On June 23, 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry released a 100-page report concluding that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the occupied West Bank. The Commission, composed of three senior international jurists and chaired by former Indian judge Srinivasan Muralidhar, had already concluded in 2025 that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
"The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces." Srinivasan Muralidhar, Commission Chair
The Commission found that Israeli forces killed children through two deliberate methods: airstrikes using high-yield explosives with wide-area effects, and quadcopters, drones, and sniper rifles that specifically targeted children in the head and upper body. The report determined that the deliberate targeting of children is a key indicator of Israel's genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian people.
The scale is staggering. The Commission documented at least 20,179 children killed and 44,143 children injured since October 2023. About 30 percent of all people killed in Gaza since the start of the war were children. According to UNICEF, more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded, and one Palestinian child has been killed on average every single day for more than eight months since the October 2025 ceasefire.
The report also documents the targeting of neonatal and maternity care centres, endangering newborns and driving a rise in miscarriages and stillbirths, the mass arrest, torture, and sexual abuse of children in Israeli detention with many still unaccounted for, and a sharp rise in settler violence against children in the West Bank, where B'Tselem reports 236 children killed since October 2023.
"By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future." Srinivasan Muralidhar
The Commission has identified specific Israeli military units responsible for killing and injuring children and called on all UN member states to uphold their legal obligations and ensure accountability. Israel's government dismissed the report as propaganda. The killing has not stopped: one day after the report's release, an Israeli drone struck a tent in al-Mawasi, an area Israel itself had designated a "safe zone," killing a 12-year-old child.
The world has been told, in the clearest official terms yet, what is being done to the children of Palestine. Silence is complicity.
