Musaab Firas Tamimi, 17, was shot and killed Wednesday by Israeli occupation forces near Ramallah in the West Bank, making him Israel’s first victim in the year 2018 amid major clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Tamimi was shot by an Israeli soldier, reportedly at a close range, in Deir Nitham village after occupation forces raided the village.
"He died shortly after the occupation forces fired a bullet into his neck," Maria Aqraa, a spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry, told Al-Jazeera Wednesday. "He was transferred to a hospital in Ramallah and he passed away minutes later."
Israeli officials told local media that Tamimi was shot after he appeared to be carrying a gun. The Times of Israel reported the army saying it was "not immediately confirmed that Tamimi had been armed at the time of the shooting."
The slain teen is also a relative of Ahed Tamimi, the iconic revolutionary teen who was arrested and charged with assaulting an Israeli soldier and throwing stones after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier in her home’s yard in the nearby village of Nabi Saleh went viral. It was revealed later that the Palestinian girl was upset after soldiers had shot her 14-year-old cousin in the face a day earlier.
The Israeli occupation has been actively persecuting the family for decades over their weekly protests against the theft of their lands in favor of the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish near their villages. Several members of the family have been detained and killed over the years.
"The occupation army has been raiding both Deir Nitham and Nabi Saleh day in and day out. They come in, irritate the residents, raid our homes at night and throw sound bombs in the street. This has been our reality every day," Firas Tamimi, Mussab’s father, told Al-Jazeera.
"We cannot just keep quiet and keep watching. No one is listening to us – no one feels the pain that we're going through. The world is just silently watching."
According to a tally by Ma’an news agency Tamimi was the 14th Palestinian to have been killed by Israel since U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last month, sparking widespread protests across the West Bank, gaza, and East jerusalem.
