Last November, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy named Jad Jadallah was shot at close range by Israeli soldiers in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
As Jad lay collapsed in an alley, the soldiers created a cordon around him and blocked two Palestinian ambulances from reaching him.
According to video footage and eyewitness testimony, the soldiers – 14 in total – then stood around Jad casually for at least 45 minutes while he bled from one or more gunshot wounds.
All Israeli soldiers receive training in trauma treatment, and any Israeli combat unit should contain a specifically trained medic, but none of the soldiers appeared to give Jad life-saving medical aid. At points, they appeared to ignore repeated attempts from Jad to get their attention.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) told the BBC that soldiers had provided “initial medical treatment”, but a spokesperson refused to give any details about the nature or timing of the treatment.
The IDF has also accused Jad of throwing a rock, which, under their rules of engagement, can permit soldiers to use lethal force.
But the footage of the incident shows an IDF soldier dropping an object next to Jad after he was shot, then taking a photograph of it – an action Jad’s family and a leading human rights group say appears to be an attempt to frame him.
The soldiers eventually loaded Jad into the back of an Israeli military vehicle, but at some point, either before or after they did, he died. It is still unclear where on his body or how many times he was shot, because the Israeli military has refused to return his body to the family and declined to answer any questions about his injuries.
Jad was born and raised in al-Far’a, a refugee camp in the West Bank that is home to about 10,000 Palestinians. Along with other similar camps in the occupied territories, it is subject to frequent Israeli military raids, which Israel says are necessary to counter armed groups operating there.
In many respects, Jad’s death was not unusual. According to the UN, 55 children were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank last year and 227 have been killed there since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
But two things stand out about this case. The first is that Jad lay on the ground untreated for so long, with so many soldiers around him, while he died. The second is the emergence of a significant amount of video footage of the incident, which the BBC has verified.
The exact moment of the shooting was captured by a CCTV camera in the camp. The footage shows three boys standing on the corner of an alley. First they peek to their right, where, according to eyewitnesses, Israeli military vehicles had moments earlier driven away towards the exit of the camp.
