DNA
RAMALLAH, APR 5: At least 350 Palestinian children are currently being held by the Israeli occupation in various central prisons and military camps across the country, including more than 100 of them who are incarcerated without trial or charge under Israel’s unlawful military court system.
On the occasion of the Palestinian Child’s Day marked annually on April 5, Palestinian political prisoners’ legal defense and advocacy groups issue this report highlighting key facts and figures surrounding the children held in difficult conditions behind Israeli bars amid the most violent period yet in the Palestinian people’s struggle against the occupation.
Like the rest of the thousands of political prisoners held by the occupation, Palestinian children face a wide array of abuses and rights violations including torture, starvation, deprivation of medical care and systematic maltreatment. These policies lead to the killing of the first child detainee since the start of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023. The minor, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad from the town of Silwad near Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank, was martyred in Israel’s Megiddo prison on March 22, 2025.
In parallel with Israel’s significantly increasing mass arrests since the genocide, children have not been spared. No less than 1,200 cases of arrests among children in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been recorded since October 2023. As for Gaza, Israeli authorities have blocked the ability of Palestinian lawyers and prisoner groups from gaining access to information on the number of cases of arrest among children as well as the number who remain in custody with many subject to the severe crime of enforced disappearance.
Over the past few months, legal teams of prisoner groups have been able to carry out visits to many child detainees in the Israeli prisons of Ofer, Megiddo, and Damon, despite the heavy restrictions imposed on lawyer visits. During these visits, dozens of testimonies were collected from the children, reflecting the level of brutality they are subjected to.
They have been enduring an unprecedented level and scale of abuse behind bars. Severe physical assault by Israeli occupation guards is one of the most prominent abuses taking place inside prisons, including through sudden, violent raids on their cells by specialized prison units leaving many of them wounded. Statistics and documented testimonies indicate that the majority of the children arrested are subject to one or more forms of physical and psychological torture, through a range of systematic methods that violate enshrined protection laws, international standards and child rights agreements.
Additionally, there have been cases of executions of Palestinian children during their arrest as well as documentation of cases where occupation soldiers used children as hostages to pressure family members into surrendering. There are also instances where the occupation’s intelligence services summon the families of the children, forcing them to bring their children for military interrogations. Dozens of children are also being subject to mass field interrogations.
The abuse of Palestinian children begins from the moment of their arrests in the late hours of the night, where dozens of heavily armed soldiers raid Palestinian homes in a violent manner and cause intentional vandalism and destruction before the arrest, terrorizing the child and their entire family.
Many of these children are injured or ill, and during their arrests, occupation soldiers use humiliating and degrading methods that violate their dignity. The majority of them are held in detention centers belonging to the occupation army under tragic conditions, with threats, insults, severe beatings, and deprivation of food and access to restrooms for long hours. This is done in an attempt to pressure them into making confessions. Children are also coerced into signing documents written in Hebrew which they do not read or understand. In addition, dozens of sick and wounded children have been denied medical treatment by prison authorities, including those suffering from chronic and serious diseases and various levels of injuries.
Starvation of Child Detainees
The crime of starvation, which is being perpetrated against prisoners, including children, has taken center stage in testimonies collected after the war on Gaza. Hunger looms over the child prisoners’ sections in an unprecedented manner, to the point where many of them are being forced to fast for days. What the prison administration refers to as meals are, in fact, mere scraps of food. While prisoners have, for decades, established certain standards within the sections with the help of adult prisoner supervisors, this system has effectively ceased to exist. The prison administration now exclusively controls the children, with no oversight as to what happens to them. The care that prisoners had attempted to establish through sacrifice was dismantled by the prison administration, just like all the previous conditions of prison life prior to the genocide.
Walid Ahmed, a 17-year-old child, was arrested from his family home in Silwad on September 30, 2024. During the months he spent in Megiddo prison, he faced systematic crimes, the most notable of which was the crime of starvation, which led to his martyrdom on March 22, 2025. Walid had suffered from scabies (the skin disease) for several months and was subjected to denial of medical care alongside intentional starvation, being completely deprived of treatment until his death. According to the post-mortem medical report of his autopsy, the primary cause of death was starvation.
Dozens of Children Contracted Scabies in Megiddo Prison and Were Denied Treatment
In recent months, child detainees have been suffering from skin diseases, most notably scabies, which has become a health disaster across several central prisons. The occupation has effectively used this disease as a tool to torture prisoners, including child detainees, by depriving them of treatment and of the necessary tools to eradicate the disease. The prison administration deliberately failed to take any measures to limit the spread of the diseases, which can be life-threatening if left untreated.
According to numerous legal team reports, many prisoners, including children, who went for visits had their bodies covered in sores and complained of being unable to sleep due to the intense itching they continuously endure. Despite some efforts by prisoner organizations to pressure the prison administration to provide the necessary tools to prevent the spread of the disease, particularly by ensuring an acceptable level of hygiene, the disease continues to spread widely among the prisoners, leading to the martyrdom of some prisoners in the past months due to the physical complications that arose from this disease.
Over 100 Children Held Without Trial or Charge
Israel’s military court system allows for the detention of Palestinian children without trial or charge under a “secret file” which neither the detainee nor the lawyer have access to in what is referred to as “administrative detention.” Since the genocide, the occupation’s practice of using this pretext to detain and incarcerate Palestinians, including children, has reached unprecedented levels. The number of Palestinians held under administrative detention as a whole reached 3,498 by early April 2025. Among them, there are over 100 children, including some under the age of 15, being held in administrative detention. These figures have never been recorded historically, even during the peak of confrontations in the most prominent uprisings against the occupation.
Occupation’s Military Courts: Part of the Brutality Against Children
The occupation relentlessly continues its crimes against Palestinian children, subjecting them to unjust military trials that lack the fundamental guarantees of due process, just as with all Palestinian political prisoners under Israeli detention. These sham trials serve as a tool for further oppression, where the rights of Palestinian children are systematically violated. Israeli military courts in the West Bank and the occupation courts in Jerusalem have become central instruments in this widespread abuse.
A particularly alarming and inhumane practice is the imposition of house arrest, which has become a prevalent tactic against Palestinian children, especially in occupied Jerusalem. This policy effectively transforms their homes into prisons, confining children to their residences under harsh conditions. The occupation authorities impose house arrest in a manner that isolates these children from their communities, education, and essential support networks, further exacerbating their suffering and denying them the most basic rights afforded to children under international law.
Call for International Action
Palestinian prisoners’ institutions persist in urging the international human rights system to take decisive action to hold the leaders of the occupation accountable for the war crimes they continue to commit against our people. They demand the imposition of comprehensive sanctions on the occupation to isolate it on the global stage, thereby restoring the international human rights system to its rightful role in upholding justice and human dignity. This is essential to break the paralyzing inaction that has allowed the ongoing genocide and aggression to persist unchecked. The institutions also call for the immediate end to the exceptional immunity granted to the occupying state, which has consistently evaded accountability, judgment, and punishment for its systematic violations of international law. It is time to hold the occupation to account and ensure that its impunity comes to an end.
