Fahd Abu Haikal was driving his family through this Palestinian city last week when he suddenly spotted a group of Israeli soldiers up the road.
He began to slow down, but as he came to a stop, one of the soldiers raised his rifle and opened fire .
One bullet went through the hood of the car. But another pierced the car’s windshield, grazed the steering wheel and one of Fahd’s fingers before striking his son, Sam, in the head.
He was just 7 months old.
Sam Abu Haikal is the 13th child to be killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank so far this year, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has documented the killing of 236 children in the region by Israeli forces since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Video of the immediate aftermath paints a singular portrait of tragedy and despair: Fahd, cradling his bloodied baby, pressing his hand to Sam’s head in a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding. He looks around – quietly, desperately – as the wails of Sam’s mother and grandmother rise into the air, before whisking Sam away into a passing car.
“I just – I wanted to go out and carry him to the hospital,” Fahd said in an interview with CNN days later. “And there is … if you see this hit, there is no hope. No hope.”
“They tried to save him, they give him blood units, but they couldn’t do anything to save him,” Sam’s mother Dania said. “Nothing could be done.”
Hours later, the Israeli military released a statement acknowledging the June 5 shooting in Hebron and claiming that its soldiers “perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them” and that an Israel Defense Forces soldier “responded with single shots toward the vehicle.”
But new video obtained by B’Tselem and shared with CNN paints a different picture. Rather than accelerating, Fahd’s vehicle slows to a stop as it nears the soldiers.
The video has no audio, but the person who filmed it told B’Tselem the soldier opened fire just as the car was coming to a stop. Both Fahd and his mother, who was in the front passenger seat, identified the same moment of the shooting while reviewing the video with CNN.
All three of them also identified the same soldier – standing in the middle of the road, no more than 30 feet from the vehicle – as the one who opened fire.
“We expect that they will say to us, ‘go out, return, you must return’ (or) shoot in the air to let us turn (around),” Fahd’s mother Feryal said. “But they didn’t do anything – only they shoot him.”
After firing the fatal shot, the soldier proceeds to walk back, away from the vehicle, the video shows. Eyewitnesses said none of the soldiers present helped provide medical attention.
When asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it has launched an investigation into the shooting.
CNN canvassed the street where the shooting took place and identified several CCTV cameras but could not obtain any additional footage of the incident. Local residents and business owners said Israeli forces had later returned to the area and confiscated all CCTV recordings. The Israeli military declined to comment on this to CNN, only saying there is an investigation.
While Israeli military investigations rarely result in disciplinary action, let alone criminal charges, Fahd is cooperating with the inquiry, saying he will do all he can to get justice for his son.
“When you see something in front of you and aim at him and shoot him, it’s not by mistake,” Fahd said, speaking of the soldier who opened fire. “He shoot (sic) directly to kill.”
At the family mourning house in Bethlehem, friends and family filed in and out in an attempt to console the inconsolable.
Sam’s mother, Dania, lay on a bed in the corner of the room. Amid her immeasurable grief, she is also recovering from her own painful wounds. Part of the bullet that killed her son also went through her face – entering her right cheek and exiting behind her ear.
Shards of shrapnel are still lodged in her chest – so close to her heart that doctors preferred not to operate to remove them.
But she is also enduring another pain – one known only to the small, tragic club of mothers whose babies have died.
“I was breastfeeding him,” she said. “Now, my chest is hurting me.”
The pain means she must pump the breast milk – a daily reminder of all she has lost.
“Every time I use this pump, I start crying,” she said.
Sam was Dania’s only child. And her phone’s camera roll is mostly filled with photos and videos of her smiling baby boy.
“I thought he would be a genius,” she said, remarking on how precocious he appeared at such a young age.
Sam’s maternal grandparents are especially heartbroken. While Dania and Fahd – both academics – were at work, he would often stay with them.
Nidal Salameh explained he is a grandfather of “seven, now six” grandchildren. Sam, he said, was “unique.”
He recalled Sam reaching toward him with both arms outstretched, asking to be in his grandfather’s arms.
“I would carry him and he would calm down,” Salameh said, choking up as his eyes welled with tears. “This innocent baby – 7 months – what did he do to them (the soldiers)?”
Days after her son was killed, Dania is filled not just with grief, but with anger.
Anger that her son was killed. Anger that Israeli soldiers rarely face accountability. Anger that the world seems not to be listening to the pain of so many Palestinians.
She said she wants the soldier who killed her son to feel her pain and experience the same loss “so he can feel what he did.”
She hopes the military’s investigation leads to charges – that this soldier won’t escape accountability like so many others have before.
“He should be punished,” she said. “He shouldn’t get away.”
