US demands ‘urgent’ investigation into Israeli killing of American teen in West Bank

President Joe Biden’s administration is calling for an investigation into the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian-American who was fatally shot by Israeli forces in the West Bank last week.

US officials are “devastated” by the killing of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a US citizen, and demand an “urgent investigation to determine the circumstance of his death,” according to US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel.

Mr Patel told reporters on Monday that the US Office of Palestinian Affairs has visited the teenager’s family and is connecting them with the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

“We call on Israel to conduct a full, thorough, transparent investigation into his killing,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday. “And of course, we have every expectation that those responsible for it will be held properly accountable.”

Tawfic, the son of Palestinian immigrants, was raised, coincidentally, on the West Bank of the Mississippi River from New Orleans. He attended schools in nearby Gretna and an all-boys Catholic preparatory high school in New Orleans. Last year, he made a temporary move to the occupied territory, where his father grew up, to be closer to relatives and improve his Arabic before returning to the US for college, according to his family.

On 19 January, he was reportedly in a car in the village of Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, roughly 10 miles northeast of Ramallah, when an Israeli settler began firing at him and others, followed by fire from Israeli military, according to accounts from his family and Defence for Children International – Palestine.

A statement from the Israel Defense Forces reported an off-duty police officer and a civilian “fired toward a Palestinian individual”