On 11th March 2020 another Palestinian child was shot dead by the Israeli defence Force.  Soldiers were reportedly firing indiscriminately at a demonstration opposing illegal settlers who were trying to seize land in the middle of several West Bank Palestinian villages.

Mohammed Hamayel, 15, was shot in the face.

There is a similar true story in Colum McCann’s book, Apeirogon, recently read on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime.

Its focus is on two fathers and their daughters.

Abir is 10 years old. During her school’s breaktime, with her sister, she went to a nearby shop to buy sweets. On their way back to school, which happened to be near the separation wall, for some reason they started to run when an armoured jeep turned the corner. Perhaps it was because all Palestinians know that such vehicles often mean trouble. You may be stopped for questioning or worse. Such vehicles have on board trigger-happy young soldiers armed to the teeth.

From a flap  in the rear of the jeep, a border guard fired a shot.

A rubber bullet, when shot from an M-16, leaves the barrel at more than one hundred miles per hour. The bullet that hit Abir travelled 15 metres through the air before it smashed into the back of her head, crushing the bones in her skull like those of a tiny bird.

The bullet has a metal core, tipped with vulcanised rubber.  When it hit Abir’s skull, the rubber deformed slightly, but then bounced back to its original shape, without any evident damage to the bullet itself. It could be picked up and re-used.

Such ammunition was much used by the British army in Northern Ireland during the troubles.

The border guard who shot Abir was 18 years old.

There is no possibility of an ambulance or paramedics reaching this town,  which is cut off by an array of security measures and completely surrounded by the wall, which is 8 metres tall (In 2003 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution by 144 votes to 4 declaring the wall to be contrary to international law and therefore should be removed. (With total impunity, Israel ignores this resolution, just as it has ignored all other UN resolutions.)

The owner of the shop Abir had just left was soon in the rear of a taxi, cradling the young girl in her arms.

The taxi is stuck in traffic. The road through the checkpoint to Jerusalem is closed. At best you will be detained if you try to drive through it illegally. At worst both you and the driver will be shot while ferrying the injured  child.

At the hospital the doctors are doing everything they can, but they are hampered by lack of working equipment.  It was decided to transfer Abir to Hadassah in Jerusalem. a 20-minute journey beyond the wall. Two hours later, Abir is in an ambulance held up at the check-point.

After two hours and eighteen minutes the ambulance was given clearance to proceed.

In the hospital, Abir was kept alive for another two and a half days before dying.

The commander of the border police unit reported that rocks were being pelted from a nearby graveyard, putting his men in mortal danger. The girl had been seen at the school gates holding a stone. She was killed by a rock to the back of her head from the nearby rioters.

Four years later, a civil court judge pointed out that the nearest graveyard was located behind a 4-storey building, a hundred metres away from where the jeep would have been located and so the rioters would have had to be able to sling their stones up over the building and arc it precisely downwards to land anywhere near the shop. The judge added that a rubber bullet was found yards from where Abir fell.

A report claimed Abir  was shot by  Palestinian Authority forces. Another story had her as an epileptic who  smashed her head when she fell over. Perhaps the most bizarre tale of all was that her head was smashed when she was dropped from a trolley in the Palestinian hospital.

The force of the blast on Ben Yehuda Street knocked Smadar, a 14-year old Israeli girl,  high in the air. The Palestinian bombers were dressed as women , their explosive belts strapped around their stomachs. They had shaved closely and wore headscarves.

“When a suicide bomber activates his or her belt, the head is nearly always separated from the top of the torso. There are two or three seconds of consciousness after decapitation when the brain is still functioning. The mouth can make a sound and there can be eye movement.

“That afternoon, on Ben Yehuda Street,  Smadar wore a pair of black jeans,  a Blondie T-shirt, Doc Martens and  a simple gold necklace.

In Israel/Palestine life is cheap.