Moussa is eight years old and really likes marbles. But for the past month, this Palestinian boy, living in the occupied West Bank, has had a new game: “Pretend Dad isn’t dead.”
He calls his father, imagines what he did with his day and acts as if he is suddenly going to bump into him.
But his father, Bilal Saleh, was killed on October 28.
The 40-year-old man was shot in the chest while picking olives with his family near his home in the village of al-Issawiya.
Saleh is one of more than 250 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, according to a Palestinian government tally, since the Hamas attack on October 7 sparked a new war with Israel.
“He was a simple man, attached to his land,” says his widow, Ikhlas, showing images on her phone of Saleh in the fields, reciting the Koran with Moussa and at a wedding.
She has trouble even looking at them, let alone telling the story of what happened.
The children crowded around her to clarify the details.
Videos from the scene show four men wearing knitted yarmulkes popular among Israeli settlers, shouting at the family as they harvest.
One of them is armed with an automatic rifle.
The family runs away, but Saleh has forgotten his phone and comes back to get it.
A few minutes later, a shot rang out.
The family rushes and finds Saleh bleeding from his chest.
He was taken to hospital about 10 km (6 miles) away but was pronounced dead a short time later.
The family says Ikhlas’ brother and father saw on social media that a man had been arrested for the shooting but released a few hours later.
The police and COGAT, an agency of the Israeli Defense Ministry that oversees civilian activities in the Palestinian territories, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
