UN report unveils Israel's genocidal tactics against Palestinian children

<p>It also examined the use of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, against Palestinian children, particularly during mass arrests and in detention, and analysed pattern of Israel’s targeting of critical infrastructure essential to children, such as healthcare facilities and its short-to long-term consequences, as well as the impact of reproductive violence on newborns, resulting in poor neonatal health and birthing outcomes, and attacks on orphanages and schools, impacting the loss of care for orphans and unaccompanied children, and inducing academic harm and learning disruptions for children, respectively.</p>

<p>The commission found that much of the harm suffered by Palestinian children was not incidental but intended to destroy the existence of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.</p>

<p>The report stated that the Israeli government and security forces have deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, irreparably destroying the sanctity of childhood, including family ties, identity, innocence, safety, and future.</p>

<p>“Since children embody the biological and social continuity of the group, the commission has reasonable grounds to conclude that these acts form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children,” reads the report.</p>

<p>The commission said Israel has targeted Palestinian children in Gaza in two distinct ways - directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons such as quadcopters and snipers, and through the use of high-impact weapons, causing widespread and systematic attacks on residential buildings, schools, and displacement camps crowded with children. </p>

<p>The commission added that Israel is also legally responsible for failing to protect Palestinian children from being targeted by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and for allowing, enabling, and encouraging ongoing settler violence, which serves to entrench settlements, annex Palestinian land, and force Palestinians off their land.</p>

<p>The report stated that the killings continued even after the October 2025 ceasefire, including when approaching the so-called ‘yellow line’, indicating Israel’s flagrant disregard of the terms of the ceasefire.</p>

<p>“Israeli attacks in Gaza have created a new generation of Palestinian children, who will now face a lifetime of disability that will shape their sense of autonomy and agency over their own future. Children now suffer from a myriad of compounding injuries, which have transformed them into long-term patients, who will require repeated surgeries and rehabilitation (services largely unavailable in Gaza) as they grow, anchoring disability into every phase of their lives.” </p>

<p>As a result, disability among Palestinian children has ceased to be an individual medical condition and has now become a defining demographic reality – a cohort of Palestinians growing up without one or more limbs, with chronic pain, and visible and invisible scars,” the report stated. </p>

<p>The <a href="https://iol.co.za/news/2026-03-15-israel-files-response-to-south-africas-genocide-case-at-the-icj/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">military campaign in Gaza</a> has also resulted in a severe orphan crisis, with Israeli security forces leaving thousands of Palestinian children without parents. </p>

<p>Furthermore, direct and indirect military strikes have damaged at least two local orphanages. These actions have effectively transformed essential care facilities into active militarised zones. </p>

<p>The commission has also documented incidents of sexual and gender-based violence targeting Palestinian children, often during arrests or in detention, causing severe physical and mental harm.</p>

<p>“Consistent with the commission’s previous findings on sexual violence committed against Palestinians, Israeli security forces used sexual violence as a tactic of war to punish, instill fear, and treat the bodies of Palestinians, including children, as instruments of collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities.”</p>

<p>The commission’s chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, said the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.</p>

<p>“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Muralidhar. </p>

<p>Muralidhar added that by targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.</p>

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