And yet, that attention has not resulted in any meaningful change for Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation. In fact, 2021 has been the deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014, a year which included Israel’s devastating military assault in the Gaza Strip codenamed “Operation Protective Edge.”
As of December 14, 86 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine, where I serve as General Director. Israeli forces and armed Israeli civilians killed 78 of those Palestinian children.
Based on our findings, a total of 67 Palestinian children were killed during the 11-day military escalation between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in May. Sixty of those children were killed by the Israeli military using tank-fired shells, live ammunition, missiles dropped from weaponized drones, and U.S.-sourced warplanes and Apache helicopters. DCIP also found that seven Palestinian children were killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian armed groups within the Gaza Strip during this period.
Over the course of the year, Israeli forces shot and killed a further 15 Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and shot dead another Palestinian child who was protesting near the Gaza perimeter fence in August. Armed Israeli civilians also shot and killed another two Palestinian children in the West Bank.
Under international law, intentional lethal force is only justified in circumstances where there is a direct threat to life or a threat of serious injury. However, evidence collected in DCIP’s investigations suggests that Israeli forces regularly use lethal force against Palestinian children in a manner that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings.
One of these children whose life was stolen by an Israeli bullet is Obaida Jawabra, who was killed at the mere age of 17. Obaida is recognizable to thousands of people around the world because in 2019, DCIP produced a short film about his experience in Israeli military detention. By the time he was 15, Israeli forces had already arrested and imprisoned Obaida twice: first when he was 14 years old, and again the following year. Like the overwhelming majority of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank, Obaida was accused of stone-throwing.
Israeli soldiers shot dead Obaida with live ammunition in Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron, on May 17. He sustained a gunshot wound to his chest during a demonstration at the entrance of the camp located near Route 60, the main Israeli highway that cuts through the West Bank to connect illegal Israeli settlements from Hebron to Jerusalem. A soldier standing about 70 meters (230 feet) away from Obadia fired the fatal shot, according to eyewitnesses interviewed by DCIP.
Obaida was set to graduate the following month from a vocational cooking course at the Talitha Kumi Community College in Beit Jala. And he was just three weeks shy of his 18th birthday.