The game consists of mimicking the arrival of a rocket hitting one’s home: someone dies, the other children pull the “corpse” out of the rubble and carry it away. A diplomat who has witnessed this scene several times during his travels to Gaza during the war, and who prefers to remain anonymous, says he has seen the same scene depicted in children’s drawings as well. His explanation is that young children reproduce in play the only reality they know. “They live surrounded by violence and death, and this is a way to normalize them”.
Since the beginning of the October truce, military operations in the Strip have decreased but have not stopped. People continue to die, like Nasser Shamia, a sixteen-year-old from Jabalia, who was shot in the head by an Israeli drone last December and bled to death fifty meters from the “yellow line.” His body was later torn apart by an army bulldozer. When bombs and snipers do not strike, people die from lack of medical care, hunger, and cold. In less than a month, in the besieged enclave—short of food, medicine, and safe shelter due to the blockade imposed by Israeli authorities—nine children have died of hypothermia. The most recent, Shatha Abu Jarad, was only a few months old and lived in a bombed house without doors or windows.
Gaza remains the most dangerous place in the world for children. More than twenty thousand minors have been killed since October 7, 2023; UNICEF also reports the death of at least one hundred children since the start of the truce. This does not include orphans and amputees forced to live in tents without adequate medical assistance. Added to this is profound psychological devastation. “Growing up here is like building a structure on land shaken by constant earthquakes,” the diplomat explains. “Even when the tremors stop, the foundations remain compromised, and outside intervention would be needed to prevent collapse.”
According to Ajith Sunghay, head of the Amman office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied territories, Israel’s decision to expel 37 international NGOs and to target UNRWA will have devastating effects on a population made up almost half of minors. The blocking of aid will cause immediate shortages in healthcare, medical treatment, protection, and housing. “Without organizations like Doctors Without Borders, pregnant women and newborns will lose access to lifesaving care, as well as the psychological support needed by families and children traumatized by the war.”
Even without a declared war, the Gaza scenario has long extended to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as demonstrated by the continuous attacks by settlers—almost always in coordination with the army—and daily military operations. For Joel Carmel, a volunteer with the former soldiers’ organization Breaking the Silence, the “Gaza-ization” of the West Bank lies not only in the government’s intention to expand territorial control, but also in the radical change in soldiers’ rules of engagement: “They arrive with the Gaza war mindset, where almost anything is possible,” he explains. The price is paid by an entire generation of Palestinian children and adolescents who live in fear of being killed or arrested. Since October 7, of the more than one thousand people killed by settlers or soldiers in the West Bank, 220 were minors. The latest victim is Mohammad Na’san, 14, from Al Mughayyir.
In these cases, impunity is total: the military version claims they fired because the child “was carrying a large stone and was about to throw it.” Al Mughayyir is one of the villages most affected because of its strategic position between Ramallah and the Jordan Valley, an area where the forced transfer of Palestinian communities is most advanced. According to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, between October 2023 and the end of January 2026, 44 Palestinian settlements were forcibly evacuated and another 12 partially evacuated, affecting more than 1,200 children. For spokesperson Yair Dvir, the impact of “ethnic cleansing” on minors is devastating: “They live in a state of permanent terror, after years of violent incursions into villages and homes, witnessing with their own eyes attacks on their family members.
Many parents choose to flee to save their children, but forced displacement means losing homes and community networks. Some families seek refuge in cities; others build makeshift shelters in unsafe areas lacking schools and kindergartens, risking further evictions. While children in Gaza have lost two years of schooling, education in the West Bank is severely compromised by military raids, teachers’ strikes— caused by unpaid salaries due to Israel’s withholding of Palestinian tax revenues—hundreds of checkpoints that open and close arbitrarily, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure
At the beginning of 2025, the forced expulsion of 40,000 people from the Nur Shams, Jenin, and Tulkarem camps left a population largely made up of minors without homes or schools. In the Balata camp, near Nablus, army incursions are almost daily and schools remain closed for days at a time: “We have children aged seven or eight who still cannot read,” denounces Ahed Cusini of the Yafa Center.
The situation is worsened by Israel’s declared “war” on UNRWA. Before the conflict, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees managed 288 schools and two vocational training centers, with over 300,000 students. UNRWA estimates that today in Gaza 97 percent of educational infrastructure is destroyed or used as shelters, leaving 660,000 children outside the school system. In the West Bank, UNRWA runs 96 schools (six in East Jerusalem have been closed by Israeli authorities) for 48,000 students, but at least 5,200 of them experience prolonged interruptions to their education. Despite the efforts of UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Education through online teaching and e-learning platforms, “the concrete risk is that of having a ‘lost generation’ of children,” warns UNRWA official Jonathan Fowler. “Some have already lost up to five years of cumulative learning.”
In many cases, minors are directly targeted by occupying forces. According to Addameer, a Palestinian organization for prisoners’ rights, since October 7 at least 1,650 children have been arrested in the West Bank alone; 350 are still detained, often without formal charges. In Gaza, the number is unknown: many minors disappeared with their families during bombardments or in the months of activity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, at the center of serious “incidents” that caused at least 2,000 deaths. The army does not release reliable data on the number and identity of those held in detention centers
“The arrest of children has been a constant practice since 1967,” explains human rights activist and former Addameer director Sahar Francis, “but after October 7 the violence became indiscriminate. Raids often take place at dawn, with doors smashed in, explosions, and shouting. Minors are handcuffed, sometimes blindfolded, beaten, and transferred without families being told where they are: true enforced disappearances, especially widespread in Gaza.”
From the enclave come extreme testimonies, such as that of S.R., 15, arrested during the evacuation of Al-Sultan and used as a human shield for 48 days: forced to enter houses ahead of soldiers during fighting, he miraculously survived the demolition of a building he had been forced to enter and was then hit by tank fire
Other minors endure the harsh conditions of detention centers and Israeli prisons, where there is no distinction from the treatment of adults. M.K., 17, arrested at dawn near the Netzarim coastline and transferred between the Sde Teiman military camp and the Ofer and Megiddo prisons, recounts being kept handcuffed day and night for months, with insufficient food, few clothes, and degrading hygienic conditions. Assaults were almost daily, involving dogs, batons, stun grenades, and beatings. Medical care was denied or reduced to paracetamol only. Y.H., 17, arrested in July 2024 in the West Bank, says he was forced to remove stitches from his molars himself after months of ignored requests. He also recounts children with serious breathing problems or scabies being denied treatment, and detainees beaten and transferred for asking help for others.
For Khalid Kuzmar, president of Defense for Children Palestine (DCI), “since October 7 the number of arrested children has tripled, and whereas previously there were 5–10 cases per year of administrative detention, today about one third of detained minors are in this condition. Torture and the use of hunger as punishment are widespread practices”. Israeli authorities justify arrests on security grounds, but children are often detained in their homes o for stone-throwing, an offense that under Israeli law can carry sentences of 10 to 20 years. In military courts, Kuzmar says, international law is ignored: “When I objected in one case, a judge reminded me, laughing, that I was in a military court, not before the International Criminal Court.”
Drawing on years of experience as a defense lawyer, Kuzmar describes a judicial system where protections for minors have been hollowed out: lawyer meetings under surveillance, no confidentiality, children intimidated by guards, families barred from visiting and only allowed to attend hearings by video conference, in what he calls a “humiliating” context. Beyond restoring the rule of law, there is an enormous need for psychological support. “Many minors write wills or say ‘there is no future for children in Palestine,’ reflecting the despair of an entire generation that knows only violence and oppression.”
Kuzmar argues that the Israeli government applies a “free hand” policy, supported by figures such as Minister Ben-Gvir, which guarantees impunity to jailers, soldiers, and settlers.
Sahar Francis cites the case of Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, 17, who died of hunger and dehydration in Megiddo prison: despite autopsy results and testimonies, the case was closed. Even the documented rape at Sde Teiman risks being dismissed because the victim was sent back to Gaza and declared “untraceable.” The chief IDF prosecutor, Yifat Tomer-Yeroushalmi, was arrested on charges of having disseminated the video. For Joel Carmel, the government has exploited the dehumanization of Palestinians to shift attention from alleged crimes by soldiers to the supposed faults of magistrates, marking a further step toward systemic impunity: “Today it is almost impossible for soldiers to be held accountable by the system, because that system is structured to protect them, whatever they do.”