Children Affected by Armed Conflict in Israel and the OPT – 2010 annual review – UNICEF bulletin

Since 2007, a UNICEF-led working group has consolidated efforts to monitor and report on grave violations against children in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Members of the working group include: Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Save the Children, DCI-Palestine, B’Tselem, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, War Child Holland, OCHA, OHCHR, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNRWA and WHO. The violations that are being monitored include killing and injuries, arrest and detention, ill-treatment and torture, recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups, attacks on schools and hospitals, displacement, and denial of humanitarian access including access to health and education. The bulletin is published on a bi-monthly basis highlighting trends and patterns in grave violations against children during the reporting period. This report covers the period from January to December 2010 with analysis of trends and patterns in armed conflict violations compared with 2009.

Summary

In 2010, grave violations continued to be committed against children in the occupied Palestinian territory. Eleven Palestinian children were killed and 360 injured in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. No Israeli children were killed but two were injured. Palestinian children continued to be detained and subjected to ill-treatment, and in some cases torture, during arrest and interrogations by Israeli security forces. In East Jerusalem, search and arrest operations involving children as young as seven years old intensified in the Silwan neighbourhood, and child casualties increased at the end of the year as a result of the confrontations between private armed guards, hired by the Israeli Ministry of Housing to protect Israeli settlers, and local residents (unarmed). In Gaza, Palestinian children were shot at by Israeli security forces while collecting rubble in or near the Buffer Zone, hoping to earn some money to help their poverty-stricken families. Unknown armed Palestinian men attacked UNRWA summer schools and the Hamas authorities closed a youth organisation providing psychosocial and vocational support for more than 60,000 Gaza children and youth.