Two Palestinian children — one preparing dinner inside her home days before her wedding, the other kicking a football outside — are fighting for their lives after being shot in the head by Israeli snipers in incidents that encapsulate the scale of violence engulfing Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Hala Salem Darwish, 18, remains on life support at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, after a sniper positioned east of the Maghazi refugee camp shot her through the head while she was preparing a meal inside her home near an UNRWA clinic. Her wedding had been scheduled for May 1.
Nearly 100 kilometres away in the occupied West Bank, Mohammad Saber al-Sheikh, 13, was struck by a sniper’s bullet while playing football outside his home in the Jalazone refugee camp on April 9. The round passed entirely through his skull, leaving a portion of his brain protruding from the wound. He is now sedated continuously in the neurology intensive care unit at Istishari Arab Hospital in Ramallah.
The two cases have drawn renewed international attention to a conflict that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023 — nearly 40,000 of them women and children. Despite a US-brokered ceasefire that has been in place since October 2025, Israel has killed close to 800 Palestinians in violation of that agreement, with at least seven killed in Gaza in a single series of strikes this week, including a child.
Violence in the West Bank has been equally relentless. On Tuesday, at least four Palestinians were killed in attacks carried out by Israeli forces and settlers, including two boys aged 14 and 16. Among the dead was Mohammad Majdi al-Jabari, 16, who was struck and killed in Hebron by a vehicle travelling in the security convoy of Israeli Settlements Minister Orit Strock.
Israeli forces have killed 237 children in the occupied West Bank between October 2023 and mid-April of this year. Thousands more Palestinians have been displaced by a combination of settler violence and Israeli military operations. More than 700,000 settlers now live in settlements built on private Palestinian land — communities that are considered illegal under international law.
A report published Monday by international humanitarian organisations added another dimension to the documented abuses, stating that Israeli soldiers have used sexual violence as a tool to force Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.
The shootings of Hala and Mohammad have become symbols of a conflict in which civilian spaces — homes, football pitches, refugee camps — offer no protection. Hala’s family had been counting down to a celebration; instead, they keep vigil at her bedside. Mohammad’s family watches as doctors work to stabilise a boy whose skull was traversed by a military round.
The Maghazi refugee camp, where Hala was shot, sits in central Gaza — one of the most densely populated and heavily bombarded strips of territory on earth. The Jalazone refugee camp, Mohammad’s home, lies in the West Bank north of Ramallah, a region that has seen a dramatic escalation in both military raids and settler attacks over the past 18 months.
Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that the cumulative toll on Palestinian civilians — particularly children — constitutes a generational catastrophe. With the ceasefire holding in name only and no political resolution in sight, the cases of Hala and Mohammad represent not isolated tragedies but a pattern that advocates say demands urgent international accountability.
