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The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel yesterday, June 23rd, published a detailed report of approximately 100 pages documenting the systematic use of brutal violence against children palestinesi da parte dello Stato d’Israele e del suo esercito. Il titolo del rapporto è eloquente: “L’essenza dell’infanzia è stata distrutta”. La Commissione indipendente ha esaminato violenze e attacchi sui bambini nei diversi territori palestinesi occupati, non solo a Gaza, e i crimini che essi hanno subito, compresi i crimini psicologici.
Il rapporto evidenzia chiaramente come l’accanimento specifico sui bambini sia fra le dimostrazioni più brucianti dell’intento genocidario di Israele verso il popolo palestinese. Si legge nel testo: “Il fatto di aver preso di mira i bambini palestinesi è fondamentale per stabilire l’intento genocida delle autorità e delle forze di security israeliane di distruggere il gruppo palestinese nel suo complesso a Gaza. La Commissione osserva che l’«intento di distruggere» non implica che tale distruzione debba necessariamente essersi verificata; tuttavia, l’intento specifico può essere accertato sulla base della totalità delle prove, attraverso il modello di condotta delle autorità israeliane e delle forze di sicurezza israeliane, anche nei casi in cui il prendere di mira i bambini sia proseguito nonostante chiari avvertimenti e, cosa importante, persino quando le conseguenze prevedibili di tale Action si siano effettivamente verificate. I bambini non sono semplicemente parte di una popolazione; la loro sopravvivenza è fondamentale per l’esistenza e la continuità del gruppo palestinese. Il numero stesso dei casi indagati e documentati dalla Commissione, che evidenziano un chiaro schema secondo cui i bambini sono stati presi di mira direttamente dalle forze di sicurezza israeliane, costituisce un elemento chiave dell’intento genocida delle autorità israeliane di distruggere il gruppo palestinese a Gaza.
The Commission considers that the killing and serious physical and mental injury inflicted upon Palestinian children were part of a strategy aimed at destroying the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian group in Gaza. The Commission therefore reiterates its conclusion that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed the crime of genocide in Gaza by killing and causing serious physical or mental injury to members of the group, including Palestinian children therein.”
Mettiamo a disposizione dei lettori la versione integrale in italiano del rapporto, nella nostra traduzione non ufficiale, per l’importanza del documento e la sua attualità. Come sempre, Kritica pubblica ogni suo articolo e materiale gratuitamente per i lettori. Puoi sostenere il work realizzato per metterti a disposizione il nostro rapporto con un contributo libero, Who.
The original English version of the report is Who.
Read and download the report in Italian
Below, we reproduce the conclusions of the report in their full version.
In qualità di potenza occupante, Israele è giuridicamente tenuto a garantire la protezione, l’assistenza e la sopravvivenza dei bambini palestinesi. Tuttavia, attraverso la natura, la portata e l’estensione delle operazioni militari israeliane a Gaza, il governo israeliano e le forze di sicurezza hanno deliberatamente compiuto atti che hanno causato la morte e gravi danni fisici e mentali a centinaia di migliaia di bambini palestinesi, distruggendo in modo irreparabile la sacralità dell’infanzia, compresi i legami familiari, l’identità, l’innocenza, la sicurezza e il futuro. La Commissione ha riscontrato che gran parte del danno subito dai bambini palestinesi non era accidentale, ma mirava a distruggere l’esistenza dei palestinesi a Gaza come gruppo. Poiché i bambini incarnano la continuità biologica e sociale del gruppo, la Commissione ha motivi ragionevoli per concludere che questi atti facciano parte di una strategia deliberata volta a distruggere il futuro dei palestinesi a Gaza prendendo di mira i loro bambini.
The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children and pregnant women are inextricably linked to the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, as children represent the future bearers of their collective identity and resilience. By targeting children, Israel is eroding the fundamental fabric of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise their right to determine their future as a people.
Israele ha preso di mira i bambini palestinesi a Gaza in due modi distinti: direttamente, sparando ai loro organi vitali utilizzando armi di precisione quali quadricotteri e cecchini; e attraverso l’uso di armi ad alto impatto che causano attacchi diffusi e sistematici contro edifici residenziali, schools e campi profughi affollati di bambini. Israele è inoltre giuridicamente responsabile per non aver protetto i bambini palestinesi dal diventare bersagli dei soldati e dei Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and for having permitted, facilitated and encouraged the ongoing violence by settlers, which serves to consolidate settlements, annex Palestinian land and force Palestinians to abandon their lands.
Killings continued even after the October 2025 ceasefire. After October 2025, children continued to be killed and injured in various circumstances, including as they approached the so-called «yellow line,» demonstrating Israel's blatant disregard for the terms of the ceasefire. The Commission argues that a ceasefire that allows Israeli security forces to open fire on children crossing an ill-defined border cannot credibly be considered a cessation of hostilities. The vagueness of the markings, the absence of clear warnings, and the lack of safe corridors have turned the area into a death trap, particularly for children. It is scandalous that the «ceasefire» has effectively consolidated the continued Israeli occupation in Gaza, characterised by restrictions on civilian movement and attacks that cause casualties, including children.
Based on its investigations and documentation, the Commission has concluded, with well-founded reasons, that the following divisions, brigades or units of the Israeli security forces may be responsible for the killing and injury of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank in the following incidents:
- La Brigata Kfir per gli attacchi con drones e l’uccisione di due fratelli, di 10 e 9 anni, nei pressi di Bani Suheila, a est di Khan Younis, nel sud di Gaza, il 29 novembre 2025.
- The 162nd Division, in particular the 401st Brigade and Shayetet 13, for throwing hand grenades inside a residential building where 30 members of the same family were present, severely injuring a five-year-old child, and for subsequently shooting and killing eight members of his family, including his seven-month-pregnant mother and father, in Sheikh Radwan between 20 and 21 December 2023.
- The 401st Brigade, part of the 162nd Division, for shooting and killing Hind Rajab and members of her extended family, including Layan and other children present in the car, and for bombing the PRCS ambulance, killing two Palestinian aid workers in Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City, on 29 January 2024.
- 98th Division for shooting and killing a 15-year-old boy waving a white flag and his brother using a sniper rifle in the western area of Khan Younis on 24 January 2024.
- Multidimensional Unit/Unit 888 or Unit «Refaim» (Phantom), which used quadcopters to shoot and injure a 10-day-old baby on 12 April 2024469 and she is a four-year-old girl on 24 August 2024.
- 99th Division for shooting and wounding an eight-year-old child with a sniper rifle in the Bureij refugee camp on 10 December 2024.
- Duvdevan unit for shooting and wounding two girls (and an elderly woman) in Anza, south of Jenin, on 25 September 2024.
- The “Jordan Valley and Valleys Brigade”, also known as the 417th Territorial Brigade, for the killing of a 10-year-old child and an eight-year-old child along with their 23-year-old cousin following a drone strike in the village of Tammun on January 8th, 2025.
- Menashe Brigade for shooting and killing a two-year-old girl south of Jenin on January 25, 2025.
- The Ephraim Brigade for shooting and killing a 10-year-old child in Tulkarem on January 28, 2025.
- (k) The Paratrooper Battalion, which operated under the command of the Menashe Brigade, also known as the Territorial Brigade 431, for shooting and killing a 14-year-old boy in the Al Faraa refugee camp on November 16, 2025.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have given rise to a new generation of Palestinian children who will now face a life of disability that will shape their sense of agency and control over their future. Children are now suffering from a myriad of co-occurring injuries that have turned them into long-term patients who, as they grow, will require repeated surgeries and rehabilitation (services largely unavailable in Gaza), embedding disability into every stage of their lives. Consequently, disability among Palestinian children has ceased to be an individual medical condition and has now become a defining demographic reality: a cohort of Palestinians growing up without one or more limbs, with chronic pain and visible and invisible scars.
Israel is responsible for causing a severe orphan crisis. Israeli security forces have orphaned thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza. Exacerbating the orphans' plight, at least two orphanages in Gaza have been damaged by direct and indirect attacks. Israel has in effect turned these care facilities into militarised zones during its military campaign in Gaza.
Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, especially teenage boys, have been arrested, tortured and mistreated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities. Separating them from their families and communities and punishing them based on their age and Palestinian identity – or assuming they pose a threat for future acts they have not committed – raises critical issues of proportionality, necessity and reasonableness under international law. They have been detained alongside adults, systematically subjected to torture and physical violence, without any access to lawyers, parents, or information about their location. This has created prolonged uncertainty for their families, amounting to forced separation. Their detention may also amount to enforced disappearance.
La Commissione ha inoltre documentato episodi di sexual violence e di genere ai danni di bambini palestinesi, spesso durante gli arresti o in stato di detenzione, che hanno causato gravi danni fisici e psicologici. In linea con le precedenti conclusioni della Commissione sulla violenza sessuale commessa contro i palestinesi, le forze di sicurezza israeliane hanno utilizzato la violenza sessuale come tattica di guerra per punire, instillare paura e trattare i corpi dei palestinesi, compresi i bambini, come strumenti di umiliazione collettiva e oppressione, radicati in un modello prolungato, etnico, di genere e intergenerazionale di occupazione e ostilità israeliane.
Israel's deliberate attacks on hospitals, including those caring for infants and newborns, have systematically compromised children's access to life-saving care, undermining their survival as a protected group. These attacks, including the forced closure of paediatric hospitals, are part of a broader pattern of targeting infrastructure essential for children's well-being – including the health and survival of newborns. With Gaza's healthcare system collapsing, injured children have undergone operations in overcrowded or damaged facilities, often without anaesthesia, sterile conditions, or post-operative care, leading to permanent damage and increased mortality. Healthcare facilities catering for children have been targeted and destroyed by Israeli security forces, with the predictable effect of depriving children, including newborns, of essential healthcare, causing long-term physical and psychological harm and preventable deaths. A particularly grave consequence is that Gaza now has the highest concentration of child amputees globally.
The Commission claims that targeted attacks and the destruction of neonatal and obstetric health infrastructure by Israel in Gaza have had a particularly severe impact on birth rates and the health outcomes of newborns. These attacks have disrupted prenatal care, caused trauma to mothers, and contributed to the systemic collapse of the neonatal healthcare system, leading to an increase in miscarriages, premature births, low birth weight, and neonatal mortality, as well as a range of congenital disabilities that have caused permanent vulnerabilities in newborns. Over two years, the birth rate in Gaza has fallen, undermining the continuity of the Palestinian population. The damage inflicted on the reproductive capacity of Gaza's inhabitants and the denial of reproductive healthcare have caused severe, disproportionate, and long-term harm to pregnant women, newborns, and future generations.
Israel's use of starvation as a method of warfare, imposed through blockade and siege, has resulted in acute and chronic malnutrition among children in Gaza, denying them the basic requirements for survival. Children, including infants, have been deprived of the calories, proteins, and nutrients necessary for growth, with visible effects such as damage to hair, skin, and teeth, and limb paralysis. Immunological vulnerabilities have also contributed to the resurgence of diseases such as polio. The growing food insecurity, destruction of the healthcare system, and reduction in vaccinations have severely compromised children's health. Israel's use of starvation as a method of warfare has also caused severe reproductive damage to women and girls, with repercussions across all aspects of reproduction, including pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum recovery, and breastfeeding, as well as negatively impacting the health of newborns.
Israeli attacks on Gaza's schools, and the broader disruption of access to education due to the conflict, have led to the complete cessation of education for children in the Gaza Strip. Repeated bombardments, displacement, and the collapse of basic services have disrupted years of schooling, weakening foundational skills like reading, mathematics, memory recall, and structured study. Gaza's children have effectively been «left behind,» even if they have been able to receive informal education in makeshift classrooms or through online lessons. The disruption to education has also extended to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where Israeli security forces and settlers have shut down schools, attacked students and educational institutions, and obstructed the school pathway. The Commission stresses that the cognitive damage caused by the disruption to education extends beyond the lost years. It reconstructs Palestinian childhood around survival rather than learning, particularly in Gaza. By disrupting the educational pathway, Israeli authorities have systematically undermined children's capacity for learning, thereby sabotaging the intellectual and social foundations of Palestinian society itself.
The children of Gaza are suffering immense psychological damage as a direct consequence of hostilities and deteriorating living conditions. They have been deprived of any sense of security and future. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli military operations, arrests and detentions, checkpoints, raids, settler violence, and constant surveillance have terrorised children and created a pervasive sense of despair among them. Israeli policies have generated a constant situation of widespread and pervasive terror, which does not require continuous bombing to remain effective. Psychological damage has become intergenerational, giving rise to a peculiar «occupied psyche» in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope and develop an identity has been eroded. Israeli occupation and control have functioned as long-term mechanisms of domination, subjugation and oppression, thereby damaging memory, identity and hope across generations.
Israeli soldiers in Gaza filmed destroying and mocking children's toys raise serious ethical, disciplinary and legal concerns, symbolising the very dehumanisation of Palestinian childhood. The Commission considers that such acts were committed to demonstrate Israel's dominance and control over the population, reducing symbols of childhood to objects of humiliation and mockery, as well as Israel's subversion of an entire community through the desecration of shared property and spaces.
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PHOTO CREDITS: Hamed Sbeata