accused her of “not granting the police what every police [force] in a democratic country needs to fight criminal terror.”

He went on to insist that there is a “silver lining” to the deteriorating situation. “We should acknowledge that there is also a silver lining, since the start of the year we have 20% fewer murders in the Jewish sector, 40% fewer murders of women, 66% fewer murders of Jewish women.”

Violent killings have run rampant in Arab cities and towns over the past decade, but the issue worsened considerably in 2023 — Ben Gvir’s first year in office — when the number of murders jumped to 244, doubling the previous year’s figure of 116. It dipped slightly in 2024 before reaching new heights last year. The previous record high, set in 2022, was 126 murders.