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Mohammad was shot after going to play football – and we joined the 54 families in the occupied West Bank whose children were killed by Israel in 2025 alone
My name is Aliyah Abdel Majid al-Halaq. I am 33 years old, from the village of ar-Rihiya, south of Hebron, and the mother of five children. My eldest daughter, Mais, is 14. My youngest son, Elias, is five. Between them was my beloved nine-year-old son, Mohammad.
I always knew that life under occupation was built on violence, humiliation and fear. No Palestinian mother needs to be taught that. Still, I tried to protect my children from the full weight of that truth. I told myself that the poverty we lived in was the greatest hardship we had to endure; that patience would carry us through; that despite everything, our children could still grow up happy. On 16 October 2025, the day the Israeli army killed Mohammad, even that fragile belief was taken from me. I understood then that occupation does not only take land, freedom or dignity. It takes away something even more fundamental: a parent’s certainty that her child will come home. It turns every Palestinian mother into someone who lives in constant anticipation of loss.
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