Published On 7/8/2026
Ramallah- “Oh my love, mother,” says the mother of the infant, Ahmed Marouf Zaid (4 months), as she bursts into intense tears in grief over the loss of her father, who was martyred at an Israeli military checkpoint set up by the occupation army at the entrance to the town of Deir Ammar, west of the city of Ramallah, in the central West Bank.
The mother cried bitterly for her child, while she was holding him in her hands in the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah, where he was declared martyred as a result of the arbitrary occupation measures.
Warmly, the grieving mother held her martyred child, who was wrapped in the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh, to her chest and began to smell him and bid him farewell with the last looks and the warmest tears, while a relative of hers began to pat her on the shoulder and recall and unite God, praising his destiny and destiny.
Detention and suffocation with liquefaction
The family of the child Ahmed did not expect that the state of fatigue that afflicted him and forced them to transfer him to the hospital would be confronted by the occupation’s closure of the entrance to the town and its stubbornness in not allowing them to pass and obstructing them for more than an hour. Rather, the soldiers ignored his critical condition while firing tear gas bombs at the people and vehicles, “to deprive him of his right to access treatment in a timely manner, and he later died,” according to what the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, Leila Ghannam, confirmed via Her Facebook page.
Ghanem added that what happened with the child Ahmed, the only male in the family who was born after years of waiting, is “a disgrace to humanity.”
She stressed that it comes in the context of a terrorist policy pursued by the occupation through military checkpoints, gates, and closures, to obstruct the movement of citizens, patients, and ambulances, in violation of the most basic rights, most notably the right to life, movement, and transportation.
Official condemnation
In the same context, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates confirmed that Israeli barriers and checkpoints are “death barriers” and tools used by the Israeli occupation authorities to persecute and kill the Palestinian people and deliberately target their lives.
She said – in a statement – that the latest of these heinous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces was preventing the transfer of the infant Ahmed Marouf Zaid – who was suffering from a lack of oxygen and convulsions – to the hospital and detaining him by closing the road for more than an hour through a military checkpoint.
According to data from the official Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, the number of military checkpoints and gates in the Palestinian territories is 916, including 243 gates that were installed after October 7, 2023.
Since the same date, attacks by the Israeli occupation army and settlers have escalated in the occupied West Bank, resulting in the martyrdom of more than 1,179 Palestinians, the injury of about 13,000, and the arrest of nearly 24,000, according to official data.
Meanwhile, Israel in Gaza, according to the Information Unit of the Ministry of Health there, killed more than 21,638 children who were martyred during the last war, a rate of approximately 30% of the total martyrs, and wounded more than 45,000 children, including about a thousand who suffered amputations in their limbs.
