A Baby Is Dead. The Facts Matter.

Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was seven months old on the day he was killed.

Israeli soldiers opened fire on a car in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron on the evening of Friday, June 6. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, a bullet passed through the infant's face. His mother was left in critical condition — shrapnel lodged near her heart. His father, Fahd Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, took a bullet through his right hand.

The family also included an 11-year-old son and the baby's grandmother. They were going for a drive in the occupied West Bank.

Two Accounts. One Is Harder to Believe.

The Israel Defense Forces put out a statement saying soldiers "perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them" and that one soldier "responded with single shots toward the vehicle." The IDF expressed "deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals" — their words — and said the incident is "under review."

The father's account, given to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and to the Associated Press, is direct and specific.

"The soldier signalled me to stop," Fahd Abu Haikal told Haaretz. "I brought the car to a complete halt and raised my hands on the steering wheel. Immediately afterwards, they opened fire on the vehicle."

He added: "The soldier was about 10 metres away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children. The windows were not tinted, it was broad daylight and everything was clear."

AP journalists physically examined the car afterward. A bullet struck the windshield. Another struck the hood. The geometry matters — bullets in the windshield and hood suggest the car was facing the soldiers, which is consistent with the father's account of being stopped and compliant.

The IDF Already Admitted the Key Fact

The IDF's own initial inquiry concluded the wounded were uninvolved civilians.

Not militants. Not threats. Uninvolved civilians.

So the military's operational justification — moving vehicle, perceived threat — resulted in the killing of a seven-month-old, the critical wounding of his mother, and an injury to his father. And by their own account, these people had NOTHING to do with any threat.

The father saw this coming. "At the end they tell you it was a mistake," he told the AP. "Nothing is called a mistake."

He's not wrong to be skeptical. Rights groups have documented for years that Israeli military investigations into Palestinian civilian deaths in the West Bank rarely result in prosecutions. The review process exists. Accountability rarely follows.

The Broader Context

This shooting didn't happen in a vacuum. According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and CBC News — all citing AP — Israeli military activity and Jewish settler violence in the West Bank have surged significantly since the Gaza war began in October 2023.

This is factual. It's not contested. The West Bank has seen intensified raids, increased checkpoints, and documented settler attacks — including a separate incident reported by CBC News in which two Palestinians, one of them a 14-year-old, were killed in an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank around the same period.

Simultaneously, Hamas and regional mediators have been engaged in new Cairo talks trying to salvage the fragile Gaza ceasefire. The timing of incidents like this one does not help those talks.

What the Coverage Is Getting Wrong

Left-leaning outlets like the Guardian frame this primarily through the lens of occupation and systemic Palestinian suffering — not wrong, but it crowds out the specific factual dispute between the IDF account and the father's account, which is where the real journalistic work needs to happen.

Most American mainstream coverage leads with the IDF's justification early and prominently, which functionally gives it equal weight with the father's account even though the physical evidence — bullet placement, IDF's own civilian admission — undercuts the military's version.

What's getting insufficient attention: the car's physical damage pattern, the fact that it was broad daylight, the fact that the IDF already confirmed the victims were uninvolved, and the father's specific, detailed, named account given to multiple outlets.

What This Means

A man named Fahd Abu Haikal buried his seven-month-old son on Saturday, June 7, 2026, in Hebron. He carried the small body wrapped in a Palestinian flag. He bowed in prayer.

The Israeli military says it's reviewing what happened. That review will determine whether anyone is held accountable — and given historical patterns, that's far from guaranteed.

If the father's account is accurate — stopped car, hands raised, daylight, soldiers ten meters away who could clearly see a family — then this was NOT a justified use of force. It was a catastrophic, potentially criminal failure.

If the IDF's account is accurate, then their rules of engagement allowed soldiers to kill an infant in a stopped car.

Either way, someone needs to answer for this.