AhlulBayt News Agency: A children’s rights advocacy group confirmed that 2025 was yet another devastating year in the lives of Palestinian children, marked by genocide, famine, torture, mass displacement, and enforced disappearances, alongside relentless violence by Israeli forces and settlers.
In a comprehensive report, Defense for Children International – Palestine said documentation shows the ongoing war on Gaza, combined with escalating repression in the West Bank, systematically stripped Palestinian children of their basic rights to life, safety, health, and childhood.
The report emphasized that despite “overwhelming evidence of mass atrocity crimes,” world leaders continued to shield Israel from accountability, leaving Palestinian children unprotected. The Israeli military, the report states, used starvation as a “weapon of war,” escalated torture in detention centers, and forcibly disappeared children in Gaza.
Impunity and daily horrors
Khaled Quzmar, the organization’s director general, said that in 2025, “Israeli forces killed, maimed, tortured, starved, kidnapped, and displaced Palestinian children every single day.” He stressed that not one Palestinian child experienced a single moment of safety throughout the year.
He described the situation as “the culmination of decades of impunity” enjoyed by Israeli forces and authorities, who continue to commit crimes against children without facing any consequences.
In the West Bank, the report documented the killing of 54 Palestinian children in 2025 by Israeli forces and settlers, who continue to enjoy state protection while illegally occupying the territory.
According to DCI-Palestine, Israeli authorities have withheld the bodies of at least 62 Palestinian children since June 2016, returning only six to their families, with the remains of 56 children still held by Israel.
Gaza: A killing field for children
The report said that killings, mutilations, and the total annihilation of entire families in Gaza reached catastrophic levels in 2025. Even the few children who were evacuated for treatment outside Gaza suffered severe injuries, deep psychological trauma, and overwhelming anxiety about their futures.
It documented numerous cases, while noting that thousands of children remain unaccounted for—buried under rubble, trapped in tents, or locked in prisons and displacement zones across the Strip.
Regarding living conditions, the report stressed that Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon reached unprecedented levels in 2025. A total blockade on Gaza cut off access to food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, while agricultural land, bakeries, mills, water infrastructure, and hospitals were deliberately destroyed. Infants and newborns were among the most vulnerable.
Crushing hope inside prisons
In Israeli prisons, Palestinian children faced acute shortages of food and water. The report highlighted the death of 17-year-old Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmed in Megiddo prison, the first documented death of a Palestinian child in Israeli custody in 2025.
An autopsy revealed severe muscle and fat wasting, untreated infections, dehydration, scabies, and trauma injuries, indicating months of starvation and abuse before his death.
The organization asserted that across Gaza and within Israel’s prison system, children were deliberately deprived of life-sustaining resources to “break their bodies, extinguish hope, and dismantle Palestinian existence.”
As of September 30, 2025, 350 Palestinian children remained in Israeli prisons, according to the Israeli Prison Service.
DCI-Palestine also reported a sharp rise in torture and mistreatment of children during all stages of detention in 2025. It found that 94% of detained children were interrogated without a family member present, and 89% were not informed of the reasons for their arrest.
The report said some children from Gaza were abducted while searching for food or humanitarian aid, then taken to Israel’s Sde Teiman military camp. There, they were stripped, starved, beaten, caged, electrocuted, and subjected to extreme abuse, including being held in “disco rooms” where they were blasted with loud music for hours and beaten randomly.
Worrying trends: disappearances and abuse
The report concluded that 2025 saw a sharp rise in enforced disappearances among Palestinian children, one of the most alarming developments in a year dominated by ongoing impunity.
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