fetal- Only 5 meters away from the window of his room, the family of the child martyr, Muhammad Hamarsheh, buried his body today, Monday, in the cemetery of the town of Ya’bad, south of the city of Jenin. In front of the grave, Rabei Hamarsheh stood praying for his son, and said that the time between Muhammad leaving the house and the sound of gunfire did not exceed 5 minutes. The distance between his home and the site of his martyrdom does not exceed 100 meters.
The Israeli occupation forces killed the 13-year-old child, Hamarsha, in front of his house during their storming of the town of Ya’bad last Sunday night, where they shot him from a close range and deliberately, then they also shot the young man, Ahmed Zaid (20 years old), when he tried to approach Hamarsha. To pull him out and treat him, he too was martyred.
Hamarsheh’s neighbors describe what happened as a “cold-blooded execution” of a child who could not pose any threat to a group of heavily armed soldiers, who were already inside an armored military jeep.
“They left him bleeding”
One of the residents adjacent to Hamarsha’s house says, “I was in the neighborhood when the occupation forces stormed the town. Suddenly we heard the sound of intense and close gunfire, then we heard the sound of screaming. We tried to check what was going on. We saw the military jeep near the martyr child Hamarsha, and the shooting did not stop.” The young man Ahmed tried to help him, but they started spraying him with bullets and he fell on top of the donkey, so we could not get any closer, for fear that we would be targeted as well.”
The neighbor confirms in his testimony about what happened that the occupation army continued to shoot at the bodies of the two martyrs, and then prevented ambulances from reaching them until they were certain of their martyrdom.
Muhammad’s father describes what happened to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, saying: “Muhammad was surprised by the presence of the occupation army in our neighborhood, because when the soldiers storm the town, they usually enter through its main entrance, while we live to the north of it,” and he adds: “They killed him immediately. They did not ask him what he was doing? “They let him tell them he just left the house and will come back right away.”
Hamarsha says, “I heard the sound of bullets, and when I got out, the military jeep was over my son’s head, and the ambulance was in the back. The military jeep did not move until they were sure that Muhammad had surrendered his soul. They left him bleeding for more than a quarter of an hour.”
Continuous violence
The mayor of Ya’bad, Amjad Atatreh, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that what happened was an execution against a child, “It is assumed that all international and global conventions guarantee him the right to live freely and safely in his country,” recalling that a few days ago was the occasion of International Children’s Day, “while our children are being killed, They are tortured and deprived of education, safety, dignity, and the opportunity to live their childhood normally like the rest of the children in the world.”
Atatreh asserts that the incident of the execution of the child Hamarsha could be repeated over and over again, “because the whole world is silent in the face of all the crimes committed by Israel, in all of Palestine.”
The mayor adds that Ya’bad is besieged on three sides by Israeli settlements, and suffers almost daily from raids by occupation forces, raiding citizens’ homes and vandalizing their property. Settlers also attack people and farmers in light of the expansion of the quest to confiscate and seize land, which means the possibility of the town’s people being repeatedly exposed to injuries and killing. .
UNICEF stated in a report, published in late July, that the loss of children’s lives has increased at a significant rate in the West Bank since the beginning of the war on Gaza, explaining that since then, “Israel has killed one Palestinian child every two days in the West Bank and Jerusalem.” This represents three and a half times what was recorded before the war on Gaza.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in the report, “Children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been exposed to horrific violence for years, and the situation has deteriorated sharply as hostilities inside Gaza escalate.”
Russell added that the organization frequently receives news “about Palestinian children being detained on their way home from school, or being shot while walking in the streets,” and she says, “This violence must stop now.”
Lack of accountability
During the past months, cases of execution of children were recorded in several Palestinian cities, the most recent of which was the scene of the martyrdom of the child Abdullah Hawash (11 years old) last month, who was shot by an Israeli sniper in the chest during the withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Old City of Nablus, which led to… He was killed immediately.
Although the occupation soldiers’ operation was in the Old City to arrest a resistance fighter, the Israeli sniper deliberately wounded Hawash, on Fatayer Street, which is relatively far from the Old City in the center of the city, during the army’s withdrawal.
In the town of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin, the occupation executed the little girl, Jana Abed, inside her room after an Israeli sniper shot her in the head while besieging a house in the town.
From October 7, 2023 until today, Israel has killed approximately 167 children in the West Bank, according to statistics from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Over the past years, the International Movement for Defense for Children has recorded a large number of execution crimes against children in West Bank cities, and despite documenting them and providing several pieces of evidence against occupation soldiers by the movement, these cases have not been seriously considered in the Israeli courts, nor have Any Israeli soldier will be punished for killing a Palestinian child, according to the director of the movement’s accountability program, Ayed Qutaish.
Qutaish confirms to Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the absence of legal accountability for Israel and its government is the reason it continues to target children, and says that “all incidents of shooting Palestinian children are necessarily to kill them directly, and in all of them the child did not pose a danger to the occupation soldiers, but the process of facilitating the killing and lack of accountability It is what permanently gives soldiers justification to repeat these operations.”
He added, “During the last ten years, no soldier who shot and killed a child in the West Bank or Gaza was held accountable. On the contrary, neither the Israeli security establishment nor the courts conducted any real and professional investigation into these soldiers, and the investigations that took place were only to throw dust in the eyes.”
Qutaish notes that during his years of work in the institution, only one investigation was opened in 2014 against a soldier who shot two children near Ofer Prison on the Nakba anniversary of that year, “and despite Israel’s attempt to disavow the crime at the time and accuse a Palestinian policeman of the matter, we filed Recordings prove that an Israeli soldier killed the two children.
The Director of the Accountability Program confirms that after October 7, 2023, in a third of the cases in which children in particular and citizens in general were shot in the West Bank, ambulances were prevented from transporting the injured and they were left to bleed for long periods with the aim of killing them.
According to the movement, all international reports issued by investigation committees condemned Israel for its direct targeting of children, “but the international community did not take any action to hold Israel accountable or prosecute it for these crimes against children, despite the issuance of rulings in international courts as crimes,” says Qutaish.
The same speaker adds that despite the anniversary of International Children’s Day on November 20, the occupation’s crimes, such as bombing shelter centers, starving and burning children, shooting at them from marches in Gaza, executing children in the West Bank, terrorizing them, and depriving them of their schools in remote villages, were all unacceptable. Receiving any action from the countries that signed the Child Protection Law.
