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Photos: Published by Haaretz

Zahia Jawda.

The family has surrounded the place where their matriarch fell with cinder blocks, preserving the bloodstains. Credit: Alex Levac

The Shoafat refugee camp, this week. Credit: Alex Levac
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Zahia Jawda's sons say the street was quiet when a Border Police unit passed by her home; one of the officers fired a single shot, hitting her in the forehead, killing her

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz
July 5, 2025

On the morning of the day she died, the lamb she loved died. Zahia Jawda had taken care of the animal from its birth, feeding it milk from a bottle twice a day. The lamb died last Tuesday morning in its pen.

Her husband Qaid was overcome with grief when he saw the dead animal, before leaving at 5:30 A.M. for his job in Jerusalem. He knew how deeply attached Zahia was, body and soul, to the lamb. He called relatives in the town of Hora and ordered five lambs from them. They promised to bring them by evening. Qaid wanted to lessen Zahia's grief over the death of the pet she had cared for.

The animals arrived that evening. We saw them this week, huddling and clinging to one another in the small pen on the ground floor of the Jawdas' home, located in the Waqf neighborhood – aka Lower Neighborhood – at the foot of Shoafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.

Zahia only managed to feed the new lambs once. A few hours afterward, a Border Police officer shot her from a distance, one bullet straight to the forehead, killing her on the roof of her home. Her bereaved children must now feed the lambs.

To reach the Jawda home, one must cross the entire length of the sprawling camp, in which tens of thousands of people are packed; the sight recalls the Jabalya camp in the Gaza Strip before it was bombed. Amer Aruri, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, guided us.

The twisting streets are narrow and steep – the camp is built on the slope of a mountain – the traffic is unbearable, and the huge permanent checkpoint at the entrance recalls how deep apartheid runs in Jerusalem and the fact that it is a divided city from here to eternity.

The Jawdas are originally Bedouin from Jordan. Zahia and Qaid, aged 66 and 67, respectively, were both born there but have blue (Israeli) ID cards, like all East Jerusalemites. Qaid explains that they try to avoid contact with the inhabitants of the rough neighborhood nearby, the refugee camp itself.

The house they built years ago is almost a traditional Bedouin abode: The ground floor has an animal pen and a chicken coop, whose smells waft all the way up to the roof. Qaid says he must maintain the sheep pen to honor the guests who visit them by serving them mutton.

Sections of the three-story building aren't even finished; they're dark construction skeletons. The couple's sons and their families live in the built-up parts. Access to the roof, where Zahia was killed, is not by stairs but via a rather dangerous ramp.

A terrible sight greets visitors to the roof: The family has surrounded the place where their matriarch fell with cinder blocks, they have preserved the bloodstains and fragments of brain that oozed from her, and have laid a plastic cover over it all. They want the blood not to be erased.

In another corner of the roof, the last clothes Zahia wore, stained with her blood, are hanging nearby.

Qaid, who has worked for years as a traffic inspector in Israel, wears a uniform that he's proud of and drives an official vehicle parked below. He speaks fluent Hebrew. Sitting in his living room, we talk about how Zahia was killed. In a quiet voice he corrects us: "Zahia wasn't killed – she was murdered," he says, bursting into tears for the first but not the last time during our visit. The couple had been married for 50 years.

This Monday, when we visited, he had been a widower for six days. His daughters have been in a state of depression since the incident, he says, and he doesn't know what to do. The couple have seven children and 50 grandchildren, some of them darting about from one floor of the building to another.

In the past Qaid worked for years as a driver for the Egged bus company, before heading a team at the New Way company for traffic inspectors. For three years he was also employed in the light rail project on Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv. When he left, business people and residents wrote him a heartfelt farewell letter, dated November 11, 2022.

"We, owners of businesses and owners of apartments on Ben Yehuda Street, wish to express our appreciation to Qaid Jawda for his devoted work. This pleasant man likes to help and to serve the passersby with great politeness, to the public's satisfaction."

Qaid keeps the letter, among other letters of recommendation he has collected over years of work in Israel, in a file that he displays with pride.

On Tuesday last week, he came home from work, ate dinner and went down with Zahia to care for the sheep. Qaid says that his wife's behavior that evening was unusual but can't explain why, saying, "It's as though she felt that something was about to happen. Something strange."

At about 10 P.M. Qaid went to sleep; he had an early morning assignment with his team in Jerusalem. After midnight he awoke to harrowing shouts. Opening the bedroom door, he saw members of his family screaming. As he demanded to know what happened, he saw his sons carrying Zahia down from the roof, blood streaming from her.

Qaid immediately called 101 to summon a Magen David Adom ambulance to the Shoafat checkpoint – no Israeli ambulance dares to actually enter the camp – and explained that his wife's life was in danger. He went down to the street, where the whole neighborhood was already gathered. His sons placed their mother in a car, en route to the checkpoint. Qaid drove along behind them. The ambulance was waiting and Qaid pushed through to see Zahia. He saw the shattered skull and the blood, and realized she was dead. He kissed her.

At the checkpoint he was told that his wife was being taken to Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus. After reaching Hadassah he was told that she had been evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, and at Shaare Zedek he was told that she had been taken to Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. At that point he decided that she had likely been taken to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, where bodies and not wounded people are transferred. He went home.

At 3:30 A.M. a large Border Police force arrived at his home, rifles at the ready. Qaid says he called out to the force commander: "Just a minute, just a minute, wait. Lower your weapons. No one will do anything to you here. I am asking you, lower your weapons." They complied.

The troops went up to the roof and photographed the scene and the bloodstains along the stairs. "Imagine it was your mother," Qaid told them. "I only want justice. For the Border Police officer who shot my wife to be tried. Just promise me that. I don't want more than that. My wife will not return, but I want the shooter to face trial."

Afterward he heard more details from his children about what had happened. Zahia was on the roof with their daughter Ala, 40, and a few of the grandchildren, like every night. It's hot inside but pleasant up there; they talk, eat sunflower seeds. Everything around, they said, was quiet, when they noticed soldiers marching along on the street, dozens of meters away from them on the high roof.

The Border Police were on the way back from another of the frequent night raids on the camp, most of which are superfluous and even dangerous – invasions intended solely to frighten the inhabitants and display brutal force in the united capital of the State of Israel.

At about 12:30 A.M. one of the troops fired a single shot from a distance that slammed into Zahia's forehead. She collapsed in front of her daughter and grandchildren. One of the sons told us that immediately afterward the Border Police troops fled the scene.

An Israel Police spokesperson this week stated in response to a query: "Border Police undercover troops and fighters who operated in Shoafat refugee camp during the incident referred to were attacked in a violent disturbance that included stones and rocks being thrown at them. An undercover officer was wounded in the head by a rock and taken for treatment to a hospital. In response, the force, which felt itself to be in mortal danger, opened fire at those who were causing the disturbance. The incident is being examined by the relevant personnel."

This response, we will note, is totally irrelevant. What is the connection between the woman on the roof and the mortal danger that was felt, or not felt, by the troops? What is the connection between the "rocks" that were thrown, or not thrown, at them and the precise shot to the head of an innocent woman on top of a house that is outside the camp?

Qaid: "I wear a uniform. For me it's an honor. A police officer who doesn't preserve the honor of his uniform should not be a police officer. He ruined my life. Why did he shoot her? Why is he not a human being? If he were a human being who has a mother and a father, he wouldn't have done it. If he had a heart, he wouldn't have done it. I never did anything bad to the state. I give my heart to the state. I have a large family in the Negev. I also have a grandson who's a soldier. During the war I directed people into the shelters at the sites where I work.

"My role as a traffic inspector is to save the lives of Israelis. Why do I deserve to have my wife be killed? What harm did she do? I only want those who don't respect their uniform not to serve. Let them stand in front of the mirror and take stock of themselves. I don't know if that police officer was a Jew, a Druze or a Bedouin. Just let him stand before the mirror and know that he killed an innocent woman of 66. A good woman. A wonderful soul."