Systematic killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces in West Bank

The United Nations Office for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories reported the killing of 9-year-old Palestinian child Mohammad Bahjat Al-Hallak in the West Bank. According to the report, Mohammad was shot by Israeli soldiers on Thursday, October 16, while playing football.

With Mohammad Bahjat Al-Hallak’s death, the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem since October 7, 2023, has reached 1,001. Notably, one in every five victims in the West Bank is a child, including 206 boys and 7 girls.

The figures also include the deaths of 20 women and at least seven individuals with disabilities. The total of 1,001 Palestinian victims over the past two years does not include Palestinian prisoners killed in Israeli detention centers.

This number represents 43% of all Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank over the past 20 years.

UN human rights documents attribute this staggering level of killings to the systematic use of lethal force by Israeli soldiers in most cases, including live ammunition, airstrikes, and shoulder-launched rockets, applied in ways deemed unlawful, unnecessary, and disproportionate, with blatant disregard for the right to life—including that of children.

The youngest victim in the West Bank over the past two years was a 2-year-old girl, killed on January 25 in her bedroom in the Jenin refugee camp.

In another recent example, on September 8, two 14-year-old children returning to the Jenin camp were shot and killed by Israeli forces, despite posing no threat to soldiers.

The UN Office for Human Rights confirmed ongoing patterns of intentional killings of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and noted that in at least 244 cases, Israeli forces delayed or prevented medical aid to the injured.

Despite the absence of hostilities in the West Bank, Israel carried out 108 airstrikes in the region and used other designated weapons, mainly targeting Palestinian refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, and Nablus.

The UN human rights office rejected Israeli claims regarding the victims and emphasized that the killings indicate systematic unlawful executions.

Many other cases reflect a cruel indifference by Israeli forces toward Palestinian lives. In one incident on January 8, 2025, an air-to-ground missile killed two 8-year-old boys and ten others. Initially, Israeli forces made claims about the victims’ identities and affiliations with Palestinian resistance, but later admitted that insufficient measures had been taken to verify their identities.

Furthermore, following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, settler attacks against Palestinians reached new heights in both scale and intensity. Israeli policies, which involved enlisting thousands of settlers into the army and providing them with more weapons, enabled these attacks.

This has led to the deaths of 33 Palestinians, including three children, of whom 19 were killed solely by settlers, while 14 others were killed in incidents involving both settlers and army gunfire.

While international standards require Israel to conduct independent and effective investigations into all incidents where people are killed under violent or suspicious circumstances—including deaths resulting from the use of force by Israeli soldiers—Israeli authorities have only rarely announced investigations into fatalities caused by settler violence or lethal military force.

In the few cases investigated, no meaningful progress appears to have been made, leaving near-total immunity for the unlawful use of force and killings of Palestinians in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

The high number of Palestinian casualties during this period, the prevalence of illegal use of force, the provision of support for settler violence, and domestic impunity for crimes committed against Palestinians all indicate that Israeli forces are using lethal and potentially lethal force as a tool to control and suppress Palestinians.