Gaza Herald – Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCIP) documented 2025 as one of the most devastating years for Palestinian children, marked by genocide, starvation, torture, enforced disappearance, mass displacement, and relentless killings carried out by Israeli occupation forces across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
DCIP reported that Israeli occupation forces and settlers killed and maimed Palestinian children daily, stripping them of any moment of safety. Children were shot during military raids, run over by settlers, bombed in Gaza, and denied medical care, while Israel continued to withhold the bodies of dozens of Palestinian children as collective punishment.
In Gaza, Israel intensified the use of starvation as a weapon of war, imposing total siege conditions while deliberately destroying food systems, hospitals, and water infrastructure. Infants died from malnutrition and hypothermia, and child detainees suffered extreme deprivation, with DCIP documenting the first recorded death of a Palestinian child inside an Israeli prison due to starvation and abuse.
Israeli occupation authorities also escalated the mass detention of children without charge or trial, reaching record levels of administrative detention. Children as young as 14 were imprisoned, tortured, held in solitary confinement, and interrogated without legal or family presence, in a system that violates the most basic standards of international law.
DCIP warned that Israel’s actions amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide against Palestinian children, carried out with total impunity. The organization called on the international community to move beyond statements and enforce accountability, stressing that Palestinian children cannot survive another year of global silence.
