The latest targets amid the blood and violence: Pregnant women

The tiny girl called Fida lay cradled in her wounded mother's arms, yawning like any other new-born, blissfully unaware that her life had been irreparably scarred by Israeli soldiers even before it began.

Before her mother, Maysoun, set out for hospital early yesterday, too tortured by labour pains to hang on any longer but knowing that she must travel the West Bank's lethal roads in darkness, the unborn Fida had a father.

By the time they reached hospital, her father was dead, the victim of a hail of bullets pumped into their car at a makeshift Israeli army roadblock. And Fida's grandfather, who was travelling with them in the pathetically misguided hope that the presence of an old man would make them safer, was so badly injured that Palestinian doctors say he may be paralysed from the neck down for the rest of his life.

Maysoun Hayek and her child were lucky. Fragments from a bullet hit Maysoun's abdomen, but missed the unborn baby. Hours later, amid grief and trauma, she was born, weighing 7lbs 10oz. Maysoun, abruptly widowed at a mere 22 years old, chose the name "Fida" because it is Arabic for sacrifice. Fida is her first child.

There has been much cruelty in the 17-month conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but the events of the past 48 hours mark another squalid chapter, overshadowing the latest peace manoeuvrings, based on proposals tentatively floated by Saudi Arabia.

Only a day before the attack on Maysoun Hayek and her family, Israeli soldiers shot and injured another pregnant Palestinian woman in the same place as she was travelling to hospital to give birth.

And, as night fell yesterday, doctors in Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital were operating on a 33-year-old Israeli settler, who had given birth after being shot and seriously wounded by Palestinian guerrillas who opened fire on cars near Nokdim in the southern West Bank yesterday. Two other Israelis were killed. Reports said the woman was in her 36th week of pregnancy and gave birth to a baby after undergoing a Caesarean section as doctors also treated her injuries. The Al Aqsa Brigades, affiliated with the mainstream Fatah faction, claimed responsibility.

These ugly events were so similar to the Hayek family's suffering that it was impossible not to wonder if it was not deliberate revenge.

In all, three healthy baby girls – two Palestinians and an Israeli – were beginning their lives yesterday as their mothers were recovering from bullet wounds. The blood of war has left its mark on the latest generation even before they were out of the womb.

Maysoun and her husband, Mohammed Hayek, a 24-year-old unemployed labourer, knew about the earlier shooting of another pregnant Palestinian woman before they set out yesterday. They had heard how Shadia Shehadeh was shot on Sunday by the soldiers, and had had to give birth to her baby – now called Hiba, or "gift from God" – while being treated for a shoulder injury. The couple were deeply worried about it. Maysoun Hayek tried in vain to hold out in the morning so that she could make the difficult 12-mile journey from her village, Zeita, to hospital in Nablus during daylight.

"I was afraid that something would happen to us," she said, as she lay in bed in Rafidia hospital, Nablus, yesterday. "My husband told me before we left the house that maybe we would live to see the baby, and maybe we would not."

When her contractions began in earnest, the couple decided to risk the journey, although it meant going through an Israeli checkpoint on the outskirts of Nablus on a notoriously dangerous stretch of road. She said they set out at 1.30am and passed through the checkpoint without any problems after soldiers searched the vehicle and patted her stomach to make sure she was really pregnant, and not concealing a bomb.

Five minutes later, she said, their car came under fire from troops stationed on a hillside, where four Israeli armoured vehicles and two tanks look down on a makeshift road-block. Bullets struck her husband, fragments hit her in the shoulder and three bullets hit her father-in-law, Abdullah, 64, in the chest and back. "They shot at the car's tyres and the car stopped immediately... I got out of the car and all the windows were smashed. I looked at my husband and saw that he was unconscious and the same with my father-in-law.

"I started screaming in English 'There's a baby, there's a baby'," she added tearfully.

Israeli soldiers took them into an armoured vehicle, where they received medical treatment. For 45 minutes, cold and so engulfed by shock and pain that she forgot that she was about to give birth, Maysoun says she lay on the ground as the Israelis made arrangements to move her. She was eventually transferred to a Palestinian ambulance and taken to hospital in Nablus.

Doctors said X-rays of her dead husband showed he had 25 bullet wounds. His father Abdullah was rushed off for surgery; he was on a respirator yesterday. Three minutes after arriving in hospital, shortly before dawn, Maysoun gave birth.

Israeli soldiers have been trigger-happy throughout the conflict, and have killed hundreds of Palestinian non-combatants, including many children. But they are particularly on edge after last week's attack by Palestinian guerrillas on a West Bank checkpoint last week, in which six soldiers were shot dead.

More now than ever, the Palestinians are focusing their attacks on soldiers and settlers inside the occupied territories rather than inside Israel, a trend underscored last night when two gunmen opened fire on a bus stop and injured 10 people – five seriously – in a residential neighbourhood in Neve Yaakov, a Jewish settlement in occupied east Jerusalem.

Israeli army checkpoints in the occupied territories have become the scene of regular shootings. This weekend, soldiers near Ramallah opened fire on the bullet-proof car of Ahmad Qreia, one of Yasser Arafat's top officials.

The Israeli army yesterday offered detailed explanations for shooting at the two pregnant women. It accused the drivers of their vehicles of trying to break through a roadblock and ignoring repeated commands from Israeli soldiers to stop. It said that in both cases the soldiers assumed they were under attack.

This will not stop a growing tide of criticism within Israel of the army's conduct, led by more than 200 reservists who have refused to serve in the occupied territories. Yesterday's events will further stoke this.

Nor will it assuage the anger of the Palestinians, any more than the prospect of an Israeli inquiry, also announced by the army yesterday. They know that the Israeli army hardly ever punishes its wayward soldiers, and when it does so they are treated with astounding leniency. That much has again been made clear. Three soldiers were punished for posing for "trophy" photographs as they stood over Israeli Arab shot by mistake at a roadblock last week. The most severe of the three sentences was a mere seven days in prison.