13-Year-Old Palestinian Girl Shot After Ignoring Orders To Halt

By Marcy Oster September 21, 2016

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian teen was shot in the leg after she ignored instructions to stop at a West Bank checkpoint.

A civilian checkpoint guard first fired a warning shot in the air, and then aimed at the legs of the girl, 13, after border guards repeatedly called on her to stop and she began to reach under her shirt, the Defense Ministry told Israeli media.

The incident was first believed to be a stabbing attack, but security officials who searched the teen and the bag she was carrying did not find a knife or explosives.

The girl, from the nearby Palestinian city of Qalqilya, said during questioning “I came to die,” according to the Defense Ministry. She is hospitalized in Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba in central Israel.

The incident comes as a new surge of Palestinian violence against Israeli security forces and civilians began last week after a period of relative calm in a wave of violence that began at the start of Rosh Hashanah last year.

The teen’s aunt, Rasha Owaisi, 23, was shot by security guards and killed at the same checkpoint last November after she approached the guards waving a knife, the Times of Israel reported. The aunt left a suicide note.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO