
Report: The Children of Gaza
June 12, 2021
UN Children in Armed Conflict Report
June 22, 2021The Mission of the State of Palestine would like to share with you the letter sent from our Permanent Observer Mission in the UN to the General Assembly and all delegates, dated 16th June.
The letter outlines the ongoing aggressions and violations being committed by the occupying power against Palestine and aims to draw attention to the “the deepening hardships and vulnerabilities being endured by the Palestinian people as Israel, the occupying Power, escalates its illegal policies and practices in tandem with the rising lawlessness it has cultivated among the most extreme elements of its population, particularly the settlers illegally transferred to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
· Second round of airstrikes against Gaza on 15th June;
· Occupation forces brutally attacking Palestinians, clearing them from the streets and shutting down Palestinian businesses to make way for an anti-Palestinian march by extremists who chanted, among other things, “Death to Arabs” and “Burn, Shufat, Burn”;
· The occupying Power continues to coordinate, sponsor, and promote settler provocations at Jerusalem’s holy sites. Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif are becoming increasingly caught in the dangerous crosshairs of settler extremism;
· At the date of writing, 5 Palestinians had been killed since the beginning of June including one boy;
· Mohammad Hamayel, 15, is the third child to be killed in the village of Beita which is currently going through an intense effort by settlers to ethnically cleanse the area of Palestinians. The settlers have already seized hundreds of acres of Palestinian owned lands and protests are being violently suppressed with live fire and other weapons;
· The Israeli forces are carrying ut large scale raiding, detentions and confiscations of property, including at the headquarters of the Health Work Committee where equipment was seized. Amnesty said “The targeting of HWC is part of a wider attack by Israel against Palestinian civil society organizations.”;
· Video evidence emerged of the use of violence against detainees, showing more than 50 Palestinians tied and forcibly thrown onto concrete floors on top of each other they beat them with batons.
Meanwhile, new Israeli PM Naftali Bennet doubled-down on his anti-Palestinian rhetoric and occupation-entrenching views, proclaiming that the new government would “strengthen settlements across the whole of the land of Israel.”
Israel’s attempts to normalize its occupation must be countered with measures that are capable of stopping such acts of aggression and protecting human lives.
The so-called “temporary” occupation entered its 54th year this month, proving that Israel has no intention whatsoever to end it. Faced with this reality, States and the Security Council must utilize all available diplomatic, political, legal mechanisms and capabilities to assert international law as a source of authority on the question of Palestine in order to make this regime of colonial occupation and apartheid costly and finally bring it to an end, the only path to justice for the Palestinian people and to Palestinian-Israeli peace and security.
Israel is not the sovereign in occupied East Jerusalem or in any part of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 and has no right whatsoever to “route” or “re-route” such supremacist marches through Palestinian cities and no right to barricade areas throughout Jerusalem, including in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods, turning them into military zones as it continuously attempts to assert its illegal control, colonization and Judaization of the City.