Israel detained 1,200 Palestinian children in West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023: Rights groups

ISTANBUL

Israel has detained 1,200 Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, according to data released by Palestinian rights organizations jointly.

The data was published in a joint statement by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association on Saturday, marking Palestinian Children’s Day, which is observed on April 5 every year.

The statement revealed that child detainees are subjected to “torture, starvation, medical neglect, and systematic deprivation on a daily basis.”

These conditions recently resulted in the death of the first child prisoner since the beginning of the Gaza war, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad from the town of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, who was killed at Megiddo Prison in northern Israel.

Last week, both the Detainees Affairs Commission and the Prisoners' Society confirmed Ahmad’s death, citing forensic results that identified systematic starvation as the leading cause of his deteriorating condition and subsequent death.

The institutions said that arrest campaigns targeting children have escalated to unprecedented levels, aiming to “uproot them from their families and strip them of their childhoods during the bloodiest phase in their history.”

“Since the genocide began, children’s detentions have increased dramatically. In the West Bank alone, at least 1,200 children have been arrested,” it stated, noting that “as for Gaza, the exact number remains unknown due to Israel’s ongoing crimes of forced disappearance."

The organizations renewed their call for the international human rights community to take “concrete actions to hold Israeli leaders accountable for ongoing war crimes and to impose sanctions against them.”

So far, the identities of 63 prisoners who died in custody have been confirmed, including 40 from Gaza, according to the institutions.

Over 9,500 Palestinians, including women and more than 350 children, are currently held in Israeli prisons under harsh conditions, according to both Palestinian and Israeli human rights reports.

Tensions have been running high across the occupied West Bank, where more than 944 Palestinians were killed and around 7,000 others were injured, according to official Palestinian figures.

The International Court of Justice declared Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories illegal in July. It demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.