PA accuses Israel of ‘deliberately, systematically targeting’ Palestinian children

The Palestinian Authority accused Israel yesterday of “deliberately and systematically targeting” Palestinian children and “committing the gravest crimes against them.” This, said the foreign ministry, includes “killing and maiming, arrest and detention, and countless other untold traumas.”

The latest victim of Israeli brutality against Palestinian children was three-year-old Mohammed Tamimi from the village of Nabi Saleh. “This child died yesterday of head wounds sustained last Thursday when Israeli occupation forces fired on his father’s car, demonstrating once again their total disregard for Palestinian lives, including the lives of children.”

Mohammed’s death brought to 20 the number of Palestinian children killed by Israel this year alone, the ministry pointed out. “This was another Israeli war crime against a defenceless, innocent child, with no consequences [for the perpetrators].”

The ministry added that Israel is not only killing Palestinian children. “It is also depriving them of their fundamental human rights, hampering their access to education, forcibly displacing them from their homes, detaining and torturing them, and denying them their rights to life. Israel deprives Palestinian children of their right to development, prosperity and dignity, in flagrant breach of humanitarian law and every norm of human decency and morality.”

READ: Palestinian toddler shot in the head by Israel, dies

Israel’s crimes against Palestinian children must not go unchecked, the PA ministry insisted, as this further endangers the lives of untold numbers of Palestinian children. “Israel and its political and military officials and settlers must be held accountable to the full extent of the law.”

In closing, it called for the UN Secretary-General “to immediately put Israel, the occupying power, and its settler militias on the List of Shame naming those committing grave violations against children.”