Photo : Mohammed Tamimi - private source
Mohammed Tamimi, a two-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian child from the village of Nabi Saleh in occupied Palestine, was shot in the head on Thursday 1 June as he was sitting in front of his house in the car with his father.
He was shot in the head by a soldier from the Israeli occupying army. His father was also hit by bullets fired by the occupying forces. Three days later, this little child, nicknamed Hamoudi, died in hospital.
The first reaction of the Israeli army of occupation was to deny any responsibility and to claim that the child and his father had been hit by Palestinian fire supposedly aimed at the guard tower built by the occupier at the entrance to the village. A new version acknowledged the firing by the occupying army, but claimed that it was a case of mistaken identity during a return fire. A supposed riposte to imaginary shots that no one in the village had heard.
Once again, the resistant village of Nabi Saleh has been struck by the barbarity of an army of occupation whose soldiers have repeatedly been given a licence to kill and guaranteed impunity.
Hamoudi is the 10th Palestinian to be murdered in the village.
We remember that Ahed Tamimi (whose grand-cousin he was) was sentenced to 8 months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier who had broken into her home.
To add insult to injury, the army of occupation entered the village during the funeral and attacked the villagers, who threw stones at them: the funeral of this tiny child ended with gunfire, tear gas and rifle butts. Nariman Tamimi, Ahed’s mother, suffered a broken nose and had to be hospitalised. Maher Tamimi, another member of the family, had to undergo emergency surgery after being hit by live ammunition.
The occupying forces have no respect for the living or the dead: we remember what happened to the coffin of journalist Shirine Abou Akleh just over a year ago.
Will Hamoudi’s killer be held to account for shooting a two-and-a-half-year-old child in the head? No one in Israel - not the State, not the government, not the soldiers, not the settlers - is accountable for the daily violations of human rights and international law against the Palestinian people. Hamoudi’s parents are demanding justice, and will take their case all the way to the International Criminal Court.
Do the lives of Palestinians count? 160 have been murdered since the beginning of the year by soldiers or settlers! Do the lives of Palestinian children count? Hamoudi is the 28th Palestinian child murdered since the beginning of the year by an army of murderers!
The AFPS would like to express its outrage and its solidarity with the Tamimi family, who have come to France several times to testify, and with the village of Nabi Saleh, which has never resigned itself to seeing its land occupied and confiscated, and which is paying an extremely heavy price. The Palestinian people are in mourning, and so are we.
Against the barbarity of a colonial occupation now led by openly fascist ministers, there is an urgent need to protect the Palestinian people. We call on the President of the Republic and the French government to firmly condemn these new acts of barbarity, and to make a concrete commitment to the international protection of the Palestinian people. It is time to put an end to the impunity of the State of Israel and to take action.
The AFPS national executive board, June 12, 2023
