A photo from Hebron shared around the world this week shows an Israeli soldier and a young Palestinian woman. She is covered in a niqab, looking at the soldier pointing his rifle at her. The photo was taken on Sept. 22 by a volunteer with the Youth Against Settlements group. Moments later, Hadil Hashlamoun, 18, was shot in her abdomen and critically wounded. She was taken to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, where she was pronounced dead.
A preliminary Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigation found that the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint separating the area under Palestinian control from the one under IDF control called on the woman to stop after the metal detector she went through at the roadblock went off. When she kept walking, the soldiers fired at the ground to stop her. After she tried to stab a soldier with a knife she was carrying, he shot her. The IDF spokesman even provided a photo of the knife she was allegedly carrying.
