Ahmad Khatib was shot dead last Thursday by an Israeli soldier who mistook his toy gun for a real weapon. Less than a week later his organs have given new life to Jews and Arabs alike after his parents gave them to Israeli hospitals.

Ahmed’s heart is now beating inside an Israeli Druze Arab girl. His liver is keeping a Jewish child and a mother alive. His lungs have been transplanted into a teenage Jewish girl, and his kidneys divided between a five-year-old Bedouin and a three-year-old Jewish girl. The humanitarian gesture by Ahmed’s father, Ismail, rare enough in itself, is all the more extraordinary given the nature of the boy’s death, the latest of more than 3,600 Palestinian and 1,000 Israeli fatalities during the five-year intifada.

The shooting occurred in Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian militant stronghold, on the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid el-Fitr, when Palestinian children often receive toy guns as presents. Israeli troops had entered the camp looking for an Islamic Jihad suspect.

Once the circumstances of the shooting became clear, Ahmed was transferred to an Israeli hospital where he died of his injuries two days later.

After consulting Muslim authorities, Mr Khatib publicly donated the organs to the hospital. His decision has drawn some criticism from Palestinians embittered by decades of communal hatred, but Mr Khatib says it was also influenced by the fate of his brother, who died while awaiting a liver transplant.

“They (Israeli forces) killed my son who was healthy, and we want to give his organs to those who need them,” the mechanic told Israeli television. “No one can tell me what to do. I feel very good that my son’s organs are helping six Israelis . . . I feel that my son has entered the heart of every Israeli.

“We are doing it for humane purposes and for the sake of the world’s children and the children of this country. I have taken this decision because I have a message for the world: that the Palestinian people want peace — for everyone.”

His mother, Ablah, said: “We have no problem whether it is an Israeli or a Palestinian (who receives his organs) because it will give them life.”

One beneficiary of Mr Khatib’s magnanimity is Samah Gadban, a 12-year-old girl from Israel’s Druze community in northern Galilee. She had her first bath yesterday and sat up in an armchair after receiving Ahmed’s heart during an eight-hour transplant operation at the Schneider children’s hospital in Petah Tikva on Sunday.

Samah’s father, Riad, called the donation a “gesture of love” to his daughter. Sitting beside Samah’s bed her mother, Yusra, said she had already lost one son to the same heart condition, and had named her daughter after the dead boy. The name means Forgiving in Arabic. “She has been waiting for a donor for five years,” said Mrs Gadban, 49, from the village of Beqaa in the Golan Heights.

On Sunday she and her husband had waited outside the operating room until 9.45am, when the surgeons emerged. “As the doctors came out smiling I almost broke down,” Mrs Gadban said. “I wanted only to thank them, but my tongue was tied. I saw Samaah as she came out and the first thing I noticed was her beating heart. Then we began to find out from the media more and more about the young boy, Ahmad, whose family donated the heart.

“I was shocked by the way he died. I am a mother who has lost a son and I have no words to express what I feel towards Ahmad’s mother. I was crying and at the same time happy, not knowing how to express it all.” At the same medical centre near Tel Aviv, a seven-month-old Jewish girl received part of the Palestinian boy’s liver. The rest of the liver went to a 58-year-old woman from Beersheba, a mother of two children, suffering from chronic hepatitis. Mrs Gadban disclosed that among the other recipients of Ahmed’s organs in the hospital was an orthodox Jewish family who were unwilling to be identified, fearing a negative reaction from their family and neighbours.

Reuven Rivlin, speaker of the Israeli parliament, praised the family’s action as a “remarkable gesture” after decades of conflict.

This is not the first time organs have been donated across the political divide. Three years ago a seven-year-old Palestinian girl received the kidney of Jonathan Jesner, the British victim of a Tel Aviv suicide bombing.

The Israeli army has said its soldiers in Jenin refugee camp came under fire from Palestinian gunmen in several locations and returned fire. It regretted the incident. Witnesses said the suspect escaped.

SAVING LIVES ACROSS THE DIVIDE

Where Ahmed’s organs went:

Times Recommends

• No cause for celebration in crushed Sarajevo
• Jazz funeral for the final victims of Katrina
• French fined for 'insulting' civil servants