My nine-year-old son Mohammad, killed by Israeli soldiers, is not just another number | Alia Abdel Majid Al-Hallaq

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 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/29/is-it-israels-aim-to-kill-our-children-west-bank-parents-implore-end-to-idfs-child-killings-with-impunity">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.