Israel Executes 8-year-old in Broad Daylight

Tamara Nassar 

Rights and Accountability 

30 November 2023

Rescuers check the damage of a house following an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on 29 November. Mohammed NasserAPA images

While the Israeli army is taking a pause from slaughtering Palestinian children in Gaza, its routine killing of children in the occupied West Bank persists unabated.

The Israeli army extrajudicially executed an 8-year-old Palestinian child in the city of Jenin on Wednesday.

CCTV footage shows Adam Samer al-Ghoul walking backwards when he suddenly starts running away. As he retreats, he is shot and falls to the ground.

Another Palestinian youth cautiously approaches him, crouches behind a parked vehicle, and pulls him by his arm in an attempt to bring him to safety.

The youth peeks and raises his arms to indicate to the Israeli army (not captured in the footage) that he is unarmed. He then quickly ducks away and signals in the opposite direction for help.

Israeli forces fired live ammunition at Adam from a distance of 10 to 15 meters from inside a heavily armored military vehicle, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International-Palestine.

Adam was hit with a bullet to the head.

A second Palestinian child was killed when Israeli forces fired live ammunition at him from the same distance from inside a heavily armored military vehicle.

Basel Suleiman Abu al-Wafa, 15, was “allegedly attempting to throw a homemade explosive device at the time Israeli forces shot and killed him,” DCIP said.

The teen sustained a bullet wound to the chest.

Israeli occupation forces left the two children “bleeding” after shooting them, and “prevented citizens and paramedics from reaching them and treating them,” Wafa news agency reported, citing local sources.

Both boys were eventually transferred to hospital where they were announced dead on arrival, DCIP reported.

“Palestinian children in Jenin have been a routine target for the Israeli military,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP’s accountability program director.

“It is shocking that Israeli forces, sitting in an armored vehicle, can fatally shoot two children in broad daylight and the international community will refuse to hold them accountable.”

The Israeli army killed the two children during a military incursion into Jenin and its refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank that started Tuesday night and ended on Wednesday afternoon.

Injuries included a Palestinian who was shot with a live bullet in the head and another who was run over by an Israeli armored vehicle.

Israel killed four Palestinians during its raid, including Adam and Basel, and injured others.

“Israeli forces besieged three of Jenin’s major hospitals, and armed Palestinians confronted them,” DCIP said.

Israel’s besieging of the hospitals prevented patients and wounded Palestinians from reaching Ibn Sina hospital, as its director Wissam Bakr told Wafa news agency.

Israeli forces bombed a home, struck a vehicle in the camp and fired Energa anti-tank rifle grenades at another home. Israeli army bulldozers also destroyed infrastructure in the camp, including electricity, water, sewage and roads.

Sixty-four Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 104 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank so far in 2023.

Israeli drone strikes in the occupied West Bank have killed nine Palestinian children in 2023, while Israel has used a US-made Apache helicopter to fire missiles that killed four children. An Israeli warplane airstrike killed one additional child in the West Bank during that time.

Israeli troops have killed nearly 240 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, and an additional eight were killed by settlers, the UN monitoring group OCHA has reported.

This constitutes more than half of all Israeli killings in the area since the beginning of the year. “Already, 2023 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since OCHA began recording casualties in 2005,” the group said.

Israeli forces have injured over 3,100 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, more than 500 of them children.