“To my unborn child, with you, I will become a mother for the first time. I can’t believe how quickly this pregnancy has passed and how you have grown quietly within my womb, waiting for my first joy.”
These were what would tragically turn out to be the last words posted online by Sundus Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant. Early on Sunday morning, the 23-year-old Palestinian mother-to-be was killed by the Israeli military in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, in what the Palestinian Foreign Ministry is calling a “crime of execution” and the targeting of “defenseless civilians.”
Shalabi and her husband Yazan Abu Shola were shot in their car, with her husband critically injured. Their unborn child was also killed in the attack. “Medical teams were unable to save the baby’s life due to the [Israeli] occupation preventing the transfer of the injured to the hospital,” said a statement from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah. ….more