OCCUPIED WEST BANK – Israeli forces left a Palestinian boy bleeding to death for 45 minutes after shooting him in the occupied West Bank in November, standing nearby despite his pleas for help while family members watched helplessly from a distance.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 14-year-old Jadallah Jadallah was shot by Israeli gunfire on his back on November 16 in an alley in the al-Far’a refugee camp in the northeastern West Bank. A large group of soldiers walks around him or stands nearby, sometimes less than a meter away (3 feet). At times they glance at him, but usually stand close without looking.
Neighbors were unable to do anything. On one occasion, they fire toward his mother. When she learns that the wounded boy is her son, she hurries out of the family’s home, 200 meters away (about 600 feet) trying to reach him and beg for his life. Several Israeli bullets strike the wall near the exit door, forcing her back.
Jad was shot when there was an Israeli offensive in the camp. Three children, Jad and his friends, managed to escape; Jad fell. Soldiers dragged him several meters into the alley.
The Israeli military spokesperson’s statement said that soldiers “identified a terrorist who was attempting to harm the force. The force fired at him and eliminated the terrorist. There were no injuries to our forces”, omitting the fact that they fired at Jad when there was no danger to their lives, and that he was not immediately “eliminated.”
Residents said the soldiers prevented a Palestinian ambulance from reaching the scene. “My son was not carrying a rifle, he wasn’t holding a grenade – nothing,” his father, Jihad, said in their home last week. His wife, Safaa, added, “Even if he had been, they should have taken him and treated him. He wasn’t a senior commander. He wasn’t a member of any battalion. They made it seem as if he had gone out to carry out a terror attack.”
“They say Jad told the soldiers, ‘I’m a kid,'” his mother said, her face contorted with pain. His sister, Shahed, added: “A female soldier was angry at her comrades and said, ‘Why did you shoot? He’s a kid.'”
Shahed said that after the soldiers took her brother away, the family received a call from the Palestinian local liaison committee saying he was alive. About ten minutes later, the committee reported that it had received a message from its counterpart, the Israeli liaison committee, stating that he had died.
Jad became one of 55 Palestinian minors in the West Bank killed by Israeli soldiers in 2025, and one of 77 killed minors whose bodies are being held by Israel – most of them in morgue freezers.
Last year was one of the most violent on record for Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to United Nations data that shows more than a thousand Palestinians were killed between October 7, 2023 and October 17, 2025, in Israeli attacks carried out by Israeli forces and settlers, including over 220 children.
In 2025 alone, a total of 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers, including 225 by Israeli forces. — QNN
