‘There Is No Safety for Us’: West Bank Kids Under Growing Assault by Israeli Forces

An average of five children per day have been killed or wounded by Israeli occupation forces and settler-colonists in the West Bank of Palestine, according to a report published Tuesday by Save the Children, which sounded the alarm on what it called a “significant escalation of violence in the past six weeks.”

According to the charity, Israeli forces have killed 158 Palestinian children in the West Bank between October 7 and August 14. At least 1,400 other children have been injured. The majority of those killed – 115 children – were shot, while others have been killed by Israeli aerial bombing and drone strikes.

Child casualties have increased significantly since Israel launched a major offensive in the northern West Bank on August 28.

One 12-year-old girl from the Tulkarem refugee camp described what it was like to experience an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid.

“I felt a lot of fear because of the airstrikes and shootings,” she said. “By the third day, I was even more scared because the Israeli forces raided our home. They barged in, screaming, and my mum tried to speak to them, but they swarmed the house and searched every room. We were so afraid of them.”

“There is no safety for us,” she added. “At any moment they might come back and at any moment they go – we don’t know.”

The girl’s mother told Save the Children that IDF troops “gathered at night, began the raid, and stayed a long time here and raided our home, terrorizing the kids, separating them, frightening them.”

“They blew up the door,” she continued. “My little girl couldn’t control herself and wet herself. [She] was standing, shaking in the corner. They pointed their guns at me.”

“The children are constantly afraid, deprived of the simplest things,” she added. “Their mental health is deteriorating. These children deserve better. They deserve to be children, not to live in constant fear of raids and shootings.”

Save the Children said that “since last October there has been an increase in the arbitrary arrest, detention, and abuse of children in the Israeli military detention system, more forced displacement of families, demolition of homes, and a sharp rise in violent attacks by Israeli settlers.”

Jeremy Stoner, the charity’s Middle East regional director, stressed that “these actions are not isolated incidents; they are part of a trend of increasing Israeli military operations and use of force that are systematically eroding the safety, security, and fundamental rights of Palestinian children, who are paying the highest price in this escalating violence.”

“Every day, children are killed, injured, or left severely distressed, and their families are left grieving unimaginable losses,” he continued. “This environment deprives children of essential services and even the basic security of their homes, ripping away their sense of safety when they need it most.”

“We must not allow violence against children to become normalized or accepted as inevitable,” Stoner added. “We need urgent and decisive action to protect children across the West Bank and to stop this becoming their increasing reality.”

Israel’s offensive began just weeks after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – where Israel is also on trial for genocide in Gaza – declared the country’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately. Instead, Israel launched the largest campaign in the territory in decades.

According to the most recent United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs situation report, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 546 Palestinians and injured at least 5,669 others in the West Bank since October 7. Since January 2023, 772 West Bank Palestinians have been killed and more than 14,600 were wounded. Over that same period, Palestinians have killed 41 Israelis including eight children and wounded 278 others.

Meanwhile in Gaza, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 146,000 Palestinians since October 7, when the IDF began a “complete siege” and relentless bombardment, followed by a ground invasion, that displaced almost all of the embattled enclave’s 2.3 million people while starving and sickening many others.

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.