"Children are paying an intolerable price for escalating militarised operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
"Between January 2025 and today, at least one Palestinian child has been killed, on average, every week. That is, 70 Palestinian children killed in this timeframe. Ninety-three per cent of these were killed by Israeli forces. A further 850 children were injured. Most of those children killed or wounded were by live ammunition. All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks. OCHA said last month that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years, and we are seeing attacks become increasingly more coordinated. Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, beaten, and pepper sprayed.
"These are not isolated incidents-they point to a sustained pattern of the worst kinds of violations of children's rights, as well as attacks on children's homes, on their schools, and on the water they rely on. What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow.
"Homes are demolished. Education is attacked. Water systems are destroyed. Access to healthcare is obstructed. Movement is restricted. Over the past 30 months, more than 900 additional barriers and restrictions have been imposed across the West Bank. As a result, children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are routinely cut off from schools, hospitals, and other essential services, as movement becomes increasingly restricted or denied all together.
"Homes have become the frontline of attacks on children. In the first four months of this year, more than 2,500 Palestinians, including 1,100 children, have been displaced, surpassing the total displacement recorded in all of 2025. To recount a single story from my recent mission to the West Bank. Ezzaldin, 8, was asleep when settlers attacked his village. His family's home had been demolished two months earlier, so Ezzaldin was sleeping outside. Beaten with a piece of wood, he was hospitalised for head injuries. His mother had both her arms broken as she sought to protect her four-month-old baby, by placing her arms between her baby and the attacker's club.
"Education is also under sustained assault. For thousands of children across the West Bank, daily travel to school has become a walk through fear. There have been 99 documented education-related incidents in 2026 alone, including the killing, injury and detention of students, the demolition of schools, military use of school buildings, and denial of access. In just over two years to the end of 2025, more than 550 such incidents have been documented. Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming sites of fear. Attacks on schools and the denial of children's access to education are grave violations against children with long-term consequences for their safety, wellbeing, and future.
"It was harrowing to walk with 12-year-old Roa'a through her school destroyed by settlers and Israeli forces-a place where, within months, she should have been celebrating her grade 6 graduation, not mourning demolition. Once again, a school reduced to rubble.
"She was able to show me every aspect of her education in that place: from the 1st grade classroom to final year papers, to a now broken school heater she said the teacher would use when they got cold. Amid the wreckage, Roa'a asked a question that should haunt every one of us and demand not just condemnation, but actual action: 'When I saw my school destroyed, a heavy feeling overwhelmed me, and I asked myself, why was our school demolished?'
"In addition, according to OCHA, in 2026, more than 60 water and sanitation structures were vandalised, including pipelines, irrigation systems and water tanks, further limiting already fragile access to clean water. This has serious implications for both the Palestinian economy and children's health, hygiene, and dignity. Livelihoods are further dismantled through the theft of livestock.
"All this occurs alongside a sharp rise in the arrest and detention of children. The latest data indicates 347 Palestinian children from the West Bank are being held in Israeli military detention for alleged security-related offenses-the highest number in eight years. Alarmingly, more than half of these children-180-are held under administrative detention and without the required procedural safeguards, including detention without regular access to legal counsel and the right to challenge the detention.
"Taken together, these patterns reveal an overarching reality: children are being targeted both through direct violence, and through the dismantling of essential systems and services. Their suffering cannot be normalised.
"UNICEF is seeking to support children and their families in the West Bank to access safe water, sanitation and healthcare, and by providing cash assistance, learning materials, and psychosocial care.
"UNICEF calls on the Israeli authorities-who have legal obligations to uphold child rights in all areas within its jurisdiction or effective control, including occupied territories-to take immediate and decisive action to prevent further killing and maiming of Palestinian children and to protect their homes, schools and access to water in line with international law. UNICEF also calls on Member States with influence, to use their leverage to ensure that international law is respected."
