Last Dispatch from Palestine

Earlier this week, Brenna and her Meta Peace Team members departed the West Bank after five weeks of solidarity and protective accompaniment work, as planned. She returns here to this land in Wisconsin next week and will be busy preparing her storytelling and presentation about her experiences. Please be in touch if your group would like a presentation from her.

The full archive of the team’s writings can be found here: mptinpalestine.blogspot.com

Her final piece is below.

Israel’s War on Children - Brenna Cussen Anglada

On the evening of Thursday, October 16, we got word that a nine-year-old boy had been shot in the abdomen by the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) in al-Rihiya. A small village 4 miles outside of Al Khalil (Hebron), Al Rihiya is close to Al Fawwar refugee camp, established on 1 square km of land in 1951 to house internally displaced Palestinians forced to flee their homes upon the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and is now home to 13,000 people.

On our phones, we quickly began receiving minute-to-minute updates and pictures: Muhammed being rushed to the hospital in the back of a car, held by an adult, blood covering his body; Muhammed’s dead and wrapped body in the hospital; photos of Muhammed while he was alive, handsome and sweet.

Muhammed Bahjat Al-Hallaq was only nine years old. He loved birds, he loved soccer, he excelled at school, and he had an insatiable energy that nobody could contain. “He was like a butterfly, constantly flitting from place to place,” his grandmother lovingly recalled.

Muhammed had been playing soccer on a school playground when he and his friends saw Israeli military vehicles and began to run away, according to Al Jazeera. Still, as witnesses attest, an Israeli sniper knelt down, took aim, and fired at Muhammed from 200 meters away in broad daylight while the little boy was crossing his arms in front of his chest. Though the Israeli Army initially falsely claimed the boy had been throwing rocks, they had to recant their statement after footage from the many cameras placed around the village proved otherwise. The bullet entered one side of Muhammed’s abdomen and exited out the other. The sniper, Muhammed’s mother Alia was told by witnesses, raised his arms in the air as if in celebration. He killed a nine-year-old boy. For playing soccer.

Alia said that the day Muhammed was murdered, he had spent the morning at school and had returned “the happiest I had ever seen him,” as he had just received a brand new backpack from UNRWA. Alia, her husband, and their five children - ranging in age from 4 to 14 - are quite poor. Alia’s husband used to work in Israel, but, along with 400,000 other Palestinians, had lost his job after October 7, 2023, and now had to live away from him family most of the week, working at a grocery store.

Muhammed, then, had never had a new backpack. Alia said that he “immediately and excitedly began unpacking his old school bag and filling his new one.”

Upon noticing the sadness of his older brother, Wajdee, who went to a different school and had not received a backpack, however, Muhammed rushed back to his school to try to get an extra one. He returned dejected, as his mission was not successful.

Since the next day was Friday, a holy day, Muhammed took his time to lay out his clothes and perfume on his bed in preparation. (The clothes still remain on his bed, as a memorial to him.) He then went outside and spread a net with his friends, a common activity he would do to catch birds. Soon after, he ran to his grandmother’s house for a short visit. Next, he ran to the girls’ school yard to play soccer with his friends. “Since I knew he was having fun and playing, I took the three younger children to Yatta, 20 minutes away, to go food shopping with my father,” Alia said.

It was while in Yatta that Alia got a phone call that the village had been attacked. She knew instantly that her son had been hurt - a mother’s instinct. Alia opened the family chat on her phone, saw images of her son bleeding, and rushed immediately to the hospital.

The car carrying Mohammed’s wounded body to the hospital was delayed by the Israeli military, who after the shooting had put up roadblocks and fired tear gas grenades into the gathering crowd. Mohammed’s father, away at work, began receiving messages and images of his son. That four-hour car ride, also extended due to Israel’s military roadblocks, “felt to him like four years,” Alia recounted.

Muhammed died before his father could reach the hospital. Alia recalls screaming and being held by her sister and son before losing consciousness. “I have experienced a lot of real pain in my life,” she said, “but nothing like this.”

Though Sharia custom asks that the dead be buried as soon as possible, the family waited until Muhammed’s father returned at 9:30 that night before bathing the body of his child, shrouding him in a simple white cloth, and placing him in the family grave on a hillside visible from their home.

The family remains in shock and grief. Alia goes outside several times a day to look at Muhammed’s grave and to weep. Her 4-year-old son Ilyas clings to her skirts, constantly afraid that soldiers are going to come and hurt him. Seela, 6-years-old and accustomed to her older brother waiting for up to two hours to walk her home, refuses to go to school.

Tragically, Muhammed was not the only young person killed in the West Bank by Israeli forced that day. According to the IMEMC, 20-year-old Mahdi Ahmed Kamil was also shot by occupation forces on October 16 as they stormed the town of Qabatia, south of Jenin.

On a visit to Fawwar Refugee camp on the same day we visited Mohammed’s family, we met a man who showed us a picture of his 17-year-old son, shot dead by the Israeli Army December 26, 2023. “Before my son was shot,” he told us, “my friends overheard the soldiers making a game out of it. Whoever shot a kid would get a coca cola.”

The number of children and teenagers shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank has dramatically increased in 2025. According to The New Arab, “a Palestinian teenager who held US citizenship was shot dead by the army in April, followed by a 14-year-old in June in the town of Sinjil in June, and a 15-year-old in July.”

According to UNRWA, as of October 4, 2025, 213 children were among the 1,001 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. None of the soldiers who killed these children have been held accountable by the Israeli Army. Isaac (named changed for safety), our host and translator who lives near Fawwar, used to work for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, and recalls filing hundreds of complaints against the crimes of Israeli soldiers each year. “

In 2014, the one and only only time a soldier was convicted of wrongdoing was when a young soldier stole the wallet of an old man,” he recalled with bitterness. “Alia wants nothing more than to see the soldier who killed her son held accountable. But it will never happen.”

Israel has condemned the shooting of Alia’s son, saying it went against protocol, and has opened an investigation. Though they have the whole thing on camera, Isaac is certain the investigation will amount to nothing. “I have seen it countless times before.”

“Why does the American taxpayer stay silent in the face of Israel’s crimes?” asked another person we met in Fawwar. “Do the American people hate us?”

Said Isaac, “If we don’t have safety, we don’t have hope. Let us live.”