Ahmad Husam Yousef Moussa, the nine-year old boy who was shot dead by the Israel Occupation Forces on Tuesday July 29 in the West Bank village of Ni’ilin, is the latest child to become a symbol of the Palestinian and international struggle against the Israeli occupation. Ahmed was killed by what an initial Israeli Border Police investigation confirmed was a live M16 bullet fired by the driver of a military jeep which advanced on a group of youths and children, including Ahmad.

Ni'ilin, along with many other places in the West Bank has shown its willingness to resist Israel's military occupation, whose sole purpose is to colonize as much Palestinian land as possible, if not the entire West Bank.

Ni’ilin is one of the villages threatened by the further construction of the separation wall. Certainly, Ni’ilin has been the main one dominating the headlines recently, with footage being released only two weeks ago of an Israeli soldier shooting a handcuffed and blindfolded man in the foot, at close range. The village is located in the West Bank, 26km to the west of Ramallah. The village of Ni’ilin has become a site of active buzz in the struggle against the wall. Frequent peaceful demonstrations and protests between villagers and Israeli soldiers are staged on the site where bulldozers are razing land to build the latest segment of the Wall.

The local Popular Committee to Resist the Apartheid Wall has mobilized both residents in neighboring villages as well as international activists, organizing a number of actions against the ongoing construction of the Wall. Weekly Friday protests as well as other actions during the week have slowed construction and brought considerable attention to the local struggle. The actions against the construction have nearly always been met by force. Ahmad is not the only victim; scores of people have been injured and arrested by occupation forces. Bulldozers have uprooted a number of olive trees, while fires started by tear gas canisters have burnt others. The heavy-handed measures of Israeli occupation forces have failed to break the resolve of those campaigning to save Ni’ilin, and the strength of the local solidarity between Ni’ilin and the surrounding villages continues to grow.

The threat and actual dispossession has only strengthened resolve within the community to resist until the village lands are returned and dignity and justice are restored for the people in Ni’ilin and Palestine as a whole. Only recently, the Israeli army informed the village about a new tunnel it is planning to build at the entrance to Ni’ilin on the western side of the village. Some 150 dunums of the land will be confiscated for this purpose. The current entrance will be closed, and the tunnel is to be built under Road 446 to take its place. The first aim of the tunnel is to control the life of Ni’ilin’s 5,000 inhabitants and to cut them off from their links with the surrounding villages, as well as Ramallah city. It will be built on some of the village’s most fertile agricultural land, and will see the destruction of hundreds of olive trees that serve as livelihood for the local people.

The tunnel will divide the village into two parts: upper and lower Ni’ilin. On one side 1,000 inhabitants living in the upper area will be isolated and prevented from accessing the lower area. This means they will be cut off from health, education and other services in the upper part, as well social networks. Their movement will depend on the whim of Israeli soldiers, who will open the gate to upper Ni’ilin for 45 minutes each day, as is already taking place in other parts of the West Bank. The second aim of the gate is to destroy the village’s economy, and the third aim is to isolate farmers from their agricultural land.

Despite its troubles, Ni’ilin continues to remain strong in the face of the occupation; however, in 1948 there were 2,500 inhabitants living in Ni'ilin. Today, 60 years later, there are some 5,000 inhabitants. According to the Stop the Wall campaign research that has been undertaken, under normal growth rates, the population should be five times higher. Continuous land confiscations has taken its toll and resulting poverty and unemployment, together with closures, have led to continuous and forced displacement and many people had no other choice but to leave the village in search of work opportunities.

Given this state of affairs, it is understandable as to not only why the residents of Ni’ilin are fighting for their town, but also why there is a huge rallying of support from international groups and individuals.

When Ahmad Moussa was killed, the Israeli army attempted to offer their feeble claims that the demonstrations were violent and that they were responding to protests fuelled by civil disobedience. The question remains as to whether the actual use of live ammunition can ever be justified when facing an unarmed demonstration? The killing of a nine-year old only serves to fuel the people and will not end the resistance to the building of the separation wall. It also serves to highlight Israel’s position as the aggressors. At no point can that unarmed child have posed a threat to the great Israeli Occupation Forces, with all their imposing military might.

Meanwhile, whilst the protests, demonstrations and Israeli military aggression continue in Ni’ilin, a family is left without their son. Nothing will bring him back. Images on television this week have shown young men joining the procession outside their home, some with green Hamas and yellow Fatah flags, marching past the Mousa family's white two storey house to the adjacent cemetery chanting: "Mother of the martyr, ululate, all the young here are your children". In the center of this village in the hills west of Ramallah, freshly painted red graffiti on the wall proclaims, "The death of the martyr Ahmed Mousa will increase our struggle against the occupation." The sad reality is that these religious and political statements don’t mean anything to the grieving family, other than a bitter reminder that their son is another statistic, another pawn in the battle between the two sides. Their personal loss is tragically a political gain; one that may lead to more fighting in the long term.

Meanwhile, the Israeli camp has adopted their usual style of shrouding everything in secrecy and all that has been released is a statement saying that an investigation into this child’s death is being carried out and that a ‘border policeman involved at the scene at the time of incident was questioned for 24 hours and kept under house arrest for five days in connection with the incident”. This vague and insulting information is likely to offer no comfort to the Mousa family, who as of last Tuesday evening will be starting a sentence of their own.