Live, Sponge-tipped Bullets & Suspicious Objects: Israeli Gifts to The Children of Palestine
14 August 2017Taking advantage of
the impunity enjoyed by its soldiers, and the immunity against any legal
prosecution, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continue to target
Palestinian children, whether by killing, wounding or arrest.
One of those children was the 16-year-old child Abdel Rahman Abu Hamisa from
the Gaza Strip who was killed by Israeli soldiers last month, raising the
number of Palestinian children killed by the IOF since the beginning of the
year to 13 children, 11 of whom were shot with live bullets.
Abu Hamisa was shot with a live bullet in the left shoulder that penetrated
his chest while taking part in a march in solidarity with Al-Aqsa Mosque on
July 28, 2017, near the Gaza border, which led to his instant death.
Killing childhood
The crime of the occupation is not limited to direct killings; it extends to
suspicious objects it leaves behind, which kill those touch them, especially
children, as what happened to the 16-year-old Uday Nawaja, who was killed in
the explosion of a suspicious object.
Nawaja comes from Yatta town in al-Khalil and lives with his family that herds
sheep in Khirbet Buzeeq, in the Tubas governorate of the West Bank.
According to Daas Nawaja, the child's uncle, on July 22 this year, while Uday
was herding the sheep with Daas' son and his own brother in the Wadi Al-Makhba
area in Khirbet Buzeeq, and as they were preparing to return, Uday went away
to collect the sheep and stopped under a tree when a loud explosion was heard.
"I immediately went to Uday and found him lying on the ground on his right
side, suffering from an injury from the right side of his head, with the
fingers of his right hand amputated. He died in front of my eyes", Daas added.
Uday was taken to the Tubas government hospital where doctors reported that
the cause of death was shrapnel in the head that caused severe brain
hemorrhage.
Sponge-tipped bullets kill childhood
Tariq Mohammed al-Issawi, 15, from Al-Issawiya village in Jerusalem, joined a
group of children who lost one of their eyes because of sponge-tipped bullets,
which the IOF uses frequently in Jerusalem.
On July 21, 2017, al-Issawi was visiting a relative near the western entrance
of the village near the main bus station. Confrontations with the IOF took
place in the area due to the closure of al-Aqsa. When he left his relative's
house, heading to his family's house, a sponge-tipped bullet hit his right
eye.
Al-Issawi told Defense for Children International, Palestine (DCI), "I felt
something very strong that hit my right eye, which made me fall to the ground
and I woke up in the hospital, to realize that I was injured in my right eye
because of the bandages covering it," said al-Issawi.
He added, "I did not see the soldier who fired at me, or his whereabouts, and
I knew that the bullet that hit me was a sponge-tipped bullet, because the
Israeli army is using it a lot, and there are a lot of eye injuries in the
village because of this type of bullets."
Defense for Children International, Palestine (DCI) documented a number of
cases of children injured with a sponge-tipped bullet. At least five of them
lost an eye, with two children killed by the same type of bullets. Mohieddin
Al-Tabakhi, 10 years old, from Al-Ram, was killed on July 19, 2016 after a
spongy-tipped bullet hit the left side of his chest, and Mohammed Sinokrot,
who died on September 7, 2014 from wounds sustained on 31 August 2014 after
being shot by a sponge-tipped bullet in the right side of his head, causing a
skull fracture and cerebral hemorrhage.
Ayed Abu Qutaish, the Director of the Accountability Program for Defense for
Children International, Palestine (DCI), said: "The state of impunity enjoyed
by the occupation soldiers and the lack of activating the principle of
accountability will increase these crimes and encourage Israeli soldiers to go
on with their violations."
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