A two-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammad Tamimi, who was shot by Israeli soldiers last week succumbed to his injuries and died on Monday, June 5. His body was handed over to his family after being kept overnight at the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah. His funeral was held on Tuesday in his native village of Nabil Saleh, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. A procession was held from the medical complex to his village in which thousands of people marched alongside his coffin.
Mohammad Tamimi was with his parents in a car when Israeli soldiers were carrying out a raid in his village and started firing in the direction of the stationary car parked near the entrance of the village, according to eyewitness reports. The soldiers ended up shooting the boy in the head. He was admitted to a hospital in a serious condition and was subsequently shifted to an Israeli hospital for advanced treatment in the nearby illegal settlement of Nevei Tsof. His father, Bilal Tamimi, also sustained injuries to his shoulder and is being treated at a hospital in Ramallah.
The Israeli army in a statement claimed that the family’s car was mistaken as holding Palestinian fighters with whom they were engaged in an armed shootout. However, a relative of the family who witnessed the whole incident disputed the army’s claim, saying that the soldiers fired at the car without provocation as soon as the family started to drive away. The village of Nabil Saleh has been regularly invaded by Israeli forces and has seen sustained resistance to the Israeli occupation with regular protests and demonstrations. Since 1967, Israeli forces have killed at least 27 village residents, wounded 400 and arrested 400 others in illegal and violent raids.
Following the child’s death, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of deliberate and systematic targeting and killing of Palestinians with “total disregard for Palestinian lives, including of children.” It added that “Israel is not only killing Palestinian children, but is depriving them of their fundamental human rights, hampering their access to education, forcibly displacing them from their homes, detaining and torturing them, and denying them their rights to life.” The statement called on the United Nations and the wider international community to ensure that Israeli crimes and human rights violations do not go unchecked and that Israel as the occupying power is held accountable in accordance with international law. Palestinian resistance group Hamas also released a statement extending condolences to the family. Hamas also reiterated calls to hold Israel accountable for “the continuous crimes of the occupation against our children, the latest of which is the Tamimi child, whose innocent childhood was assassinated by the occupation.”
With Tamimi’s killing, Israeli forces and settlers have already killed 160 Palestinians this year—119 in the occupied West Bank and 34 in the Gaza strip. Among those killed are 21 children in the West Bank and seven in Gaza. In the last few years, the Israeli forces have dramatically increased their violent, illegal raids in Palestinian villages and towns, leading to a higher number of deaths and injuries than previous years. In Gaza, the frequency of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaigns has also increased that often target residential and civilian areas. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed or injured. A study published by rights groups yesterday noted that over 1,000 Palestinian children have lost their lives in the last five major Israeli invasions of Gaza in the past 15 years. A large percentage of them have died as a direct result of the Israeli attacks, while a substantial number also perished in the aftermath of these invasions due to the humanitarian and medical crisis created in Gaza from the 17-year-old Israeli air, land and sea blockade. Thousands of children have also been injured, many among them left with permanent disabilities.
