Palestinian boy, 11, shot and killed by Israeli Army ‘after throwing stones at car’: Father opens up about tragedy as IDF launches probe

The Israeli army has launched an investigation after 11-year-old Palestinian Abdullah Hawash was fatally shot by its troops in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.

‘I never imagined I would lose a child so young,’ Abdullah’s devastated father, Jamal Hawash, told the Daily Mail. 

‘The pain I have felt since the moment I realised my little boy was dead is beyond description.’

Several Israeli army jeeps were withdrawing from the city centre at around 17:30 on Tuesday, following a raid to arrest a wanted person. 

Video footage shows the jeeps driving along the main road as a boy – identified as Abdullah – picks up stones and throws them at the armoured vehicles as they pass by. 

Moments after the last jeep passes him, Abdullah suddenly drops to the floor. 

He was approximately 50 metres (164 feet) away from the last Israeli military vehicle, when an Israeli soldier inside the vehicle fired a bullet at Abdullah, puncturing his chest near to his heart and exiting through his back, according to an investigation by NGO Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP).

His older brother Nidal, 12, was hiding down a narrow side street a few feet away from Abdullah when he heard the gunshot. 

He saw his brother collapsed on the floor and ran to him. Nidal said he still can’t believe his younger brother is never coming home.

‘We had been playing on the bikes with our cousin. When I saw the jeeps, I grabbed Abdullah to hide him out of the way because I was afraid of something bad happening. But he managed to escape and started throwing stones,’ said Nidal.

‘I kept telling him ‘Come back, come back!’ but he just replied ‘I’m not scared of them!’. As Abdullah went to throw a stone, they shot him.’

Strangers helped Nidal bundle his brother into their car before driving the unconscious boy to the hospital.

Abdullah’s father Jamal was on his way home from his furniture workshop when he received the devastating news that his son had been seriously wounded.

‘I turned around and went directly to the hospital. When I arrived, I watched helplessly as the doctors tried to resuscitate him,’ said Jamal, who explained that his son had been deeply affected by the war in Gaza.

‘I went to his side and stroked his hair, begging him not to die. I said, ‘Please my love, please don’t leave me’.’

Abdullah’s death has shaken the community. His family, teachers and friends described him as a charismatic, kind boy who everybody wanted to be friends with, and who had a talent for making people laugh. Thousands of people turned out for Abdullah’s funeral on Tuesday evening.

Hawash posed ‘no realistic threat’ to Israeli forces, said the United Nation’s Human Rights office (OHCHR).

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, said Abdullah’s killing highlights the ‘routine nature of violence that Palestinian children face, where Israeli military incursions often escalate to fatal outcomes without accountability’.

‘Israeli forces consistently use lethal force against Palestinian children, even in circumstances where they pose no threat to life or safety,’ he said.

Medical director Jamal Abu Al Kibash at the Rafidia Hospital, where Abdullah was treated, said medics who worked on him had been deeply moved by his death.

‘There are far too many Abdullah’s, particularly since October 7. There’s no justice. This is the final conclusion for me as a human being. How do we stop this?’ said Abu Al Kibash.

The IDF spokesman’s office said that during an arrest operation ‘suspects blocked routes and threw stones at the forces, who responded by firing at a suspect. A hit was identified. The incident is under investigation’.

It comes as Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar. 

Speaking at a press conference in Cairo alongside Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the Egyptian leader’s comments come as diplomats from Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar are slated to meet in Doha to restart currently-dormant truce talks.

The negotiations will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners.

The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire. 

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been leading negotiations to bring an end to the war, which broke out after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies. 

Since October 7, Israel has killed 167 Palestinian children, according to documentation collected by DCIP.

The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins. 

Meanwhile, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday that his nation has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange four Israeli hostages with some Palestinian prisoners.

The United Nations said the plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was ‘unbearable’ and the conflict was being ‘waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law’. 

‘The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter, amid reports of families being separated and many people detained,’ U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. 

Since October 7, Israeli forces and Israeli settlers have killed 167 Palestinian children across the occupied West, according to documentation collected by DCIP. 

Over the past year, Israeli forces have killed at least 760 Palestinians in the West Bank, while more than 11,400 have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.