Israel’s fatal shooting of a pregnant Palestinian woman puts the focus on West Bank violence

Mohammed Shula speaks at a relative's house, where he and his wife have taken refuge, in the West Bank village of Kafr al-Labad, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

KAFR AL-LABAD, West Bank — The call came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first child, was whispering. There was panic in her voice.

“Help, please,” Shula recalled her saying. “You have to save us.”

Minutes later, Sondos Shalabi was fatally shot.

Shalabi and her husband, 26-year-old Yazan Shula, had fled their home in the early hours of Sunday as Israeli security forces closed in on Nur Shams refugee camp, a crowded urban district in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

Israeli military vehicles surrounded the camp days earlier, part of a larger crackdown on Palestinian militants across the northern occupied West Bank that has escalated since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza took effect last month. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has announced the expansion of the army’s operations, saying it aimed to stop Iran -- Hamas' ally -- from opening up a new front in the occupied territory.

Palestinians see the shooting of Shalabi, 23, as part of a worrying trend toward more lethal, warlike Israeli tactics in the West Bank. The Israeli army issued a short statement afterward, saying it had referred her shooting to the military police for criminal investigation.

Also on Sunday, just a few streets away, another young Palestinian woman, 21, was killed by the Israeli army. An explosive device it had planted detonated as she approached her front door.

In response, the Israeli army said that a wanted militant was in her house, compelling Israeli forces to break down the door. It said the woman did not leave despite the soldiers' calls. The army said it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians.”

Across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, at least 905 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Many appear to have been militants killed in gunbattles during Israeli raids. But rock-throwing protesters and uninvolved civilians -- including a 2-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and 73-year-old man -- have also been killed in recent weeks.

“The basic rules of fighting, of confronting the Palestinians, is different now,” said Maher Kanan, a member of the emergency response team in the nearby village of Anabta, describing what he sees as the army’s new attitude and tactics. “The displacement, the number of civilians killed, they are doing here what they did in Gaza.”

Mohammed Shula, 58, told The Associated Press that his son and daughter-in-law said they started plotting their flight from Nur Shams last week as Israeli drones crisscrossed the sky, Palestinian militants boobytrapped the roads and their baby’s due date approached.

His son “was worried about (Shalabi) all the time. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver the baby if the siege got worse,” he said.

Yazan Shula, a construction worker in Israel who lost his job after the Israeli government banned nearly 200,000 Palestinian workers from entering its territory, couldn’t wait to be a father, his own father said.

Shalabi, quiet and kind, was like a daughter to him -- moving into their house in Nur Shams 18 month sago, after marrying his son. “This baby is what they were living for,” he said.

Early Sunday, the young couple packed up some clothes and belongings. The plan was simple -- they would drive to the home of Shalabi’s parents outside the camp, some miles away in Tulkarem where soldiers weren’t operating. It was safer there, and near the hospital where Shalabi planned to give birth. Yazan Shula’s younger brother, 19-year-old Bilal, also wanted to get out and jumped in the backseat.

Not long after the three of them drove off, there was a burst of gunfire. Mohammed Shula’s phone rang.

His daughter-in-law’s breaths came in gasps, he said. An Israeli sniper had shot her husband, she told her father-in-law, and blood was flowing from the back of his head. She was unscathed, but had no idea what to do.

He coached her into staying calm. He told her to knock on the door of any house to ask for help. Her phone on speaker, he could hear her knocking and shrieking, he said. No one was answering.

She told him she could see soldiers approaching. The line went dead, said Mohammed Shula, who then called the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service.

“We couldn’t go outside because we were afraid we’d be shot,” said Suleiman Zuheiri, 65, a neighbour of the Shula family who was helping the medics reach their bodies. “We tried and tried. All in vain. (The medics) kept getting turned back, and the girl kept bleeding.”

Bilal Shula wasn’t hurt. He was arrested from the scene and detained for several hours.

The Red Crescent said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had secured approval from the Israeli military to allow medics inside the camp. But the paramedics were detained twice, for a half-hour each time, as they made their way toward the battered car, it said.

When asked why soldiers had blocked ambulances, the Israeli military repeated that it launched an investigation into the events surrounding Shalabi’s killing.

It wasn’t until after 8 a.m. that medics finally reached the young couple, and were detained a third time while rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital, the Red Crescent said.

Yazan Shula was unconscious and in critical condition, and, as of Tuesday, remains on life support at a hospital. Shalabi was found dead. Her fetus also did not survive the shooting.

Mohammed Shula keeps thinking about how soldiers saw Shalabi’s body bleeding on the ground and did nothing to help as they handcuffed his other son and marched him into their vehicle.

“Why did they shoot them? They were doing nothing wrong. They could have stopped them, asked a question, but no, they just shot,” he said,his fingers busily rubbing a strand of prayer beads.

Israeli security forces invaded the camp some hours later. Explosions resounded through the alleyways. Armored bulldozers rumbled down the roads, chewing up the pavement and rupturing underground water pipes. The electricity went out. Then the taps ran dry.

Before Mohammed Shula could process what was happening, he said, Israeli troops banged on his front door and ordered everyone -- his daughter, son and several grandchildren, one of them a year old, another 2 months old -- to leave their home.

The Israeli military denied it was carrying out forcible evacuations in the West Bank, saying that it was facilitating the departure of civilians who wanted to leave the combat zone on their own accord. It did not respond to follow-up questions about why over a dozen Palestinian civilians interviewed in Nur Shams camp made the same claims about their forcible displacement.

Mohammed Shula pointed to a bag of baby diapers in the corner of his friend’s living room. That’s all he had time to bring with him, he said, not even photographs, or clothes.

Isabel Debre, The Associated Press