As the world celebrated International Children’s Day on Wednesday, Palestinians were counting their children killed by raids by Israel or its forces, as well as those arrested by Israeli authorities over the past year.
Since its beginning on October 7, 2023, the Israeli war on Gaza has resulted in the deaths of 13,319 children in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 167 other children in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s Commission for Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and the Prisoners’ Club said in a joint statement that since the start of the war, at least 770 children from the West Bank under the age of 18 have been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces.
The statement stated, “This fact was not actually recorded even at the height of the confrontation in the two most prominent uprisings in the history of our people.”
The authority and the club stated that “one of the most dangerous and terrifying developments is the occupation’s continued administrative arrest of about 100 children, and detaining them under the pretext of (the presence of a secret file)… The occupation also continues to arrest children from Gaza on the pretext that they are (illegal combatants).”
Israel uses an old law that allows it to detain Palestinians without trial for a period ranging between three and six months, which can be renewed, under the pretext of the existence of a secret security file for the detainee.
The statement stated that there is “no clear data on the numbers of children who have been arrested from Gaza, in light of the continuing crime of enforced disappearance against them inside the Israeli camps.”
Gaza students and schools
The Prisoner’s Club explained that the occupation re-arrested at least 9 of the 169 children who were released as part of the exchange deals that took place in November 2023.
Deprivation of education comes as another aspect of what the children of Palestine suffer, as the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education indicated, in a statement, that more than 11,000 children in the Gaza Strip and 81 from the West Bank have fallen since the start of the war.
It showed that 171 government schools in Gaza were severely damaged, and more than 77 were completely destroyed, and 126 government schools and 65 UNRWA schools were bombed and vandalized, compared to 91 schools that were also vandalized in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Ministry indicated that about 700,000 students are still deprived of going to their schools due to the ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip.
Torture and diseases
The Prisoners’ Club and Prisoners’ Affairs Authority statement said that the legal teams were able to conduct visits to many detained children, “during which dozens of testimonies were collected from children, which reflected the level of brutality practiced against them. Systematic crimes of torture and unprecedented robberies were carried out against them.”
“During the past months, child detainees have been affected by skin diseases, most notably scabies, which has turned into a health disaster that has taken over the majority of detainee sections and in several central prisons, as the occupation has effectively used it as a tool to torture detainees, including children, by depriving them of treatment,” according to the statement.
The two institutions reported that “the occupying state is the only country in the world that systematically and systematically tries between 600 and 700 Palestinian children before its military courts.”
The statement continued: “The occupation continues its crime against children by trying them and subjecting them to trials that lack the basic guarantees for fair trials, as in all trials of detainees. In the West Bank, children are subjected to trials in the Israeli military courts, which have formed and continue to be the primary arm for consolidating crimes against children.” And detainees in general, perhaps more than ever before.”
The Commission and the Club stressed that “Jerusalem children are subject to the provisions of the (Israeli Juvenile Law) in a discriminatory manner, and are deprived of the minimum rights, based on the courts’ approach based on transforming all exceptions into rules for dealing with them, noting that the rate of arrest – over the years – has constituted the rate The highest compared to any of the other geographical areas in the West Bank.
The statement said, “The level of brutality practiced by the occupation against our children constitutes one of the most prominent goals of the war of genocide that has been going on for more than 411 days, so that this stage of brutality is an extension of the policy of targeting children that the occupation has practiced for many decades.”
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