AT LEAST 17,000 CHILDREN IN GAZA SEPARATED FROM FAMILIES: REPORT

Wed 13 March 2024:

The UK-based Palestinian Return Centre submitted a report to the UN on the treatment of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Here’s a summary of what it said:

More than 12,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza in attacks by Israeli forces since October 7, with many others facing amputations and life-changing injuries.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates at least 17,000 children in Gaza are “now unaccompanied or separated from their families”, amid Israel’s five-month war on the coastal enclave.
Israeli forces “systematically” detain Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, leading to the detention of at least 200 kids since the war in Gaza began. They’re often subjected to psychological and physical torture.
“The suffering of children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must not fade into the background of the current conflict – it is part of it,” says the report.
Deliberately targeting and causing harm to civilians is considered a war crime.

Al Jazeera has this on a report by Save the Children which warns of the huge psychological damage being done to Palestinian children affected by Israel’s war in Gaza:

Without urgent action, Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip will inflict further lifelong detrimental mental harm to Palestinian children, with rapidly shrinking opportunities to recover, a report by Save the Children said.

The report notes that before 7 October, children in Gaza were already living with exceptionally poor mental health due to the 16 years of a blockade, lack of freedom of movement, various Israeli escalations on the Strip, economic collapse, and separation from family and friends.

“It is unacceptable that any child should contend with the horrors that those in Gaza have lived through,” said Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“While dodging bombs and bullets, fleeing through streets littered with debris and corpses, being forced to sleep in the open air and going without the basic food and clean water they need to survive, children in Gaza are going through a period of mass-scale shock and grief.

“This war and the physical and mental scars it is leaving on children is further eroding their resilience.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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