This is a chapter in history that the media rarely talks about.
March 2004, Nablus, West Bank, a Palestinian child dressed in a suicide bomb vest, approached a bustling West Bank checkpoint in what Israel described as an unsuccessful attempt to kill soldiers stationed there.
The dramatic moment was recorded by the press, showing soldiers taking cover behind concrete barriers. They then deployed a yellow robot to deliver scissors to the 14-year-old boy so he could remove the vest himself. Following this, he was instructed to strip down to his underwear for a security check.
At the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus, soldiers had received intelligence about an impending attack, leading them to close the checkpoint and conduct thorough searches.
Lt. Tamir Milrad, an officer at the checkpoint, noted the child's suspicious approach, wearing a large red jersey. "We saw that he had something under his shirt," Milrad recounted. The soldiers quickly took cover, aimed their weapons at the child, and commanded him to halt.
Upon removing his jersey, the child revealed a thick gray bomb vest. He expressed his unwillingness to die or detonate the device, leading the soldiers to use the robot to provide him with scissors.
Struggling with the vest, the child managed to cut part of it off but found the rest challenging, saying, "I don't know how to get this off."
After he discarded the vest, he was further instructed to remove his undershirt and jeans to confirm he carried no additional weapons.
Subsequently, experts safely detonated the bomb vest, with no group immediately claiming responsibility for the event.
This incident marked another in a string of thwarted attacks by young teenaged Palestinian militants, according to Israeli reports.
Dore Gold, an advisor to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, expressed the recurring shock at the use of children in such attacks, stating, "Israelis do not understand how Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their own children in order to kill ours."
The military's assessment was that the child was deployed to target soldiers at the checkpoint, potentially endangering not only the soldiers but also the 200-300 Palestinian civilians present, as noted by Lt. Col. Guy, the checkpoint commander.
On March 16, 2004, Israeli forces intercepted an 11-year-old boy at the same Hawara checkpoint, suspected of carrying explosives. Israel claimed the boy was unaware of the explosives in his bag, which he and local Palestinians insisted contained auto parts; the bag was later destroyed by army sappers.
In February 2004, Israeli police detained three boys aged 12, 13, and 15, who admitted they were planning a shooting attack in Afula, an Israeli city.
