On 27 January 2023, a gunman opened fire in Neve Yaakov, an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, killing at least seven civilians. According to Haaretz reporting, the attacker walked approximately 200 metres past a synagogue and killed four passersby and a motorcyclist. People who emerged from the synagogue after hearing gunfire were also fired upon, and on his way back to his vehicle the gunman killed two more people at an intersection. Seven people were killed in total — five men and two women, ranging in age from 14 to 68 — and at least three others were wounded. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that one of the women killed was a Ukrainian citizen.
The attacker fled toward the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina, where police confronted him. According to police, he was shot and killed after opening fire on officers while attempting to flee on foot. The suspect was identified as Khairi Alqam, a 21-year-old resident of East Jerusalem. A relative of his, aged eighteen, had been killed two days earlier by Israeli authorities after reportedly threatening them with what turned out to be a toy gun. Alqam's grandfather, whom he was named after, had been killed in 1998 during the 1997–99 Jerusalem stabbings. Alqam's father told Arab media he had no knowledge of his son's plans and expressed pride in his son's actions.
The attack occurred on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a coincidence some commentators linked to the timing of the attack, while others suggested a connection to personal or family history instead. It was described as Israel's deadliest peacetime Palestinian attack since the 2008 Jerusalem yeshiva attack. Palestinian militant groups did not claim the attacker as a member but characterized the shooting as retaliation for an Israeli raid in Jenin the day before, in which ten Palestinians were killed. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesmen issued statements framing the attack in this context. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stated that the Israeli government was "fully responsible for this dangerous escalation." Celebratory gatherings, including fireworks and gunfire, were reported in parts of Gaza and the West Bank.
In the aftermath, Palestinian and Israeli sources reported that between 42 and 50 people, mostly relatives of the attacker, were arrested. Israeli authorities moved to demolish the attacker's family home, evacuating and sealing it on 28 January. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office indicated intent to strip residency and citizenship rights from attackers' families and cancel social security benefits, drawing criticism from human rights groups and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry as collective punishment. The attack drew widespread international condemnation from numerous governments and organizations, including France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United Nations, with several calling simultaneously for restraint amid escalating tensions.
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