Israeli police arrest soldier suspected of shooting Palestinian child in West Bank

Israeli police arrested a 19-year-old active-duty soldier on leave Aug. 1 on suspicion of involvement in the shooting of a Palestinian boy near the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir on July 31, according to statements from the Israeli military and police.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it received a report the evening of July 31 that a Palestinian minor had been struck by gunfire in the area, which falls under its Binyamin Brigade. An Israel Police statement said an interagency unit opened an investigation over the shooting and the possible involvement of an Israeli civilian.

Detectives, officers from the Binyamin police station, and Border Police personnel identified and detained the suspect, a resident of the Binyamin region, and confiscated his weapon. Haaretz, an Israeli news outlet that received a statement from the IDF, described the suspect as a settler who lives in the area. After questioning, he was returned to his military base under arrest in coordination with Military Police, which opened a parallel investigation into the forces operating at the scene. Police said investigators were continuing to collect evidence.

CCTV footage published by The Times of Israel shows a mother and three young children running as multiple shots are heard from a distance. One child clutches his arm after apparently being hit.

https://x.com/ihabhassane/status/2083258786609836181 

The Palestinian Authority's official WAFA news agency, citing local sources, said a group of Israeli settlers attacked a sheep farm west of Al-Mughayyir Friday evening, opened fire, and struck the boy in the back. A later i24NEWS report said the soldier allegedly arrived at the village's outskirts with several other Israelis and fired his personal weapon.

WAFA, the English-language edition of Israeli outlet Ynet, and the U.S.-based Catholic apostolate the Vulnerable People Project (VPP) describe the shooting victim as a 10-year-old boy. Later Israeli reports described him as being 9 years old.

In an account published by Ynet, the boy said, “I managed to escape from the scene, and they started advancing quickly. I was near the farm gate when they arrived, and they shot at us. One time my father was at the farm entrance, a bullet first hit the tin plates and then hit me.” 

The later interview established that he survived the shooting, but no official update on his condition was available.

VPP's initial alert repeated the local account that settlers had attacked the farm while expressly noting that the gunman's identity had not yet been established. The apostolate called for an independent investigation and accountability.

The latest shooting comes amid a wider surge in settler-related violence that Zeale News has reported.

Days before the July 31 shooting, Pope Leo XIV said he was following the “ongoing and escalating violence in the Holy Land” with deep concern. As Zeale News reported, the Pope appealed for “a just political solution, founded on the equal dignity and equal rights of every human person.”

That same day, Vatican News published a warning from Franciscan Father Ibrahim Faltas, head of schools for the Custody of the Holy Land.

“The West Bank is burning, bleeding, crying out in pain and suffering,” Father Faltas wrote. He described more than 1,000 checkpoints and temporary roadblocks, parents unable to bring children to hospitals for regular treatment, workers unable to reach their jobs, and people who “can no longer find refuge or safety even in their own homes.” He urged both those committing the violence and those in a position to speak out against it to heed the Holy Father's appeals.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, offered a similar assessment at a June 29 event reported by Vatican News. “There is no rule of law. The law does not apply, and even if it does, it is not meant for Palestinians,” he said. He accused settlers of erecting checkpoints, cutting down trees, blocking Palestinians from cultivating land, and committing assaults and thefts with impunity.

In an April pastoral letter previously covered by Zeale News, Pizzaballa warned that increasing occupation-related aggression, the absence of the rule of law, and expanding settlements risked hardening into a “permanent occupation” that would undermine the possibility of a just, mutually agreed solution. The Latin Patriarchate published the letter, which was also reported by Vatican News, the official news portal of the Holy See.

Two days after the shooting, Pope Leo renewed his repeated calls for peace during his Sunday Angelus address, calling on Catholics to remember “all the victims of hostilities,” but “especially the weakest and most defenseless: children, the elderly and the sick.”