The book explores how a myriad of security measures including a separation wall and military checkpoints, forced segregation in the West Bank between Israeli Settlements and Palestinians, and bureaucratic limits on Palestinian citizens' freedom of movement led to long delays in emergency care for the children, obstacles which the author argues are entirely manmade.

[3][4] The book details a 2012 road accident in which a school bus carrying Palestinian kindergartners and their teachers on Highway 60 collided with a lorry and overturned.

Despite an Israeli settlement being a few minutes away, emergency services were severely delayed in reaching the scene and ordinary citizens entered the burning bus to rescue victims and transported the injured to local hospitals in private vehicles.

Thrall documents how the mass incarceration of Palestinians in the West Bank devastates the community; with children as young as 12 being jailed for offenses such as throwing stones at soldiers.

Thrall documents how endocrinologist Huda Dahbour, who was working at a nearby UNRWA mobile clinic, rushed to aid the victims of the tragedy.

Thrall describes how Adi Shpeter (from the Jewish settlement of Anatot) is working to improve relations with the Palestinian Authority by working with local representative Ibrahim Salama (Abed's cousin), how Israeli paramedic Edlad Benshtein had had his own past traumas unearthed after he tended to the accident victims, how Duli Yariv collected monetary donations to help the victims of the tragedy.

[7] Writing for The Guardian, Alex Preston stated that in the wake of the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel and the Israel-Hamas war; "...a book such as A Day in the Life of Abed Salama brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this."