The UN independent commission that examined violations and crimes against and affecting Palestinian children has found a clear pattern of conduct “showing the Israeli security forces directly targeted Palestinian children in different circumstances with the intention to kill them” and that it amounted to genocide.
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The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel is chaired by S Muralidhar, former chief justice of the Orissa High Court. A press release on the report quoted Justice Muralidhar as saying: “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
In all the cases investigated and documented by the commission where children were directly targeted, none of the children posed any threat to the Israeli security forces, the report noted and added that medical professionals treated many children with direct gunshot wounds to their head and upper body, indicating they were shot by snipers, drones or quadcopters.
The sheer number of cases investigated and documented by the Commission showed a clear pattern that children were directly targeted by the Israeli security forces which constituted a key element in the Israeli authorities’ genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza. The Commission found that the killing of and serious bodily and mental harm inflicted upon Palestinian children was part of a strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian group in Gaza.
“Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts. Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities,” stated the report.
The Commission contended that Israel’s targeting and destruction of neonatal and maternity healthcare infrastructures in Gaza has had a particularly severe impact on birth rates and infant health outcomes. The harming of Gazans’ reproductive capacity and the denial of reproductive health care have inflicted grave, disproportionate, and long-term harm on pregnant women and newborns and future generations, it added.
Based on its own investigations and documentation, the commission named several divisions, brigades or units of the Israeli security forces which could be responsible for the killing and injuring of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank. The commission called for putting an end to the transfer of arms and other equipment or items, including jet fuel, to Israel or third States where there is reason to suspect their use in military trade or operations that have involved or could involve the commission of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity or other violations of the Geneva Conventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It also called for investigations against Israeli individuals or organisations suspected of having participated in unlawful acts of violence against Palestinian children.
