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As the world’s gaze remains fixed on the deadly conflict in Gaza, less than 80 miles (128.74 kilometers) away, Palestinian teens are being killed, shot and arrested in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been enforcing a monthslong crackdown.
Since Hamas’ incursion on southern Israeli communities ignited the latest conflict last October, more than 150 children and teens, aged 17 or younger, have lost their lives in the occupied West Bank.
Most were killed during near-daily Israeli military raids that Amnesty International condemns for their disproportionate and unlawful use of force.
Amjad Hamadneh’s 15-year-old son Mahmoud was among the victims, shot after his school was dismissed at the start of a raid in May.
“He didn’t do anything. He didn’t make a single mistake,” said Amjad Hamadneh, whose son, a buzz-cut devotee of computer games, was one of two teens killed that morning by a sniper.
“If he’d been a freedom fighter or was carrying a weapon, I would not be so emotional,” said his father, an unemployed construction worker. “But he was taken just as easily as water going down your throat. He only had his books and a pencil case.”
Many others were killed during protests.
Still, others appear to have been random targets.
Taken together, the killings raise troubling questions about the devaluation of young lives in the pursuit of security and autonomy.
The Israeli army said in a statement to The Associated Press (AP) that it has intensified raids since Oct. 7 to apprehend Hamas members suspected of carrying out attacks in the West Bank and that “the absolute majority of those killed during this period were armed or involved in ‘terrorist’ activities at the time of the incident.”
On the June afternoon that 17-year-old Issa Jallad was killed, video from a neighbor’s security camera shows him on a friend’s motorbike with an Israeli armored vehicle in close pursuit.
The Israeli army alleged that its soldiers had spotted two Hamas members handling a powerful explosive device.
When the pair tried to flee, troops opened fire and “neutralized them.”
But Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says its review of multiple security camera videos showed Jallad and his friend posed no threat.
“We all expected to be in this situation,” said the teen’s brother, Mousa Jallad. “It could happen to any of us.”
Jenin’s refugee camp has long been raided repeatedly by Israeli forces who have occupied the West Bank since seizing control in the 1967 war with neighboring Arab states.
The embattled territory was already experiencing deadly clashes before the latest conflict began.
However, Israeli forces, which police about 3 million Palestinians while protecting 500,000 Jewish settlers, have significantly stepped up raids in the months since.
Youths represent almost a quarter of the nearly 700 Palestinians slain in the West Bank since the war began, the most since the violent uprising known as the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
A military spokesperson said the Israeli army makes great efforts to avoid harming civilians during raids and “does not target civilians, period.”
He said human rights groups focus on a few outlier cases.
Military operations in the West Bank are fraught because forces are pursuing Hamas members, many in their teens, who often hide among the civilian population, claimed Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesperson.
Critics say the crackdown is driven by retribution, not just military strategy.
When sirens erupted at the start of the May raid, Amjad Hamadneh said he called Mahmoud on his cellphone and was relieved to hear that the brothers had reached their school.
But then Mahmoud’s twin brother, Ahmed, called back to say the principal had dismissed classes.
As students poured into the street, the brothers were separated in the chaos.
Four bullets hit Mahmoud as he fled, and another pierced his skull. He was the third student from his school killed in a raid since the war began.
A former classmate, Osama Hajir, who had dropped out of school to work, was also killed, along with a teacher from a nearby school and a doctor from the hospital down the street.
Immediately after the May raid, a spokesperson for the Israeli army said it had carried out the operation with Israeli border police and the country’s internal security agency, destroying an explosive device laboratory and other structures used by Hamas.
But police recently declined to comment, and three weeks after the AP asked the Israeli military to answer questions about the May raid, a spokesperson said he was unable to comment until he could confer with police.
When Amjad Hamadneh heard his son had been wounded, he sped through Jenin’s twisting streets, drawing gunfire as he neared the hospital. But Mahmoud was already gone.
Nearby, Osama’s father, Muhamad, broke down as he leaned over his son’s body.
Months earlier, he’d snapped a photo of the smiling teen beside graffiti touting Jenin as “the factory of men,” tirelessly cranking out fighters in the resistance against Israel.
Now, he pressed that same, still-smooth face between his hands.
“Oh, my son. Oh, my son,” he sobbed. “My beautiful son.”
Since Mahmoud Hamadneh was killed, his siblings frequently ask to visit his grave.
His younger sister now sleeps in his bed so her surviving brother, Ahmed, will not be alone in the room.
“I feel like I cannot breathe. We used to do everything together,” Ahmed said.
“They think that if they kill us, people will be afraid and not do anything,” he said. “But when the Israelis kill someone, 10 fighters will be created in his place.”
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