A UN committee says the horrific impact of Israel’s war on children in Gaza will leave an “extremely dark mark on history”.
A United Nations committee has accused Israel of serious violations of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza have had a catastrophic impact on children and are among the worst violations in recent history.
More than 15,000 minors have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war sparked by Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7. More than 1,100 people, mostly Israeli civilians, have been killed in Hamas attacks and about 250 have been captured. In response, Israel has launched a war in the besieged enclave, killing more than 41,000 people and reducing large swathes of Palestinian territory to rubble.
“The scandalous death of children is almost unique in history. It is an extremely dark moment in history,” Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice-chairman of the commission, told reporters on Thursday.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen a violation as massive as what we saw in Gaza. These are extremely serious violations that we don’t see often,” he said.
In addition to the casualties recorded by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, thousands of children are believed to be missing under the rubble, buried in unmarked graves or seriously injured by explosives, the British aid organization Save the Children said in a report published in June.
According to an Tel Aviv Tribune tally from January – when the number of children killed in Israel’s war in Gaza was around 10,000 – a Palestinian child was killed there every 15 minutes.
The 18-member U.N. committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, a widely adopted treaty that aims to protect children from violence and other abuse.
Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the U.N. hearings in Geneva on September 3-4.
They said the treaty did not apply to Gaza or the occupied West Bank, but that Israel was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. Israel says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas and is not targeting civilians but Palestinian fighters hiding among them, something Hamas denies.
Civilians and health workers on the ground have repeatedly told Tel Aviv Tribune that attacks on homes without warning and without ongoing fighting have taken place since October 7, with entire families wiped out by Israeli airstrikes.
The committee commended Israel for its presence at the hearings but said it “deeply regrets the State party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”
In its conclusions, the committee called on Israel to provide emergency aid to the thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, to provide support to orphans and to allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.
The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally make efforts to comply.
During the hearings, the UN experts also asked numerous questions about Israeli children, including those captured by Hamas, to which the Israeli delegation gave detailed answers.
Sabine Tassa, the mother of a 17-year-old boy shot dead in the October 7 attacks, addressed the UN audience and said the surviving children were traumatized.
“The children of Israel are in a terrible state,” she said.