Children watch from atop a promontory overlooking shelters for people displaced by war, as smoke billows in the background near the Nuseirat camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on June 19, 2026.
| Photo Credit: EYAD BABA
What began as a response to the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, has prolonged into a nearly three-year-long aggression resulting in over 73,000 deaths and about 1.8 lakh injuries in the Gaza Strip. Children accounted for 30% of these casualties and 26% of the injuries. Israel’s actions have been termed a genocide by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry in its September 2025 report.
The nearly three-year-long aggression by Israel on Palestine has resulted in mounting casualties. About one-third of those killed were children.
Though Israel has denied such allegations, the Commission’s new report released on June 18, 2026, has offered further evidence of Israel’s violence. The report observed that several acts of the Israeli forces amounted to “war crimes of wilful killing and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
The Commission’s inquiry conducted in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel examined violations and crimes affecting Palestinian children. It noted how Israeli soldiers mocked and weaponised symbols of childhood in Gaza.
The UN identifies hate speech as a “precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide,” in cases like the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda .The phrases used by a section of political leaders and members of security forces in Israel, shown in the graphic below, reveals how their language stereotypes Palestinians to normalise brutal violence against even children
The report has captured various cases, showing how a systematic and deliberate infliction of harm has been imposed on the children in Gaza. The report highlighted that the children killed in Gaza represented around 2% of its entire child population.
Thousands of children have been orphaned or separated since October 7, 2023. The table below shows indicators related to amputation and disability among children in Gaza.
As per the report, the conditions of life imposed by Israel in Gaza has deprived the children access to schools and food, resulting in malnourishment among children.
The table below shows select indicators that show the impact of the conditions of life imposed by Israel in Gaza
Published – July 02, 2026 08:00 am IST
