Occupation forces kill children in the occupied West Bank at a growing rate, UN inquiry and UNICEF warn

Occupation forces in the occupied West Bank are killing Palestinian children at a rate that has climbed to roughly one per week, the UN children's agency and a major UN investigative commission warned separately this month, with new evidence pointing to a systematic pattern rather than isolated incidents.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published a report on Tuesday 23 June documenting Israeli violations against Palestinian children from 7 October 2023 to 31 March 2026. The 94-page paper, titled *"The essence of childhood has been destroyed"*, was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council.

The commission found that Israeli security forces have killed at least 20,179 and injured 44,143 children since 7 October 2023. Children accounted for around 30 percent of all those killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

The occupied West Bank: one child a week

Since January 2025, at least one Palestinian child has been killed on average every week in the occupied West Bank, a total of 70 children in that period, 93 percent of them by Israeli forces, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva in May.

A further 850 children were injured in the same period, mostly by live ammunition. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, 236 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

The commission's report focused specifically on the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, accusing Israeli forces of war crimes and concluding that the military has "repeatedly employed unreasonable, excessive and punitive force against children as a tool of control, deterrence and collective intimidation."

The killings come alongside what UNICEF described as historic levels of settler attacks, with OCHA data showing March 2026 recorded the highest number of Palestinians injured in settler attacks in the past 20 years.

Documented cases

On 25 January 2025, soldiers from the Israeli Menashe Brigade shot a two-year-old girl in the back of the head as she was having dinner with her family in south Jenin. She died immediately and is the youngest child killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023.

Three days later, soldiers from the Israeli Ephraim Brigade shot a 10-year-old boy at his father's house during a military incursion in Tulkarm. CCTV footage showed he was unarmed. Israeli soldiers delayed the ambulance taking him to hospital for 30 minutes. He died of his wounds on 7 February 2025.

Commission member Chris Sidoti described a further West Bank case at the Geneva press conference: a 14-year-old boy shot by an Israeli military patrol as he was leaving his house, in an area where no fighting was taking place at the time. He was shot, badly injured and lay on the ground while soldiers stood over him for 45 minutes as he bled to death.

Schools, detention, and infrastructure

In 2026 alone, 99 education-related incidents have been documented in the occupied West Bank, including the killing, injury and detention of students and the demolition of schools. In the two years to the end of 2025, more than 550 such incidents were recorded.

UNICEF also reported a sharp rise in the arrest and detention of Palestinian children, with 347 held in Israeli military detention for alleged security-related offences — the highest figure in eight years. More than half — 180 children — are held under administrative detention without required procedural safeguards, including detention without regular access to legal counsel or the right to challenge the detention.

More than 2,500 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 1,100 children, were forced out of their homes in the first four months of 2026, surpassing the total displacement recorded in all of 2025.

The commission's findings and Israel's response

The commission found that Israeli forces have committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the occupied West Bank. It reaffirmed its 2025 conclusion that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinian group in Gaza, finding that the scale and systematic nature of military operations have continued.

Commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said children are being killed in two principal ways: through airstrikes using high-yield explosives with wide area effects, and through quadcopters, drones and sniper rifles targeting children in the head and upper body.

The commission found that by targeting children, Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to self-determination.

Israel's government rejected the findings. The Foreign Ministry called the report "a propaganda piece as outrageous as its previous ones," while Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it "a political blood libel disguised as a UN document." Danon said the commission had failed to address Hamas's conduct, the October 2023 attack on Israel, or the use of children and civilians as human shields.

The commission's report covers the period following Hamas's attack on Israel in late 2023, which resulted in 1,200 deaths and 250 people taken hostage, and the subsequent war Israel waged against Gaza, which has to date killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.

The commission called for an end to Israel's continuing presence in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, in line with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.