UN Committee: Israeli killings of Palestinian children unprecedented

A United Nations committee on Thursday accused Israel of committing historically unprecedented attacks against Palestinian children, including mass killings and arbitrary detentions.

“The outrageous death of children is almost unique in history. This is an extremely dark point in history,” Bragi Gudbrandsson, deputy chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), told reporters.

“I don't think we have ever seen such massive violations as in Gaza before. These are extremely serious violations that we don't see very often.”

The CRC, which monitors compliance by states parties with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, published its findings on six states parties to the treaty, including Israel, at its most recent meeting on Thursday.

In its report, the committee expressed deep concern about the high number of children in the Gaza Strip killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned and exposed to hunger, malnutrition and disease as a result of Israel's “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks”.

At UN hearings prior to the report's release, Israel denied that its war on Gaza violated the treaty or international humanitarian law.

In addition to criticising Israel for the killing of Palestinian children, the CRC also expressed concern about the “ongoing abduction, arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention of large numbers of Palestinian children by Israeli forces, often without charge, trial or access to legal counsel or contact with family members”.

She called on Israel to release all arbitrarily detained Palestinian children and to end this practice.

The panel also called on Israel to “abolish the institutionalised system of detention and the use of torture and ill-treatment at all stages of the judicial process”.

Last week, the Gaza Health Ministry released the names of 710 Palestinian newborns killed by Israeli forces during the ongoing war.

They are among more than 16,700 Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks since last October, according to the Gaza-based government media office.

According to a June report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza as a result of the Israeli assault on the enclave; they are either lost, disappeared, arrested, buried under rubble or in mass graves.