Halhouli, his brother and four friends, the family says, were lighting fireworks to celebrate the end of another day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month marked by dawn-to-dusk fasting.
Israeli police say the officer who fired the shot acted appropriately, citing regulations that permit shooting someone who is aiming a firework at another person in a life-threatening way.
Violence across east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank has spiked since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants staged a surprise attack on southern Israel and sparked a brutal war in the Gaza Strip.
It is segmented from the rest of Jerusalem by a heavily manned checkpoint and Israeli forces regularly raid the camp to arrest suspected militants.
In desperation, the family found an ambulance to transport him to Hadassah hospital, one of Israel’s largest medical facilities, where doctors said the bullet had struck his heart.
According to Israeli legal rights group Yesh Din, a police officer was last charged of murder in 2021 after shooting dead an unarmed autistic Palestinian in Jerusalem’s Old City.
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