Fact Check: Palestinian Teen Osama Was Not Killed by IDF in Viral West Bank Video

A video spreading on social media in September 2026 is being presented as footage of Israeli soldiers shooting and killing a blindfolded Palestinian in the West Bank.

The footage is real. The shooting was real.

The claim that the Palestinian was killed is not.

The incident happened more than seven years ago, on April 18, 2019, in the Palestinian town of Tuqu', southeast of Bethlehem. Contemporary reporting shows that the teenager was wounded, taken for medical treatment and survived the shooting.

In fact, the Associated Press interviewed him alive from his hospital bed four days later.

The Viral Post Says He Was “Killed”

On September 6, an X account belonging to Adi Alardah posted the footage with the statement:

“IDF soldiers shoot and kill a blindfolded Palestinian. The incident was filmed in the occupied West Bank.”

The post received hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of reposts and likes.

But it leaves out two crucial facts.

The footage is from April 2019, not 2026.

And the Palestinian shown in it was not killed.

This is therefore not a case of a fabricated video. It is authentic footage being circulated with a false description of its outcome and without its seven year old date.

Who Was the Palestinian in the Video?

There is an unusual discrepancy in contemporary reporting over the teenager’s surname.

The Associated Press identified him as Osama Hajahjeh, 16. Haaretz used the similar spelling Osama Hajajeh.

CNN, however, identified the same teenager as Osama al Badan, 15.

This is not simply a transliteration difference. Hajahjeh and al Badan are different family names. Both AP and CNN identified his father as Ali, and both were reporting on the same April 18 incident in Tuqu'.

Israel News Pulse could not establish which surname is correct, so we will refer to him simply as Osama rather than present a disputed surname as fact.

The age is also reported differently. AP and UN documentation put him at 16, while CNN reported that he was 15.

What Actually Happened?

The shooting occurred following the funeral of Fatima Suleiman, a 42 year old Palestinian teacher from Tuqu' who had died earlier that day after being struck by a vehicle driven by an Israeli.

Clashes subsequently broke out between Palestinians and Israeli forces.

The IDF said Osama had been detained in connection with what it described as “massive stone throwing” that endangered soldiers and civilians.

Osama and his father disputed that allegation.

What happened next is much less disputed.

Osama was in Israeli custody. Contemporary photographs show him blindfolded with his hands restrained behind his back. He attempted to flee.

Israeli soldiers pursued him and he was shot in the legs.

The IDF itself acknowledged that soldiers fired at the fleeing detainee, saying he was shot in his lower body. The military said medical assistance was provided and announced that the incident would be investigated.

Importantly, the available video does not actually capture the instant the bullets hit him. Photographs document him fleeing while restrained and blindfolded, while the video records the immediate aftermath.

He Was Shot. He Was Not Killed.

This is where the viral claim falls apart.

On April 22, 2019, four days after the incident, Associated Press journalists interviewed Osama alive in his hospital bed in Beit Jala.

Doctors told AP that he was in stable condition.

Osama himself described what had happened, saying he was first shot in his right leg and then tried to run before being shot in his left leg.

CNN separately spoke with his father, Ali, who said his son had been shot once in each leg and remained in stable condition.

United Nations documentation subsequently recorded the Tuqu' incident as an injury, describing a detained, blindfolded and hand tied 16 year old being shot in the right thigh and then the back of the left thigh while attempting to flee.

The teenager also does not appear among the Palestinians recorded as killed that month in the Palestinian Authority’s own WAFA records.

There is no credible contemporary evidence that he died from the shooting.

Israel News Pulse also found no credible later report stating that he subsequently died.

That does not allow us to claim that Osama is alive today in 2026, because we could not locate reliable recent reporting about him. It does establish something much narrower and directly relevant to the viral claim:

Osama survived the shooting shown in the viral footage.

An Arizona Imam Amplified the False Claim

The post did not remain confined to its original account.

Arizona based Imam Omar Tawil shared the post with his own commentary.

Above the post claiming Israeli soldiers had killed the Palestinian, Tawil wrote:

“I’m sure it’s just your eyes being anti Semitic”

His post therefore amplified the underlying claim to another audience while framing it around accusations of antisemitism.

The problem is that the claim he shared was false.

The Palestinian shown in the footage had not been killed.

What Did the IDF Investigation Find?

The IDF said in April 2019 that the shooting would be investigated.

Israel News Pulse could not locate a subsequent public finding from that investigation.

We found no reliable public record establishing that soldiers were charged or disciplined, but equally no public record establishing that they were cleared or that the case was formally closed.

It would therefore be misleading to claim an outcome that cannot be documented.

Verdict: False and Misleading

There are two separate problems with the viral post.

First, it presents footage from April 18, 2019 in September 2026 without telling viewers that the incident occurred more than seven years earlier.

More importantly, it claims Israeli soldiers “shoot and kill” the Palestinian.

That is false.

The teenager was indeed detained, blindfolded and restrained. He attempted to flee Israeli custody and Israeli soldiers shot him in the legs. Those facts should not be erased simply because the video is now being misrepresented.

But neither should a shooting be turned into a killing that did not occur.

The Associated Press interviewed Osama alive four days later. Doctors reported him in stable condition. CNN reported the same. UN documentation classified the case as an injury.

The footage is real. The shooting is real. The claim that the Palestinian was killed is false.

That is precisely why old, authentic footage can be so effective as misinformation. The video does not have to be fake when the caption is enough to change the story.