On the day of his death, Mohammad al-Halak was jubilant over a new school bag he was given in class, printed with the logo of the UN child protection and advocacy agency UNICEF.
“He was very happy. It was something unusual for him to receive a bag,” recalled his mother Aliya. “He knocked on the door and said I had a new bag to put pencils and pens in.”
The nine-year-old boy ran home and then rushed back to school to unsuccessfully ask if he could get another bag for his brother. After lunch he went outside to try to catch the birds in a net he had built. He caught one and showed it to his friends. Full of energy, he wanted to go to his grandparents’ house nearby.
The al-Halak family lives in Ar-Rihiyya, in the hills south of Hebron that have become notorious for violence by Israeli settlers, facilitated by an increasingly politicized army. So Aaliyah was nervous that Mohammed was somewhere out of her sight, but she had to go to the shops and her son was determined, waving goodbye to her and running off. This was the last time she saw him alive.
Gaza Map
Mohammad was shot in the pelvis by an Israeli soldier at approximately 16:00 that day, October 16 last year. He was playing football with other boys in the school playground when two army jeeps arrived. The guys ran away in all directions. According to one version, a couple of older teenagers threw stones towards the jeeps, while others shouted at the soldiers as they retreated to what they thought was a safe distance.
The video shows a soldier getting out of a jeep and pointing a rifle at a hilltop as several boys watch. Shots rang out and Mohammed took a couple of steps before collapsing. Others tried to reach the bleeding boy but were stopped by gunfire and tear gas fired by soldiers below.
Aliya was in the store when the bell rang. It was her uncle who called her father, but she had an instinct and grabbed her father’s mobile phone.
“I asked him directly: “Is this my son Mohammed? Please tell me the truth. Is this my son? And he hung up when he realized it was me,” Aliya said.
Mohammad died in hospital, one of 235 Palestinian children and teenagers killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank (plus five more killed by the settlers themselves) since October 7, 2023. This date marked the beginning of the Gaza War, sparked by a Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis (of whom approximately 800 were civilians and 38 were children).
The crackdown has targeted not only the Gaza Strip, where more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed (21,000 of them children), but also the West Bank, where military rules of engagement have been relaxed and impunity is the norm.
“The widespread and unprecedented killings of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank are the result of a broader Israeli policy that allows Palestinians to be killed without accountability,” said Yuli Novak, executive director of the human rights group B’Tselem, which released a report Monday called “Vulnerable Childhood.” It focuses on the 54 Palestinian children and teenagers killed by Israeli forces in 2025 alone.
“The system doesn’t just support the shooters—it actually gives them a license to kill,” Novak said, pointing to recent remarks by Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the Army’s West Bank-based Central Command, who asserted that “we’re killing like we haven’t killed since 1967.”
Bluth also claimed that “96% of those killed were involved in terrorism”, but B’Tselem called this a “blatant lie”. An analysis of minors killed in 2025 found no evidence that any of them posed any threat or were members of any militant groups.
A bar graph showing the ages of children killed in the West Bank.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman said the army “did not deliberately target civilians.”
“Every allegation of harm to others is reviewed and investigated,” the spokesperson said. “The IDF and Israeli security forces will continue to act to counter terrorism and protect Israeli citizens, while remaining committed to Israeli and international law and taking measures to mitigate harm to civilians whenever possible.”
According to Yesh Din, another human rights organization, no Israeli has been charged with killing a Palestinian since October 2023.
In a separate report last week, an independent UN international commission of inquiry found that: “Israeli authorities and security forces are deliberately targeting Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank.”
Histogram
“The facts show that Palestinian children were deliberately attacked and killed by Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, chairman of the commission. Even after a partial ceasefire in Gaza last October, Muralidhar said, “children continue to be killed and seriously injured while Israel continues to ignore the ceasefire and the protection that Palestinian children are obligated to receive under international law.”
Rimas Amuri was 13 years old when she was shot dead near her family’s home in the Jenin refugee camp in February last year. It was Friday and she was playing with her cousins outside. There were no signs of any security alarm and traffic proceeded normally. Her father Omar said the family lived near a military checkpoint in an area generally considered safe.
“We were just living our normal lives. If I had known something was wrong, I would never have allowed my daughter to go play outside.”
Rodaina Amuri holds a photograph of her 13-year-old daughter Rimas, who was shot dead by the Israeli army in the al-Jabriyat area of the Jenin refugee camp in March. Photograph: Kike Kiersenbaum/The Guardian
The IDF told Haaretz after the shooting that its soldiers “identified a suspicious figure moving alongside forces operating in the area. The troops began procedures to arrest the suspect, which included calling the figure. When she did not respond, they opened fire on the lower part of her body.”
B’Tselem’s investigation showed that from a distance of 40 meters, the soldiers could have seen that Rimas was a young girl. None of the witnesses heard any warning bells, and according to the medical report, “Rimas was shot in the back, suggesting that she may not have been aware of the soldiers’ presence at all.”
Military police interviewed witnesses, but the family heard nothing of any investigation.
“If this happened to an Israeli girl, what would the reaction be?” – asked Omar Amuri. “We are against killing anyone. We are just like any other person.”
Most of the children killed in the West Bank were playing outside when they died. But two-year-old Leila al-Khatib was sitting on her mother’s lap in her family home when an Israeli soldier shot her in the head last January.
Bassam al-Khatib shows a photo of his two-year-old granddaughter Leila, who died from an Israeli shot in the head at her home in Mutallat a-Shuhada, near Jenin. Photograph: Kike Kiersenbaum/The Guardian
Taimaa’s 25-year-old mother is still too traumatized to speak. Her father, Bassam, Leila’s grandfather, said the family was sitting at Shabbat dinner in a second-floor apartment in Mutallat HaShuhada, near Jenin, when they heard noises in the nearby streets.
Israeli soldiers arrived in the area in three civilian vehicles with Palestinian license plates and seized a building next to the Al-Khatib apartment. Such intrusions are common and the family continued to eat until suddenly gunshots came frighteningly close.
“My wife and I threw ourselves on the floor, and then I heard the screams of our daughters, who continued to shout Leila’s name,” Bassam recalls. He entered the bedroom where his daughter had taken refuge, took Leila in his arms and carried her outside, where he found a house surrounded by soldiers.
“I asked the officer there, ‘Why did you shoot at us? Why did you kill my granddaughter?” The officer called one of the soldiers to give her first aid. The soldier said, ‘I can’t help her,’ and the officer said they would call an ambulance. It took about 15 minutes.”
Leila was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Bassam al-Khatib in the bedroom where Leila was shot. Photograph: Kike Kiersenbaum/The Guardian
“This is a small example of what is happening to our people,” Bassam said. “What is the purpose of this? The purpose of the Israeli government is to kill our children? Please allow Leila’s story to end the killing of more children and the murder of humanity.”
An IDF spokesman said the cases of Al-Halak, Amuri and Al-Khatib “are currently being investigated by the Military Police Criminal Investigations Division.”
“Once the investigation is completed, the findings will be submitted to the Office of the Military Advocate General for review,” the spokesman said, adding that “the vast majority of Palestinians killed by the IDF were involved in terrorist activities.”
The military spokesman added: “In recent years, armed terrorist cells have emerged in Palestinian cities and camps, carrying out and facilitating numerous attacks against Israeli civilians. Since 2023 and even more intensively since October 7, the IDF has been actively working to dismantle these terrorist cells through targeted counter-terrorism operations, as well as the elimination of armed and wanted terrorists.”