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b'tselem
Israel Killing West Bank Children at Highest Rate in Decades 'With Virtually No Accountability'
"The system does not merely back those who pull the trigger—it effectively grants them a license to kill," said the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
Jun 29, 2026
Between October 2023 and June 2026, Israel's military killed Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank at the highest rate since 1967, according to a report published Monday by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem.
The report, titled Unshielded Childhood, argues that "the unprecedented scale of killing of Palestinian children and teenagers by Israeli forces is the result of a reckless open-fire policy, expanded to be even more permissive than in the past, that is currently being implemented in the West Bank." Between October 7, 2023 and June 28, 2026, Israeli forces killed more than 240 children and teenagers, with 54 killed in 2025 alone.
The report, which tells the story of each child killed by Israeli forces last year, quotes Israel's top West Bank commander, Avi Bluth, who recently boasted that Israeli forces are "killing like we haven’t killed since 1967"—a reference to the Six-Day War in which Israel seized the West Bank. Among those killed between the start of 2025 and June 7, 2026 were two brothers—one 5 years old, the other 6—and a seven-month-old baby.
Yuli Novak, executive director of B'Tselem, said in a statement that "the widespread, unprecedented killing of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank is the result of a broader Israeli policy that enables the killing of Palestinians with virtually no accountability."
"When the military commander of the area boasts that Israel is killing Palestinians ‘like we haven't killed since 1967,’ he is confirming exactly that: The system does not merely back those who pull the trigger—it effectively grants them a license to kill," Novak added.
Citing fellow Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, B'Tselem noted that "no indictments are known to have been filed in cases involving killings in the West Bank" since October 2023.
"Yet the immunity guaranteed in advance and the absence of any real demand for accountability after these crimes are committed are not confined to the legal sphere," the report states. "They are also reflected in 'public impunity' that stems from the Israeli public’s indifference to the killing of Palestinian children."
בשנת 2025 הרגה ישראל הרגה 54 ילדים ובני נוער פלסטינים בגדה המערבית.
הדו״ח החדש שלנו מספר את סיפורם של כל אחד ואחת מהם.
מאז אוקטובר 2023 נהרגו בידי ישראל בגדה המערבית 1,086 פלסטינים, בהם 241 ילדים ובני נוער – ובהם גם סאם אבו הייכל, תינוק בן שבעה חודשים. אלה אינם מקרים חריגים,… pic.twitter.com/j96gyE3dAQ
— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) June 29, 2026
B'Tselem linked the spike in Israeli forces' killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank to "the military's declared easing of open-fire regulations at the end of 2021, reportedly permitting soldiers to use lethal fire against stone throwers in a departure from previous rules."
"The new regulations permitted use of lethal fire even at individuals fleeing after suspectedly throwing stones, who no longer posed a danger—in violation of international law," the group noted. "After 7 October 2023, the rules of engagement were further expanded, leading to another sharp rise in fatalities."
B'Tselem's investigation found that just two of the 54 Palestinian children and teenagers killed in the West Bank last year were armed with guns at the time they were killed by Israeli forces.
The group continued:
Thirteen were shot while throwing stones at roads or at armored Israeli forces, with no injuries reported from the stone-throwing. By contrast, at least 21 were not involved in any clashes, even when clashes were taking place nearby that included stone-throwing, hurling explosives or live fire. Regarding 12 minors, the military claimed they had tried to injure forces by throwing Molotov cocktails, IEDs ,or stones; B’Tselem’s investigation could neither verify nor refute this claim. Another teen was the object of a targeted killing. Forty-seven of the children and teenagers were killed by gunfire, and the remaining seven in airstrikes.
B'Tselem emphasized that the West Bank killings "cannot be separated from Israel's killing of more than 21,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip."
"By allowing Israel to kill on such a scale in Gaza without consequences, the international community has effectively given it a green light to pursue the same lethal policy in the West Bank," the group said in a statement. "As long as Israel continues to enjoy near-total impunity in the world, the lives of Palestinians—including children—will remain unprotected and exposed."
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'Shameful Assault on Human Rights': Trump Sanctions Palestinian Orgs That Called for UN to Investigate Israeli War Crimes
The former executive director of Human Rights Watch said Trump's "answer to Israeli atrocities is to censor reporting on them rather than to stop them."
Sep 05, 2025
Human rights groups around the world are reacting with horror after the Trump administration sanctioned three leading Palestinian human rights monitors who sought to bring evidence of Israeli war crimes before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The three groups—Al-Haq in the West Bank and the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights—are considered among the leading human rights monitors in the region.
In an announcement on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the sanctions were imposed on these groups because they "directly engaged in efforts by the international criminal court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel's consent."
In November 2023, the three groups petitioned the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials—including President Isaac Herzog and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
They cited Israel's widely documented use of indiscriminate airstrikes against densely populated civilian areas and its near-total blockade of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip—acts that, over the next nearly two years, have made Gaza virtually uninhabitable and brought it to the point of mass starvation.
The ICC would eventually issue warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024, which was met with threats of sanctions by the administration of then-President Joe Biden, who called the warrants "outrageous." Despite Netanyahu and his officials having visited multiple ICC member countries, which are obliged to carry out the court's warrants, no arrests have been made.
Since retaking office, US President Donald Trump has followed through on threats against the ICC, placing sanctions on the court as a body and threatening to sanction anyone who assisted in its prosecution or investigation into Israel or other US allies.
In August, as much of the world had begun to isolate Israel as it moved forward with an explicit ethnic cleansing campaign, the administration also sanctioned four of the ICC's judges, including the one who authorized the warrants against Israel's leaders.
Now, just days after the world's leading group of genocide scholars voted overwhelmingly for a resolution stating that Israel's actions meet the legal definition for the crime, the Trump administration is attempting to cripple the groups that are documenting those actions.
Former BBC radio journalist Sangita Myska noted that "this type of action is normally reserved for terrorists and drug traffickers," adding that it will "severely damage the organizations' ability to advocate for Palestinians."
It is not the first time the Trump administration has sanctioned a Palestinian human rights group. In June, it sanctioned Adameer, a Ramallah-based group focused on the rights of prisoners in Israel's brutal detention system.
At the time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the sanctions "would make day-to-day operations harder and harder, including for their employees, assisted communities, and service suppliers. This will also negatively affect their engagement with their partner organizations, locally and internationally, including US-based groups."
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that the administration was acting "as if the answer to Israeli atrocities is to censor reporting on them rather than to stop them."
In a joint statement issued Thursday, Al Haq, Al Mezan, and the PCHR described it as "a coward[ly], immoral, illegal, and undemocratic act."
"As the world moves to impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel," the groups said, "its ally, the US, is working to destroy Palestinian institutions working tirelessly for accountability for the victims of Israel's mass atrocity crimes."
(Video: Al Jazeera)
"They want to silence Palestinian voices," said PCHR's Basel Al-Sourani in an interview with Al Jazeera. "They want to silence anyone who stands up to Israeli crimes, anyone who tries to advocate for Palestinian rights, anyone who tries to bring perpetrators to justice."
Other human rights groups around the world have joined them in condemning the decision.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, a director at Amnesty International, described the sanctions against these groups as a "shameful assault on human rights and the global pursuit of justice."
"These organizations carry out vital and courageous work, meticulously documenting human rights violations under the most horrifying conditions," Guevara-Rosas continued. "They have steadfastly continued to do so in the face of war, genocide, and the oppressive reality of Israel's apartheid regime, as well as malicious attempts to discredit their findings and cripple their funding with spurious terrorism accusations. They are the voice of Palestinian victims, amplifying stories of human suffering and injustice that would otherwise remain unheard."
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which in July joined the growing international consensus that Israel is perpetrating a genocide, said it stands "in full solidarity with our colleagues and partners working for human rights between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."
The group described the US sanctions as "yet another move aimed at erasing fundamental norms of protecting human beings designed to enable Israel to continue harming Palestinians without restraint."
Al-Sourani said that the sanctions were "not a surprise, given the US administration being a partner in Israel's genocide."
Trump has endorsed Israel's stated goal to permanently displace most Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, with reporting earlier this week detailing plans to replace the destroyed enclave with a sprawling real-estate development.
Some of the developers of the plan are Israelis involved in the administration of the US-Israeli-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), where over a thousand Palestinian aid seekers have been killed, often in deliberate massacres by Israeli troops, in recent months.
Despite the new dangers they will impose, Al-Sourani said, "these sanctions, they will not deter us."
"We will continue documenting the Israeli crimes that are happening on the ground," Al-Sourani said. "We will continue our engagement with the ICC. We will continue advocating for justice, for the rule of law, and for the protection of the ICC judges and the prosecutors."
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3 in 4 Gaza Detainees Held Without Trial by Israel Are Civilians, Military Database Says
Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, said Israel's "unlawful combatants" law "has been used to facilitate the forced disappearance of hundreds and even thousands of people."
Sep 04, 2025
The vast majority of the Palestinians being held in Israel's brutal detention centers are civilians, according to data from a classified Israeli military database.
An investigation published Thursday by The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call reveals that of the more than 6,000 so-called "unlawful combatants" detained by Israel during the first 19 months of its military campaign in Gaza, just 1,450 of them were considered by the army to be Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.
In its public statements, the Israeli government and media often describe every Palestinian detained or killed in Gaza as a "terrorist." But according to The Guardian:
Those jailed for long periods without charge or trial include medical workers, teachers, civil servants, media workers, writers, sick and disabled people, and children.
Among the most egregious cases are those of an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer's jailed for six weeks and of a single mother separated from her young children. When the mother was released after 53 days she found the children begging on the streets.
Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law enacted in 2002, allows the military to hold people in detention if they have "reasonable grounds" to believe they participated in "hostile activities against the state of Israel" or are a member of a group that has.
The law allows them to be held for 75 days without access to a lawyer and another 45 days without being brought before a court. After October 7, 2023, those periods of internment were extended to 180 and 75 days, respectively.
Their detention periods are often extended automatically based on "secret evidence" that is not shared with detainees or their lawyers. According to the joint report, "There have been no known trials of anyone captured in Gaza since October 7."
This detention method is described as a way to subvert due process without declaring the detained to be prisoners of war, which entitles them to protection from violence under international law.
"If Israel were to put all [the detainees] on trial, they'd have to draft indictments on specific charges and present evidence of those allegations," Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, told +972. "Due process can be cumbersome. That's why they created the Unlawful Combatants Law, to bypass all of that."
Montell said that the law "has been used to facilitate the forced disappearance of hundreds and even thousands of people."
According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, shortly after the war kicked off, Israel began the "rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy."
Testimonies from dozens of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank who were arbitrarily detained revealed in August 2024 that the prisoners "were subjected to harsh arbitrary violence on a frequent basis, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation, forced lack of hygiene, sleep deprivation, restriction and punishment of religious worship, confiscation of all group and personal belongings, and denial of adequate medical care."
Those who have been released from detention often come back in horrendous health, as the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor found out when it documented the conditions of the roughly 2,000 detainees released during January's brief ceasefire period between Israel and Hamas. A report released by the group in February stated that:
The majority appeared to be in a serious state of decline, with each of them losing several kilograms of weight due to what appears to be intentional starvation.
Following their release, many of the inmates and detainees required immediate hospital transfers for critical medical examinations. One in particular seemed incapable of recognizing his future after being denied treatment while in custody.
These circumstances demonstrate how Israel has transformed its jails into institutionalized torture facilities for Palestinian detainees and prisoners, including those who were convicted and imprisoned prior to October 7, 2023.
Until the final moments before their release, most of the detainees endured psychological torture in addition to mistreatment and beatings.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Media Office, 77 Palestinians have died while in Israeli detention since the start of the war.
HaMoked says Israel is currently detaining more than 11,000 Palestinians as "security" inmates, including 2,662 people designated as "unlawful combatants"—the most since the designation was created. They are also holding 3,577 people in administrative detention, which allows people to be held without charge on the grounds that they may have broken the law in the future.
At least 360 children ages 12-17 are currently being held in Israeli detention, according to the latest figures from the Israel Prison Service released on June 30.
"These children are languishing in overcrowded Israeli prisons, fed rotten food, and beaten on a daily basis by Israeli guards, all while they are completely isolated from the outside world, including from their families and lawyers," said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at the Defense for Children International-Palestine.
A record number of these children, 147 of them, are being held under administrative detention without charge or trial.
The investigation by The Guardian, +972, and Local Call comes two weeks after the three outlets published a report on classified Israel Defense Forces data that showed 5 in 6 Palestinians killed in the first 19 months of the war were civilians, despite persistent claims by Israel and its Western allies that the military is targeting Hamas.
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