Culture | Life in the West Bank

A new book revisits a bus crash that killed Palestinian children

“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” tries to make sense of a senseless accident

Abed Salama holding Milad's photo in al-Bireh.
Image: Ihab Jadallah

It began, as many accidents do, mundanely. A bus was ferrying a group of five- and six-year-old Palestinian children on a school trip. But there was heavy rain, and the bus collided with a truck on a road in the West Bank near Jerusalem. The bus went up in flames, killing eight Palestinian children and one of their teachers. In “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” Nathan Thrall, an American author who lives in Jerusalem, examines the events leading up to the accident in 2012 and the heart-rending aftermath.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The senselessness of an ending”

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