The assassination of Nour al-Bitawi and Hikmat Abdel-Nabi: Targeting the liberated prisoners and the resistance

On Friday, 9 May 2025, occupation forces launched an assassination raid on Nour al-Bitawi, referred to as “the most wanted man in the West Bank” for his role in leading the Jenin Brigades resistance fighters confronting the occupation. He and his comrade, Hikmat Abdel-Nabi, a struggler with Saraya al-Quds in Nablus, resisted the attack of the occupation for hours, fighting until their last moment in a house to the east of Nablus where they had taken refuge, which the occupation bombed with a drone. He had previously evaded multiple assassination and arrest attempts.

Nour al-Bitawi was a commander of the Jenin Brigades and a leader in Saraya al-Quds, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. Like his fighting brothers and comrades in arms in Jenin, he was part of the leadership of a new generation of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank of occupied Palestine that is determined to resist the occupation forces by all means, rejecting the path of Oslo on the road to liberation. The occupation forces are currently waging an assault on the refugee camps, particularly in the north of the West Bank of occupied Palestine, seeking to eradicate the resistance and liquidate Palestinian refugees’ camps and their commitment to their right to return to their original homes and lands in occupied Palestine ’48 from which they were forcibly displaced in the Nakba of 1947-48.

As in many other cases, leaders of the resistance are liberated prisoners who spent years targeted by the Zionist-imperialist regime. Nour al-Bitawi was arrested by the occupation for the first time in 2011, serving 7 years in occupation prisons before his release in 2018.

On 8 February 2021, occupation forces arrested him after shooting him with live bullets inside his home in Jenin. He was in critical condition for days following the attack, and parts of his intestines were removed due to the severity of his injuries. He was held in detention for one year, mostly in the infamous Ramleh prison clinic, and repeatedly denied appropriate medical treatment for his wounds. Upon his release, he issued a call, urging that “All Palestinians, in the West Bank, Gaza, in occupied Palestine ’48 and in diaspora must work to release the prisoners and end their suffering.”

Later, on 3 November 2023, the occupation forces exploded al-Bitawi’s home in Jenin camp, and one year later, on 6 November 2024, they set fire to his father’s house, preventing civil defense crews from extinguishing the blaze that spread to three neighboring homes.

He was repeatedly pursued by both the occupation and the collaborationist “Palestinian Authority” as part of its “security coordination” with the occupation regime, especially as the PA and then the Zionist military intensified their attacks on Jenin, Tulkarem and Nour Shams camp in December 2024. In January of this year, the occupation arrested his father in an attempt to force him to surrender himself. He was also subjected to a campaign of “moral assassination” and smears by the PA, which attempted to label him a “criminal” and an “Iranian agent.” These tactics have been used frequently by the PA against resistance leaders who are also being pursued by the occupation, such as in the well-known case of Abu Shujaa of Nour Shams camp (Mohammed Jaber, whose mother, Haneen Jaber, is currently imprisoned by the occupation while diagnosed with cancer.)

Indeed, just days ago, PA “security forces” surrounded al-Bitawi’s home in Jenin, seeking to arrest him; he has been one of the “most wanted” for the PA as well, following their December 2024 attack on Jenin camp.

This type of assassination raid and attack targeting resistance fighters and leaders — often liberated prisoners themselves — often overlaps with “arrest raids” targeting the Palestinian people. The attack on Nour al-Bitawi and Hekmat Abdel-Nabi mirrors many such assassination raids against fighters who refuse to surrender themselves to the occupation or to return to Zionist prisons, such as the cases of the “engaged intellectual” and freedom fighter Basil al-Araj, Ibrahim Nabulsi, Mohammed al-Azizi, Abdel-Rahman Soboh, Islam Odeh, Saleh Barghouthi, Ashraf Na’alwa, and Moataz Washaha, to name only a few of the recent targets of the current generation of resistance.

In response to the assassination, the Palestinian resistance organizations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, pledged to intensify their resistance, urging broad mobilization in the ranks of the resistance to confront the genocidal occupier. As Nour al-Bitawi declared, “We are a people who seek liberation. We will fight until liberation for our dignity, our people, and for God Almighty.”

The assassination raid on Sheikh Nour al-Bitawi and Hikmat Abdel-Nabi echoes the stories of many martyred Palestinian resistance fighters, particularly former prisoners who refuse to return to the dungeons of the occupation. Their commitment to fight until martyrdom in the face of the assassination forces echo those of the resistance fighters from Gaza to Yemen to Lebanon and everywhere throughout the region, of the prisoners who fight with their bodies behind bars, of the Palestinians who insist to remain on their land confronting the genocidal Zionist-imperialist aggression. Despite the massive array of US-made and -provided weaponry arrayed against them by the genocidal occupation regime, they fought heroically until their last breath, resisting for their people, their land, and their liberation.

Victory to the Resistance! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!