UNICEF Flags Israel Killing 01 Palestinian Child A Week In West Bank.

Occupied West Bank; May 2026: UNICEF said Israeli forces have killed an average of at least one Palestinian child every week in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2025, amid escalating military and settler violence, with 70 children killed during that period. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said on Tuesday (12th May 2026) that 70 children had been killed since then, warning they were paying “an intolerable price for escalating militarised operations and settler attacks”.

A further 850 children have been wounded, with most injuries caused by live ammunition. “All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks”, Elder said, adding that documented assaults on children included pepper sprayings, beatings, stabbings and shootings. Children are also increasingly at risk of arrest and detention by Israeli forces. At least 347 Palestinian children are being held in Israeli military detention over alleged security-related offences.

According to Save the Children, Palestinian children are the only children in the world systematically prosecuted in military courts. More than half of those detained, 180 children are being held under administrative detention, an Israeli policy that allows Palestinians to be imprisoned without charge or trial for indefinitely renewable periods. Testimonies gathered by leading rights groups, along with media reports, say detained children have faced starvation, beatings, sexual abuse and other inhumane treatment.

In November 2024, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing the detention of children as young as 12 years of age.

Elder added the attacks on children were not isolated incidents, but part of a wider pattern of violations targeting their basic rights, homes, schools and essential infrastructure. Israeli restrictions have increasingly limited Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank, as well as access to essentials including water, education, shelter and healthcare. “What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow”, he said.

“Education is also under sustained assault. For thousands of children across the West Bank, the daily journey to school has become a walk through fear”, Elder added. This year alone, there have been 99 documented cases of education being disrupted, including the killing, detention and wounding of students, as well as school demolitions, the military use of educational facilities and restrictions on access to learning.

“Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming sites of fear”, Elder said. “Attacks on schools and the denial of children’s access to education are grave violations against children with long-term consequences for their safety, wellbeing, and future”.

Elder also highlighted the growing displacement of Palestinians, with over 2,500, including 1,100 children those who have been forcibly expelled from their homes between January and April, surpassing the total recorded for all of 2025.

Water infrastructure, including sanitation and irrigation systems, has also repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces and settlers. “This has serious implications for both the Palestinian economy and children’s health, hygiene, and dignity”, Elder said. “Taken together, these patterns reveal an overarching reality: children are being targeted both through direct violence, and through the dismantling of essential systems and services. Their suffering cannot be normalised”.

Yesterday (Wednesday, 13^th May 2026) a 16 years old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli forces during a “coordinated” settler and military attack on the village of Jaljulia, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers and forces are carrying out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the occupied West Bank with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes and lands.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, over 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

According to OCHA, between 07th October 2023 and 22nd April 2026, 1,081 Palestinians of which at least 235 of them are children, were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 35 of them have been killed since the beginning of 2026.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official agency, said Israeli forces and settlers carried out a total of 1,819 attacks in March alone, including 1,322 by the Israeli forces and 497 by settlers. Violence and harassment by Israeli settlers continued unabated across the occupied West Bank, OCHA added. The attacks have risen dramatically since the start of the genocide in Gaza. Settler violence has also become a key driver of forced displacement in the occupied West Bank.

The attacks come as Israel’s security cabinet ratified a series of decisions pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz, enabling Israel to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”. Amnesty International said the expansion of illegal settlements and state-backed settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory were “a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action”.

In a report issued in March by the UN, the number of Palestinians forcibly driven from their homes by Israel in the occupied West Bank surged 25% between 01st November 2024 and 31st October 2025. During this 01 year period, more than 36,000 Palestinians were displaced. The report recorded 1,732 incidents of settler violence that caused casualties or property destruction, up from 1,400 in the previous reporting period which is an increase of nearly 25%. The attacks included sustained harassment, intimidation and the destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods. “Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct”, the report said, making it difficult to distinguish between state and settler violence.

Longstanding and pervasive impunity is “facilitating and encouraging violence against and harassment of Palestinians”, it added. Israeli soldiers and settlers are also using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts said this week. Palestinian women, men and children have reported attacks, forced nudity, invasive and painful body cavity searches, Israelis exposing their genitals, including to minors, and threats of sexual violence.

“Sexualised violence is used to pressure communities, shape decisions about remaining or leaving their homes and land, and alter patterns of daily life”, the group of international humanitarian organisations said in a report. “To force Palestinians out, settler’s resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, “with the backing of the Israeli government and military”, Peace Now said. “No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this”, said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinian communities against displacement.

Recently, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned in a report that Israeli policies in the West Bank, including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes aim to uproot Palestinian villages and areas.

“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime”, the report said, while adding that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.

Human rights groups say the Israeli occupation has allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians. Israeli organisation B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”. The United Nations have also warned last year (2025) that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.

Team Maverick.