Over 600 Palestinian children abducted by Israel in 2025 amid systematic abuse, report reveals
There are barely any organisations highlighting the plight of Palestinian detainees as they lose precious years of their lives, with no hope of justice.
The Israelis abducted more than 600 Palestinian children — “one of whom died in prison as a result of [its] starvation policy” — in 2025, a new report by the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies has revealed.
The routine abduction of Palestinian children stems from Israel’s policy that “deliberately and systematically targets children with the aim of destroying their lives and futures and affecting their psychological and physical condition, in order to create a weak and fearful generation afraid to resist the occupation in the future,” the centre’s director and researcher Riyad al-Ashqar explained. “This is carried out through arrests, harsh interrogation, and placing them in inhumane detention conditions, with the objective of ‘searing their consciousness’ that this is the fate of anyone who stands against the occupation.”
The Israeli practice of abducting minors goes back decades and the report highlighted that “cases of detention among minors since 1967 have reached 55,000,” including the 600 kidnappings last year.
The criminal Israeli policy accelerated in the aftermath of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation of October 7, with children from Gaza being the worst affected. More than 1,700 children from the besieged enclave have been abducted to Israeli dungeons over the past two years. “This was accompanied by an unprecedented intensification of abuse and torture measures against them, subjecting them to harsh interrogation and imposing severe sentences, in addition to transferring a large number of them to administrative detention without charge,” the report added.
Many of the children in Gaza were kidnapped while seeking aid at the Israeli-American “aid” distribution sites run by the criminal enterprise known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Three children taken away from these sites to Israeli dungeons have recounted being subjected to horrific mental and physical abuse. One of them revealed attempting suicide twice to alleviate his suffering, while all three of them continue to experience recurring nightmares.
The Israelis abducted children as young as 10 and subjected them to inhumane treatment. “It proceeded to arrest wounded children after shooting them, transporting them in military vehicles lacking medical equipment, failing to provide them with primary care, interrogating them in hospitals, or transferring them before completing their recovery to interrogation and detention centers,” the report added.
Children are often abducted from inside their homes and are subjected to humiliating treatment in front of their families before being taken away. “Torture of detained children begins from the first moment of arrest, through arbitrary arrests from their homes in late night hours and beating them in front of their families,” according to the report.
Of the nearly 100 Palestinian detainees who have been killed as a result of systematic abuse, deprivation, and neglect since the start of the Gaza genocide, one was a child. Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad, 17, was deprived of food in the Megiddo dungeon and ultimately died of starvation. “The post-mortem findings indicated that Walid suffered from severe and prolonged malnutrition, inflammation of a section of the colon, and the presence of a large mass in the abdomen, likely originating from the colon,” a report documenting the murder of Palestinians in Israeli dungeons by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) revealed last November.
The occupation continues to detain more than 350 Palestinian children. “Among them are 155 serving actual sentences ranging from several months to several years, while 90 children are detained without any charge or justification under so-called ‘administrative detention,’ and the remainder are detainees awaiting trial, distributed across Megiddo and Ofer prisons,” the report reveals.
Furthermore, as a result of the unsanitary conditions inside the Israeli dungeons, the imprisoned children easily catch skin diseases, the most common of which is scabies due to the “unavailability of hygiene supplies, not being allowed to bathe, water shortages, failure to isolate infected individuals, and severe overcrowding inside the cells.” Winter adds another layer of suffering: “The conditions of child prisoners become increasingly difficult and harsh during winter, as their weak bodies cannot endure these harsh and painful conditions, with no heating means or sufficient blankets and winter clothing available.”
Israel is the only country in the world that regularly tries minors in military courts, in complete contravention of international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the prosecution of children in military tribunals.
Despite the release of thousands of detainees as part of prisoner exchange deals in the aftermath of Al-Aqsa Flood, more than 9,300 Palestinians continue to endure horrific abuse in Israeli dungeons. Apart from more than 350 children, 51 women have also been incarcerated and are also being subjected to systematic abuse and neglect.
There are barely any organisations highlighting the plight of Palestinian detainees as they lose precious years of their lives, with no hope of justice. Each day in detention steals their future, demanding urgent accountability from the world. However, the past two years have revealed a grim, depressing truth: if a live-streamed genocide failed to move the world into action, silent suffering behind thick bars and concrete is unlikely to do anything. In this bleak context, reports such as these amount to little more than academic exercises.
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I’ve found myself outraged, feeling powerless, the deepest heart felt sorrow. Daily, several times daily, or America’s 24/7, I send out unconditional love towards every heart beating in this hurtful, deliberate, abuse/cruelty of God’s children & of the land.
We are guilty for not stopping this. The rule of law abandoned. Shame !especially US allowing this and supporting Israel with arms and platitudes.