There is a tragedy that many prefer to remain silent, the one experienced by the children trapped in the midst of Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

By María Josefina Arce

There is a tragedy that many prefer to remain silent, the one experienced by the children trapped in the midst of Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.  They are victims of Zionist repression and every day they see their right to life and physical integrity violated.

A new report by the Commission for Detainees and Former Detainees Affairs confirms the horrors experienced by Palestinian children and adolescents. In this year that is about to end, more than 600 were under house arrest in East Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinian people as the capital of their independent state.

Quoted by the Prensa Latina news agency, a report by the Palestinian Prisoners Society revealed that from 2015 to the present the Zionist police and army arrested more than nine thousand infants and adolescents.

The document alerts that many of them are captured at night in their homes, beaten in front of family members, handcuffed and subjected to interrogations without the presence of parents.

 According to international organizations, this persecution and Israeli violence against Palestinian children in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has increased shockingly since the 1990s.

Last August, the UN expressed its concern at the alarming number of children killed or injured this year in the occupied territories, where some 44% of the population is under 18 years of age.

Human rights organizations, including Israeli ones, put the number of children killed in these enclaves by Zionist troops since 2000 at more than 2,000.

Serious psychological problems are faced by this segment of the population, in addition to poverty, lack of housing and scarce access to drinking water, electricity, education and health.

Many children are forced to work due to the poverty of their families, a situation that worsened with the arrival of COVID 19, which also meant the abandonment of studies for many of them.

Israel violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child under the indifferent gaze and silence of many, even though it is one of the signatory countries.

Palestinian children, like those in the rest of the world, have the right to study, to medical care, to be safe in their homes and to be free from violence and arbitrary detention. They have the right to life.