The Article 25 of the Hague Convention clearly prohibits attacking or shelling cities, villages, residential areas, or buildings devoid of defence means, regardless of the means used. The basic statutes of the International Criminal Court state explicitly that deliberately directing attacks against civilians or against civilian individuals who do not directly participate in hostilities constitutes a war crime. International agreements make harming children a crime punishable by law, such as the four Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols of 1979 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. However, Israel seems to be ignoring with any rules of international law, especially those related to children.
More than 2,700 Palestinian children have been killed and nearly 6,000 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, for a shocking average of more than 480 child casualties per day ever since the beginning of what seems to be a never ending war in modern history. More than 30 Israeli children have reportedly been killed, while at least 20 remain hostage in the Gaza Strip, their fates unknown.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a “second stage” in Israel’s war on Hamas, three weeks after Hamas launched a brutal incursion into Israel October 7. Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend in what officials described as a widening ground offensive as Israel pounded the territory from air, land and sea.
The human rights organization said that Gaza’s children have suffered severely since the start of the current Israeli offensive and have become the primary target of the ongoing “massacre” against the Palestinians, where lives have been extinguished, families torn apart, and children have suffered devastating effects. With children needing specialized medical care, suffering from the pain, loss, and the dominance of wounds due to Israel’s intense attacks on residential areas and civilian facilities, in a gross violation of the rules protecting children guaranteed under international humanitarian law. Hundreds of images and video clips have been documented, showing the shattering of the heads of young children and fragments penetrating their bodies, while the rubble scattered from the residential buildings destroyed above the heads of their inhabitants caused the bodies of hundreds of young children to be torn apart.
It added that the majority of the injured children in Gaza are suffering from horrifying burns, shrapnel wounds, and limb amputations, in addition to record levels of psychological trauma and terror, leaving them with their families without any safe shelter. The youngest victim in the Gaza Strip is Nabilah Nofal, who was born on the 7th of October, which witnessed the start of the current round of fighting, and she was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza just a week later after shrapnel penetrated her small body.
The impact of war on families and children is not only about the numbers of deaths and injuries but also about the severe psychological impact and their suffering from the lack of humanitarian supplies such as electricity, water, and other essential services. Gaza’s children are paying a heavy price for the consequences of Israel’s indiscriminate attacks, not only because they are vulnerable to killing and serious injuries but also because of the harmful psychological effects that may accompany them throughout their lives.
Israel is violating several rules of international law in its war on Gaza and its systematic targeting of children, including the failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants and the intentional harm to civilians and their property. It mentioned that Article 25 of the Hague Convention clearly prohibits attacking or shelling cities, villages, residential areas, or buildings devoid of defence means, regardless of the means used.
The basic statutes of the International Criminal Court state explicitly that deliberately directing attacks against civilians or against civilian individuals who do not directly participate in hostilities constitutes a war crime. International rules also provide special protection for children in armed conflicts and make avoiding harm to them a duty on warring parties, as they are civilians enjoying international protection.
International agreements make harming children a crime punishable by law, such as the four Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols of 1979 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. However, Israel does not comply with any rules of international law, especially those related to children.
Euro-Med Monitor concluded that the Israeli armed forces have advanced military techniques that enable them to accurately identify targets to avoid killing civilians and children, which means that avoiding the killing of innocent children is “practically possible,” but Israeli attacks are far from this clear commitment.
And even when the fighting stops, the cost to children and their communities will be borne for generations to come. War not only kills people; it kills possibility, slamming the door shut on what might have been. Children who have lost their lives will not grow up to be the people their communities needed them to become.
Children who survive could see their lives irrevocably altered through repeated exposure to traumatic events. Violence and upheaval can induce toxic stress, which can interfere with physical and cognitive development and cause mental-health problems in both the short and long term. Even before this latest escalation, more than 816,000 children in Gaza—three-quarters of its entire child population—were identified as needing mental-health and psychosocial support.
