Hala Khreis

Hala Khreis was a retired Arabic teacher from Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighborhood — more than thirty-five years at a local school behind her — and a mother of four. She would have turned fifty-eight on December 30, her daughter Sara told CNN.

On November 12, 2023, after days of bombardment and tank encirclement, the family joined a crowd fleeing south on foot, believing a safe route had been arranged with the Red Cross; the ICRC later said it had never agreed to any such role. Footage of the moment, published by Middle East Eye in January 2024 and analyzed by CNN and the Centre for Information Resilience, shows at least twenty-nine unarmed civilians carrying white flags. Out in front, Hala walked holding the hand of her grandson Tayem, four, a white flag in his other hand. As shouts redirected the column, a single shot struck her in the chest. Her son dragged her home; the family buried her beside the house.

Her family said Israeli forces fired the shot. CNN reported that satellite imagery and photos from the period show Israeli troops stationed in the area, including at a school 200 meters west of where she was killed, and the family said tanks stood on the road to the south; the Centre for Information Resilience independently geolocated the shooting to an intersection in al-Rimal and verified Israeli tanks at the same spot a day earlier, while noting it could not determine from open sources who fired. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said it was investigating nine shootings of white-flag carriers; CNN examined four.

Sources

• She was fleeing with her grandson, who was holding a white flag. Then she was shot — CNN
• Killings caught on camera: Shootings of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank — Centre for Information Resilience
• Real video of the killing of a Palestinian woman by sniper fire — Kashif Observatory (Arabic)