A seven-month-old Palestinian infant succumbed to critical wounds on Friday, June 5, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a couple of hours after being shot by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

The parents of the infant, identified as Sam Abu Haikal, were also injured in the shooting, which targeted their vehicle in the Tel Rumeida area, south of Hebron.

For decades, children have been a target of Israeli state terrorism, perpetrated by either the IOF or illegal settlers. Israel’s ongoing genocidal aggression on the Gaza Strip, which killed over 21,000 children in less than three years, was not the starting point of its gruesome cruelty.

It is a continuation of a brutal legacy, which began with dozens of massacres committed by the Israeli military and Zionist militias against the indigenous Palestinian people on their homeland since 1948.

The same cruelty took the life of four-month-old Iman Hajo, in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis in 2001, when Israeli tanks shelled the house where she lived inside a densely populated refugee camp.

18-month-old Ali Dawabshah, who was burned to death in an arson attack carried out by illegal Israeli colonists in the northern West Bank village of Douma in 2015, is one of numerous other stories etched in the memory of people of conscience around the world.

While the Israeli war machine inflicted death on the Palestinian children of Gaza in a wholesale manner in the last couple of years, the killing of children in the West Bank over the same period saw a considerable increase. As per a report published by the United Nations last month, at least 70 Palestinian children were killed by the IOF and illegal Israeli settlers across the occupied West Bank between January 2025 and mid-2026.

elevation , June 8, 2026

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