Ramallah, October 12 (RHC)-- Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has censured the brutal killing of dozens of kids and minors by the occupying Israeli regime since the start of the year, calling on the United Nations to provide special protection for Palestinian children amid heightened tensions in the occupied territories.

The ministry made the plea in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as the Israeli regime’s forces have killed more than 44 children and minors across the Palestinian territories since the beginning of the year.  The letter said the occupation forces are using “Israel’s infamous shoot-to-kill policy” that has resulted in the killing of hundreds of Palestinian children by “deliberately” aiming at their upper parts.  

“Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children and minors with the stated aim of killing and maiming them, thus, denying them their right to life. Children must never be killed or maimed.  The State of Palestine warns that Israel’s escalating crimes and deliberate targeting of Palestinian children will continue unabated and exponentially if accountability is not urgently and effectively pursued,” the letter said.

Stressing that the evidence of Israel’s mounting crimes against Palestinian children is “undoubtedly overwhelming,” the ministry said, “The State of Palestine calls on the [UN] Secretary General to rightly add Israel on the list of shame for its systematic violations against Palestinian children. Willfully exempting Israel from facing consequences for its crimes is inconsistent with international law and resolutions that form the basis for protection of children in armed conflicts.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said Palestinian children are entitled to their human rights, protection, health, dignity, and peace, underlining that double standards in enforcement of international law is unacceptable and indefensible and will cause great harm not only to the public but to the international rules-based order.

“We are firm in our conviction that the protection of children is humanity’s foremost moral, legal, and political obligation. The State of Palestine calls on the international community to end this intolerable nightmare that our children are living on a daily basis, and to take measures that hold Israel, the occupying Power, accountable for its heinous crimes,” the letter noted.

Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported on Monday that Mahmoud Mohammad Samoudi, a 12-year-old Palestinian, succumbed to his wounds after the Israeli occupying forces had critically shot him in the abdomen twelve days ago in the West Bank city of Jenin.

On Saturday, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian teenagers and injured nearly a dozen others during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp.  Wafa said at the time that undercover forces raided the camp, before Israeli military vehicles rolled into the site from multiple directions, sparking confrontations with local residents.

The attacks came hours after Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank.  The Palestinian Health Ministry said troops shot Adel Ibrahim Adel Daoud, 14, with a live round in the head, in al-Birin area south of Qalqilya city.

Furthermore, Israeli soldiers killed Mahdi Mohammad Ladadwa, 17, from al-Mazra’a al-Gharbiyya village northwest of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, after Palestinians intercepted an attack by extremist Israeli settlers on a house in the village.

Israeli forces have recently been conducting overnight raids and killings in the northern occupied West Bank, mainly in the cities of Jenin and Nablus, where new groups of Palestinian resistance fighters have been formed.

More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the Israeli-occupied territories since the start of the year, including 51 in the besieged Gaza Strip during Israel’s three-day onslaught in August.