Activists bemoan ‘trigger-happy’ troops after cop kills Palestinian boy in Shuafat
Family mourns 12-year-old shot by Border Police officer in Jerusalem camp while lighting fireworks on second night of Ramadan; authorities probing incident
A 12-year-old boy in East Jerusalem lit the fuse of a long firework and hoisted it in the air. Then, just before it exploded and illuminated the night sky with a burst of red, he was shot in the chest and fell to the ground.
A clip of Rami Halhouli’s final moments last week has been circulating on social media for days. Human rights activists say it shines a light on the surge of Palestinians — including dozens of children — who have been killed without justification by Israeli forces since October 7.
Halhouli’s family says the boy was struck by a bullet fired from the direction of a police watchtower looking over the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem. Halhouli, his brother and four friends, the family says, were lighting fireworks to celebrate the end of the second day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month marked by dawn-to-dusk fasting.
Police said the firework was directed toward its forces and endangered them. Open-fire regulations permit officers to shoot someone who is aiming a firework at another person in a life-threatening way. The government says the shooting is under investigation.
Ali Halhouli, the boy’s father, was at home when he heard the gunshot — and then his son crying out for his mother. “When I rushed out of here I saw him lying on his face,” he said.
Violence across East Jerusalem and the West Bank has spiked since October 7, when Hamas terrorists staged a brutal surprise attack on southern Israel and sparked an ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
Troops have arrested some 3,600 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank since then, including more than 1,600 affiliated with Hamas. According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, at least 450 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time.
Around 100 of these fatalities have been children under 18, according to human rights group B’Tselem. In 60 of these cases, the group says there seems to have been no justification for the use of lethal force. These include cases where teens or younger children were hurling rocks or participating in protests.
“It’s clear there is a trigger-happy attitude among Israeli soldiers and Border Police officers, and it affects Palestinian children too,” said Sarit Michaeli, a B’Tselem spokeswoman.
“Regarding the specific case in Shuafat refugee camp,” she said, “a young child was not posing any threat to a heavily armed Border Police officer.”
Halhouli, the youngest of seven siblings, was shot at around 8 p.m. last Tuesday outside his home on a garbage-strewn alleyway, his father said.
He was roughly 60 meters (200 feet) from the police watchtower; video of the incident shows Halhouli pointing the firework in the rough direction of the watchtower, but not directly at it.
The police acknowledged the fatal shooting that evening, saying its forces returned fire after fireworks were launched at the watchtower. Throughout the night last Monday and Tuesday, Palestinian protesters from the camp had thrown Molotov cocktails and launched fireworks at Israeli forces, police said.
Standing at the spot where the shooting took place, Ibrahim Halhouli, a 16-year-old relative of the slain boy, said they now all steer clear of the alleyway.
“We are scared,” he said, looking up at the watchtower.
Shuafat, home to some 60,000 Palestinians, has long been a flashpoint.
It is a poor, densely packed neighborhood that lacks municipal services despite falling within Jerusalem’s city borders. It is the only Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem, and a number of terrorists involved in attacks on Israelis have come from the area. It is segmented from the rest of Jerusalem by a heavily manned checkpoint and Israeli forces regularly raid the camp to arrest suspected terror operatives.
After the shooting, Ali Halhouli said his other sons took the body to a medical center in Shuafat where staff pronounced him dead. In desperation, the family found an ambulance to transport him to Hadassah Medical Center, one of the country’s largest medical facilities, where doctors said the bullet had struck his heart.
“The boy is dead, you brought him dead,” Ali Halhouli said, recounting one of the doctor’s words. Soon after, a police officer arrived at the ward and said they needed to transfer the body to a forensic institute for an autopsy.
Ali Halhouli, 61, said he was left in limbo for days, contacted three times by different police officers, each of whom told him his son’s corpse would soon be returned.
On one occasion, he was told he must keep the funeral to fewer than 40 people or face a fine. Funerals of slain Palestinians often escalate into violent protests. The body was eventually handed back to the family overnight Sunday and buried the next morning, he said.
The Department of Internal Police Investigations, the Justice Ministry body that investigates police conduct, told the AP that the investigation into the officer who shot the boy is ongoing.
On-duty police officers and soldiers are rarely prosecuted for killing Palestinians. According to legal rights group Yesh Din, a police officer was last charged with murder in 2021 after shooting dead an unarmed autistic Palestinian in Jerusalem’s Old City. The officer was later acquitted in 2023, it said.
The day after Rami Halhouli died, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said the officer who shot him should be commended, not investigated. The ultra-nationalist minister also called the boy a terrorist.
“A 12-year-old boy a terrorist?” Ali Halhouli said, clearly hurt by the remark.
