This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Khalil al-Mughrabi was an 11-year-old Palestinian boy who was killed while resting with friends after a game of soccer in Rafah on 7 July 2001, by shots fired from an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank.

[1] Palestinian sources and a friend of Khalil said they were part of group throwing stones at Israeli troops when al-Mugrahbi was killed.

[9] The incident occurred on 7 July 2001, in the Yubneh refugee camp, located on the outskirts of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border.

At the time a ceasefire agreement, drawn up by George J. Tenet, the American director of the C.I.A., was supposed to have been in effect from the preceding June 13.

[4] A later internal investigation by the Israeli army determined that no attacks had taken place during the time range that al-Mughrabi was shot and killed.

Colonel Einat Ron, the military's chief prosecutor, found that at 7 P.M, when al-Mughrabi had been playing soccer with his friends in a field, no grenades or stones had been thrown at Israeli troops.

[5] The report found these shots were in response to an attempt by Palestinians to block a road while an Israeli army vehicle was leaving the town.

Her report stated that the shots were fired at a time "when no grenades were thrown, and it is doubtful that the force felt its life was in danger.

B'Tselem's research director said of the letter that "it indicates that lying is legitimate in the military prosecutor's office in order to protect the troops.

[6][11][13] B'Tselem released the internal documents along with its report on the incident, titled Whitewash: The Office of the Judge Advocate General's Examination of the Death of Khalil al-Mughrabi, 11, on 7 July 2001.

It arrived from Salah a-Din Gate and drove west toward the Tel Zu'arub post, where there is a very tall military tower that overlooks the whole area.

Then I heard a faint sound and saw Khalil's brain flying out of his head and splattering all over my face and clothes.Suleiman Abu Rijal had to have his left testicle amputated as a consequence of the thigh wound.

[7] The B'Tselem field investigator, Nabil Mukhairez, added that the bullet entered the top of Khalil’s head and came out the bottom, and was fired at a distance of roughly 1 kilometre from the Tel Zu’arub tower.

According to Holi Moshe, Major Operations Directorate Officer of Division 6643 and the Summary of battalion and brigade commanders' de-briefings dated 14 July 2001: "It is impossible to unequivocally determine that the child was killed by our forces' gunfire."

"[7] Chris McGreal used the Khalil al-Mughrabi case to illustrate an article which tried to address the phenomenon, widely attested, of many Palestinian children being shot by Israeli snipers over a brief period.

In just ten weeks in 2003 McGreal instanced six similar cases in that area: Haneen Suliaman, an 8 year-old girl, had been killed by an IDF sniper’s headshot while strolling out to buy a packet of crisps; soon after Huda Darwish, a 12 years old girl, was shot in the head while at her desk at school and left blind for life; a boy Abdul Rahman Jadallah, who attended Suliaman's funeral, was then shot under the eye after attending the funeral of a Palestinian fighter the next day - among a group of kids, he stood forth and hung a Palestinian flag on a fence, and was shot in the face; Ali Ghureiz, 7 years old, was shot in the head, below his left eye, outside his house in Rafah; Haneen Abu Sitta, aged 12, was killed while walking home from school near a Jewish settlement fence in southern Gaza; Nada Madhi, aged 12, took a bullet in the stomach and died, after leaning from her bedroom window in Rafah to watch a funeral procession for another child that had just been killed.

'[12] Immediately following the shooting of al-Mughrabi, Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was quoted in The Guardian as vowing to send ten suicide bombers against Israel to avenge the Israeli army’s killing of Khalil Mughrabi in Rafah.

[2][3][15] In an essay on sacred violence, Jan Willem van Henten cited Rantisi's declaration, and argued that, while calls or justifications for acts of revenge often use Islamic religious language, more often than not the real purpose is political, and that the evidence he has examined shows that 'retaliation for Israeli killings of Palestinians is a prime motive for launching suicide attacks celebrated as martyrdom.

[1] A panel led by George Mitchell urged Israel to resume military investigations into fatal shootings by soldiers, which had no longer been standard procedure.

B'Tselem spokeswoman said that "We have a very clear feeling that the military is trying to avoid opening an investigation of Palestinian civilians killed by soldiers."

[11] Early in the following year, Sara Leibovich-Dar wrote of a string of cases like the al-Mughrabi episode where initial IDF reports denying that well-verified incidents ever took place turn out to be false.

She cited the southern district prosecutor, Brigadier General Baruch Mani's determination that the army's statement to the press regarding al-Mughrabi, claiming that no heavy weaponry was used, was incorrect.