10-year-old Palestinian Abdul Rahman Yasser Shteiwi was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier during a protest in the town of Kafr Qaddum in the occupied West Bank on 12 June.
As The National reported, head of neurosurgery at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, Dr Othman Othman operated on the child for three and a half hours, who remains hospitalized in critical condition.
During surgery over 100 fragments of bullets were found in the child’s brain. Othman claimed that “This is not a rubber bullet – this is a metal bullet. A rubber bullet will not enter because it does not have a sharp head”.
Middle East Eye published a statement by a spokeswoman for the Israeli army which asserted that soldiers “used riot dispersal means” as 60 people were part of the “riot” and “burned tires and hurled rocks” at Israeli occupying forces.
International Solidarity Movement argued that although Israeli military insisted no live ammunition was fired during the mobilisation on Friday, activists found a 5.56 bullet case where protesters had been standing and that the bullet case was “to hot to touch, suggesting it had been fired that afternoon”.
Population in Kafr Qaddum have held protests on a weekly basis for nine years after the main road to Nablus was shut down because of the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements.
Israeli forces have been criticised for its disproportionate use of violence and intentional targeting of Palestinians.
The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem) reported that in 2018, Israeli security forces killed 290 Palestinians, including 55 minors, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces enforce a "shoot to kill" policy, the organisation suggested.
On 21 June, Middle East Monitor reported that a 14 year old Palestinian child had to suffer a leg amputation after an Israeli soldier shot him while he was fetching for a football near the separation wall in the West Bank.
However, exercise of deathly violence against Palestinian children is not a monopoly of the Israeli military forces.
On 15 July, seven-year-old Palestinian Tariq Zebania was killed by an Israeli settler while riding his bicycle near his village of Tarqumia in the West of Hebron. He was struck by a car which headed immediately into the Adhoura illegal settlement. The International Middle East Media Center stated that “no efforts were made by the Israeli authorities to apprehend the driver who killed the boy”.