Ramallah, December 16, 2025—2025 marked another devastating year in which Palestinian children endured genocide, starvation, torture, mass displacement, enforced disappearance, and relentless violence by Israeli forces and settlers.
Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, coupled with intensifying repression in the West Bank, has systematically stripped Palestinian children of their rights to life, safety, health, and a childhood, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International - Palestine.
Despite overwhelming evidence of mass atrocity crimes, world leaders continued to shield Israel from accountability. As a result, Palestinian children remained unprotected as Israeli forces used starvation as a weapon of war and continue to escalate torture in detention, disappear children in Gaza, and kill and maim children across the occupied territory with impunity.
“Israeli forces killed, maimed, tortured, starved, abducted and displaced Palestinian children every single day in 2025,” said Khaled Quzmar, general director at DCIP. “There was not a single moment of safety for any Palestinian child, which is the culmination of decades of impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces and authorities, who have faced absolutely no consequences for their crimes against children.”
Killings and maiming: a year of relentless violence
In 2025, Israeli forces and settlers killed 54 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
West Bank
Israeli forces continue to regularly use live ammunition to carry out lethal raids throughout the West Bank, deliberately and arbitrarily killing children. Eight-year-old Jannat Mutawar was shot in the head while standing inside her home in Hebron, trying to pull her younger brother away from a window during an Israeli raid. She now faces permanent vision loss. Thirteen-year-old Amr Ali Ahmad Qabha was shot seven times, after unknowingly approaching an Israeli military position. Soldiers prevented paramedics and his father from reaching him for 40 minutes while he was still alive, only allowing access to Amr after he had died.
Israeli forces consistently enable and protect settlers illegally occupying the West Bank. In one case, a settler deliberately rammed his vehicle into 16-year-old Ahmad Wisam Ahmad Odeh, causing internal bleeding and a severe head injury. As Ahmad received emergency care, Israeli forces stormed the clinic, threatening and intimidating medical personnel and patients.
Israeli forces have withheld the bodies of at least 62 Palestinian children since June 2016, according to DCIP documentation. Only six have been returned to their families, while the remains of 56 children are still held by Israeli authorities. This practice constitutes collective punishment, violates international humanitarian law, and denies families the basic right to bury their children with dignity.
In September 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the state’s authority to confiscate Palestinian bodies following multiple legal challenges. Months later, on November 27, 2019, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett ordered that all bodies of Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis be withheld indefinitely.
Gaza
In Gaza, the scale of killing, maiming, and annihilation of entire Palestinian families remained catastrophic in 2025. In February, DCIP premiered “Through a Child’s Eyes,” a documentary amplifying the testimonies of children surviving the devastating reality of life in Gaza.
These horrors are exemplified by the story of the four Hassouna children. Their nightmare began when Israeli snipers killed their parents, forcing them to survive for two days without food or water beside their parents’ bodies, being eaten by stray dogs, until relatives rescued them. Fourteen-year-old Lina, was shot in the chest, during the rescue and survived several surgeries, after which she and her siblings continued to face profound emotional trauma. Their guardian, now taking care of them, also took care of 23 other children.
Even the few children who are evacuated from Gaza face catastrophic injuries, deep psychological trauma, and an unbearable uncertainty about their futures. Fifteen-year-old Majd Felfel, who survived an expanding-bullet facial injury and months of makeshift surgeries in besieged hospitals, arrived in Egypt emaciated, unable to chew, terrified of removing the mask that hides his disfigured face, and still waiting for the specialist care he urgently needed.
Four-year-old Hanan and two-year-old Misk Duqqi, each of whom lost limbs when an Israeli airstrike killed their mother, face similar limbo; their aunt tends to their wounds in Egypt while doctors explain that the prosthetics and long-term rehabilitation the girls require are unavailable, leaving them stranded far from home with no clear path to recovery or reunification. For these children, evacuation has not brought safety or stability, only a different kind of uncertainty, suspended between the trauma they survived in Gaza and a future no one can promise them.
These stories represent only a fraction of the children documented by DCIP. Thousands more remain uncounted beneath rubble, in tents, in prisons, and in scattered displacement zones across the Gaza Strip.
Starvation and the deliberate destruction of life-sustaining systems
Israel’s weaponization of starvation reached unprecedented levels in 2025 as Israeli authorities continued to impose total siege conditions on Gaza. Food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity were systematically blocked while agricultural land, bakeries, mills, water networks, and hospitals were deliberately destroyed.
DCIP published a report, “Starving a Generation,” in partnership with Doctors Against Genocide detailing Israel’s deliberate use of starvation to systematically and chronically malnourish Palestinian children and newborns in Gaza. DCIP found that this policy constituted torture under international law and forms part of a broader genocidal strategy against Palestinians in Gaza, an analysis that was then published by the Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture.
Infants and newborns were among the most vulnerable. In the cold months, forty-day-old Adam Shbair nearly died of hypothermia after repeated forced displacements forced his family into an unheated tent. Fifty-five-day-old Sham Al-Shambari died when freezing temperatures overwhelmed her malnourished body, after Israel destroyed their home and the surrounding civilian infrastructure. While, during the summer, after enduring months of the Israeli blockade, infants and newborns could not obtain the nourishment or medical care they needed in their first few days of life, many could not even breastfeed due to the malnutrition of their mothers.
Inside Israeli prisons, the severe lack of adequate food and water is prevalent among Palestinian child detainees. 2025 saw the first Palestinian child to ever die inside Israeli prisons, according to documentation collected by DCIP. 17-year-old Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad died inside Megiddo prison and his autopsy findings showed extreme muscle and fat wasting, untreated infections, dehydration, scabies, and blunt-force trauma—clear evidence that Walid was systematically starved and abused for months until he collapsed and died.
Across Gaza and inside Israel’s prison system, the deliberate deprivation of life-sustaining resources is engineered to break Palestinian children’s bodies, extinguish hope, and dismantle the conditions necessary for Palestinian life.
Escalation and expansion of the use of administrative detention against Palestinian children
Israeli forces seriously escalated their campaign to detain Palestinian children without charge or trial in 2025, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Month after month, the population and proportion of Palestinian child detainees in administrative detention grew to all-time high record levels.
This year, Israeli forces placed the youngest Palestinian child on record in administrative detention. Israeli forces detained 14-year-old Muin Ghassan Fahed Salahat from his home in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, during a pre-dawn raid on February 19 and issued a four-month administrative detention order against him on March 2, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Muin is the youngest Palestinian child placed under an administrative detention order since DCIP began monitoring child administrative detainees in 2008.
Arbitrarily depriving Palestinian children of their right to liberty through the use of administrative detention, which is the imprisonment of individuals for prolonged periods without charge or trial, often based on secret evidence amounting to arbitrary detention.
Administrative detention orders are issued by the Israeli military commander of the area, or a military officer delegated by the military commander, and can last up to six months, but there is no limit to the number of times an administrative detention order can be renewed. The orders are approved by military court judges giving the illusion of independent legal oversight, yet, Israeli military courts fail to meet international standards for independence and impartiality because military court judges are active duty or reserve officers in the Israeli military.
As of September 30, 2025, 350 Palestinian children are detained in Israeli prisons, according to the latest data available from the Israel Prison Service (IPS). 168 children, or 48 percent of the total, are held in administrative detention without charge or trial, which is both the highest number and the highest proportion on record since DCIP began monitoring these numbers in 2008. The IPS, which typically releases detainee data on a quarterly basis, was over a month late in releasing the data from the third quarter of 2025.
In September 2023, 15 percent of all Palestinian child detainees were held in administrative detention, according to IPS data monitored by DCIP.
The data released by the IPS accounts for prisons under its administration, including Megiddo and Ofer, where children are detained and imprisoned. This data does not include children who are detained at Israeli military detention and interrogation centers. There is no available data for the number of children or adults detained at these sites, though DCIP has gathered firsthand testimonies from previously detained children describing systematic torture and dehumanizing conditions.
Lawyers representing Palestinian detainees continue to face increasing barriers to legal representation, including the cancellation of scheduled visits, severe limitations on visiting hours, prolonged delays extending for months, and bans on bringing in even basic case materials. Lawyers are also forbidden from passing on simple messages from families, and children who wish to pass along messages to their families through a lawyer have been beaten. Additionally, Israeli authorities completely suspended family visits to Palestinian detainees following October 7, 2023.
Under international law, including Article 37(d) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child has the right to prompt access to legal assistance and to challenge the legality of their detention before a court. Additionally, Israel's deliberate obstruction of this right, alongside its prolonged bans on family visits and refusal to allow elected representatives to oversee detention conditions, violates the most basic standards of international humanitarian and human rights law.
It is clear that Israel has no intention of maintaining its detention system in accordance with international law. Instead, its treatment of Palestinian prisoners amounts to collective punishment, deliberately imposing degrading conditions, restricting access to food, medicine, and communication with the outside world.
Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children in military courts each year, while systematically stripping away the fundamental right to a fair trial right.
Systemic torture of Palestinian children in Israeli custody
Throughout 2025, Israeli forces escalated widespread torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children at every stage of the detention process to extreme extents. Throughout arrest, interrogation, and detention, children described being routinely slapped, beaten, kicked, verbally harassed, rifle-butted, and stepped on.
DCIP submitted an Alternative Report to the Sixth Periodic Report of Israel to 83rd Session of the Committee Against Torture (CAT) on October 13, detailing 325 affidavits from Palestinian child detainees from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem from January 1, 2021 to August 31, 2025. It was reported that 74 percent of children experienced physical violence from Israeli prison officers during detention, 26 percent were subjected to stress position abuse during interrogation, 58 percent were denied adequate food and water, and 21 percent were placed in solitary confinement for interrogation purposes for two days or more.
Israeli forces routinely place Palestinian children in solitary confinement for days or weeks at a time. Solitary cells are typically small, filthy, and without natural light. Children described being held in windowless rooms with rough gray walls, pit toilets that emitted foul odors, and a dirty mattress on the floor. Some cells were kept in total darkness, while others were flooded with harsh light day and night, causing disorientation and psychological distress.
Israeli authorities interrogated 94 percent of Palestinian child detainees without the presence of a family member, and 89 percent of children were not informed of the reason for their arrest. Israeli forces use coercive tactics, including the use of informants, resulting in children unintentionally making incriminating statements or even false confessions.
In Gaza, children were abducted by Israeli forces while seeking desperately needed food or humanitarian aid, then transferred to Sde Teiman, an Israeli military detention camp in southern Israel, where children were stripped, starved, beaten, and confined in cages. Children report being electrically shocked, beaten with sticks, and being held in the infamous ‘disco room,’ where soldiers blast deafening music for hours and assault detainees at random.
16-year-old Faris Ibrahim Faris Abu Jabal was suspended by his hands for an entire week after soldiers fabricated an image of his mother and sister being raped. 17-year-old Mahmoud Hani Mohammad Al-Majayda was beaten so hard that his shoulder was dislocated. He was denied medical care and subjected him to solitary confinement where he developed scabies and blisters across his body. Mahmoud attempted suicide twice. “The prison is inside me,” he said after release. “I wake in terror, feeling as if I am still trapped behind those walls.”
Israel’s detention of Palestinians has nothing to do with security, law or justice. It is a system designed to physically and mentally scar a generation of Palestinians in an attempt to suppress any attempt to resist Israel’s Apartheid regime or demand that their fundamental rights are upheld. Israel seeks to break Palestinian children’s hope, spirit, and personhood, in an attempt to see that Palestinians' right to self-determination is never realized.
Enforced disappearance of children in Gaza
A surge in enforced disappearances marked one of the gravest developments of 2025. As Israeli forces abducted children often while they were seeking aid, families were left without information, recourse, or the ability to locate their children.
DCIP documented 30 boys between the ages of 12 and 17 that went missing. DCIP interviewed the families of these boys, who have continually searched hospitals and morgues for their sons’ bodies and have found no signs of them. The families fear their children have been abducted and disappeared by Israeli forces. Only one child has been confirmed to be in Israeli military custody, according to a list of detainees from Gaza released by Israel.
Families searched desperately for their missing sons, moving between hospitals, morgues, and displacement centers in Gaza, only to find no trace of them. The father of 17-year-old Haitham Mohammad Jamil Al-Masri, who disappeared nearly two years ago and is believed to be held in Israeli prison, suffered two strokes while searching for answers. “How can my son be with me one moment and then just vanish?” he asked. “I am filled with despair, and I feel lost. He is just a child. He is not involved in any of this.”
The enforced disappearance of Palestinian children is a grave violation of international law. As long as Israeli authorities refuse to disclose the identities, locations, and conditions of detained children from Gaza, Palestinian families remain trapped in a cycle of terror and uncertainty, forced to live with the unbearable question of whether their children are alive, injured, or killed.
A year defined by impunity, a future determined by accountability
This year has shown, with devastating clarity, that Palestinian children are facing a crisis not of law, but of enforcement. International protections exist. International obligations are clear. Yet the international community continues to shield Israel as its forces starve, torture, disappear, and kill Palestinian children with unprecedented brutality.
Accountability cannot remain theoretical. The global community must act.
This year, DCIP has spoken before Parliament on the issue of child torture, participated in dozens of advocacy events, delivered trainings, provided expert commentary to the press, and contributed to news stories across international media. DCIP staff led briefing sessions, facilitated workshops, and hosted webinars on starvation, torture, and military detention, ensuring that the realities faced by Palestinian children remained at the center of public and policy discussions.
But awareness alone is not enough. Palestinian children deserve safety, justice, and a future free from violence. They deserve a world willing to uphold the laws created to protect them.
