On Palestinian Child Day, April 5, 2005, MIFTAH calls on the global community to improve protection of Palestinian children against Israeli violations of human and children’s rights, and to help provide long-term assistance for grossly neglected basic children’s needs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Whereas the world seems fixated on the need to provide Israel with security at this stage of the Middle East peace process, the violations of Palestinian children’s rights are not even considered an issue. Yet, no less than 872 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. That is more than one child every two days over a period of four-and-a-half years. Tens of thousands more carry physical and mental scars that will accompany them for the rest of their lives. During the same time period 113 Israeli children were killed. All of these little people were innocent. Children are, under no circumstances, legitimate targets of lethal force in any conflict, for any reason whatsoever. Yet both sides of this conflict are guilty of violating this most basic precept of international law.

And Israel’s army is the main perpetrator. Aside from seemingly senseless attacks on unarmed children, Israeli blockades and closures have led to serious malnourishment of children, child labor, jailings of children, torture of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, and a lack of sufficient health care and education. At present, some 323 children are being held in Israeli jails, including 10 girls. There are no Israeli children in Palestinian jails. Twenty Palestinian boys are being held in so-called ‘administrative detention’, i.e. as political prisoners, without ever having been informed of any charges leveled against them. Like freedom of movement, education is another basic human right that is being denied several generations of Palestinians by the Israeli closure regime. The prevention of education amounts to a crime against humanity.

Furthermore, three-quarters of the children in the Gaza Strip today suffer from anxiety and nightmares. Many suffer flashbacks of violent events. According to research by the Gaza Community Center for Mental Health, 55 per cent of kids in areas of intense conflict, such as Rafah, have acute post-traumatic stress disorder. In the Gaza Strip, for thousands of recently wounded children, there are only two physicians who offer physical rehabilitation therapies. Many of their patients are unable to reach them because of closures and curfews imposed by the Israeli military. MIFTAH believes that only a concerted effort by the global community can achieve peace and justice.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, is a non-governmental, non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society through promoting public accountability, transparency, the free flow of information and ideas and the challenging of stereotyping at home and abroad.