During his doctorate, he began a side project of cataloging DNA isolated from Egyptian mummies using emerging DNA cloning technologies. There he studied how adenoviruses - pathogens behind a myriad of infections ranging from the common cold to pink eye - interacted with the human immune system.ĭespite the switch, Pääbo maintained an interest in archaeology, particularly in the evolution of ancient DNA. The visit had Pääbo set his sights on Egyptology, but he eventually switched to medicine while at Sweden’s Uppsala University. “In this case, it was fatally traumatizing for this little boy.”Īfter Rayan’s funeral, small crowds of young men cursed and hurled rocks at Israeli armored vehicles rumbling through the streets of Tequa.How it all started - Pääbo, who founded the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany back in 1990, first got his taste for the ancient when traveling to Egypt as a teenager in the late 1960s. “That’s hugely traumatizing for the teenage kids being arrested and for their mothers and fathers,” said Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked. Israel arrests hundreds of teenagers during night raids each year, bundling them handcuffed and blindfolded into armored cars for interrogation, reported Israeli human rights organization, HaMoked. Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children age 12 and above can go to prison for six months.

Human rights groups say that across the West Bank, Palestinian children live under constant threat of violence. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed, making 2022 the deadliest in seven years. Following a surge of Palestinian attacks inside Israel last spring that killed 19 Israelis, the Israeli military has conducted almost nightly raids into cities and towns to arrest suspects. Palestinians have seized on Rayan’s death as the latest Israeli provocation as deadly violence rises in the West Bank.

His brothers are refusing to go to school again out of fear, she added. “Rayan is not the first one, he is only the latest.” “The kids are always in danger, from settlers from the army, on their way back from school,” said Rayan’s aunt, who gave her name as Umm Ali, noting that soldiers sometimes patrol a verdant shortcut that kids take from school to their homes. She said they handed her a paper in Hebrew she couldn’t read and yelled, ‘We want the boys, where are the boys?’” Rayan’s aunt, who was home at the time of the incident, said even she was terrified when Israeli soldiers burst into the home. Extended family with watery eyes milled about in mourning. His mother was crumpled over, inconsolably crying and calling out for her son. “He was just an innocent boy, just 7 years old, what can he do?” Yasser Suleiman, Rayan’s father, told The Associated Press outside the hospital morgue on Friday, choking back tears.Īt the Suleiman house on Friday afternoon, women wept and wailed over Rayan’s bed, displayed in the family’s courtyard along with his English school books.

Fear for their children’s safety and the dread of soldiers knocking on the door are part of daily life under an entrenched Israeli military rule that is now in its 56th year. Rayan’s death also struck a nerve with Palestinian parents. Heavily armed Israeli soldiers routinely arrest Palestinian children in the West Bank, where nearly half a million Israeli settlers live on land that Palestinians want for a future independent state.

The Israeli army called the death a tragedy and said its soldiers were not to blame. The story shot across the occupied West Bank, providing an emotive focus for fury over Israel’s military tactics and what Palestinians contend is their victimization by the Israeli occupation. Just moments later, Rayan, the youngest of the three brothers, was dead. After the boys bolted home, the troops banged furiously on the door and threatened to arrest the children, their parents say. Rayan Suleiman, with bright eyes and a backpack emblazoned with an animated race car, was walking home from school on Thursday when his family says he and his brothers were chased by Israeli soldiers. TEQUA, West Bank (AP) - A throng of men clutching the body of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy marched through a town in the occupied West Bank toward the child’s final resting place on Friday, a day after his parents say he died from fear of Israeli soldiers.

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