A four-month-old infant was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, an incident that has drawn swift condemnation from the British government. The child, named Fatima al-Hawamdeh, was killed by a bullet to the head while travelling in a vehicle near the settlement of Beit El, north of Ramallah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have confirmed that live fire was used during a pursuit of a vehicle suspected of throwing stones, but have not yet determined whether the bullet came from their forces or from Palestinian gunfire.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has called for an urgent investigation and full accountability, describing the death as a “horrific and unjustifiable tragedy”. The Palestinian Authority has accused Israeli settlers and military of escalating violence in the region, while the IDF has launched an internal inquiry. This incident marks the first death of a baby this year in the West Bank, where 2023 has already seen more than 200 Palestinian fatalities, including 40 children, according to the United Nations.
The data suggest a clear pattern of increasing lethality in a territory where the average rate of child killings has risen by 35% since 2020. The physical reality is that a 4-month-old does not constitute a threat to armed soldiers. The physics of a bullet entering a skull at velocities exceeding 300 metres per second produces irreversible damage.
The biology of an infant brain, with its higher water content and softer cranial bone, offers even less resistance. This is not a matter of narrative. It is a matter of ballistics and anatomy.
The British demand for accountability must therefore translate into forensic evidence: bullet trajectory, weapon registration, and chain of command. Without these, calls for justice remain mere words. The energy of this conflict continues to dissipate into the bodies of the innocent.
Thermodynamics demands that what goes in must come out. The kinetic energy of a bullet becomes thermal energy in tissue. And that heat vanishes, leaving only a cold corpse.
The world watches, but the numbers do not lie. Eleven children have been killed in the West Bank since January. The heat death of diplomacy proceeds apace.
