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Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict refers to the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on minors in Israel and the Palestinian territories, focusing on the period from 1987 to the present.

Casualty figures

Casualty figures may differ because while international law specifies 18 as the age of adulthood, some leaders of the major Palestinian armed groups state they consider children of 16 to be adults. Israel also defines Palestinians in the Occupied Territories who are under the age of 16 as minors, while it defines those under the age of 18 in Israel as minors.

The First Intifada of mass protests and rioting by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza started in 1987, and children frequently participated. In an article in the London Review of Books, American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt claimed that the Israel Defense Forces ("IDF") encouraged troops to break protesters’ bones. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that during the first two years of the intifada, between 23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for such beating injuries and that nearly a third were under the age of ten. According to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights monitoring group, between 1987 and September 2000 Israel Defense Forces killed 281 minors under the age of 18 and Israeli settlers killed 23. Btselem states that during that same period Palestinian militants killed 18 Israeli minors in the disputed territories and within Israel's Green Line. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists 24 Israeli child fatalities between 1993 and 1999.

From the outbreak of the Second Intifada starting in 2000, to September 2012, B'Tselem statistics show that 990 Palestinian minors (not including those killed during the Gaza War, discussed below) and 129 Israeli minors were killed within Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. A study by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism covering September 2001 to January 2005 found that 46 Israelis and 88 Palestinians were below the age of 12 at the time of their deaths. The youngest victim of violence during the Second Intifada was an Israeli infant who was nine hours old at the time of his death. Other Israelis, children among them, were killed abroad in attacks related to the conflict. During the 2004-2009 period there were reports of 30 or more Palestinian children and infants dying, including as a result of miscarriage, at Israeli checkpoints where they were held for long periods of time and denied medical care. Additionally, suicide bombings and other attacks have caused Israeli women to suffer miscarriages, and numerous pregnant women have been killed.

Casualties after the three week Gaza War during the winter of 2008-2009 were disputed. B'Tselem put out a report stating that 320 Palestinian minors under the age of 18 who did not take part in hostilities had been killed by Israeli forces. It was unknown if six other dead children took part, but 19 children between the ages of 16 and 18 who did so also were killed. The Israeli military later released its own figures, stating only 89 children under the age of 16 died. According to Elihu D. Richter and Yael Stein of Hebrew University B’Tselem data showed that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian child deaths were male teenagers, suggesting many could have had some role in combat or support for combat.

Studies conducted by Israel's International Institute for Counter-Terrorism indicate that 96 percent of Palestinian fatalities during the Second Intifada were male and that the vast majority of child casualties were teenagers. Israeli fatalities do not show any great inclination in regards to gender or age.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that during the November 2012 Gaza-Israel clashes 30 Palestinian children were killed.

Israeli children

Though Israeli children were killed in the conflict during the decades prior, the first acts of Palestinian violence specifically targeting large numbers of Israeli children were committed in the 1970s. Notable examples include the Ma'alot massacre in which 22 Israeli high school students, aged 14–16, from Safed and a 4-year-old boy from Ma'alot were killed by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Avivim school bus massacre in which 9 children were killed, and the Kiryat Shmona massacre in which 9 children were killed.

About 70% of the Israeli children were killed in Palestinian suicide bombings. Others were killed in shootings and attacks on cars and buses. In addition, several rapes, kidnappings, and murders of Israeli children and teenagers have occurred.

According to Amnesty International, between 2000 and 2004 during the First Intifada "more than 100 Israeli children... killed and hundreds of others injured in suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks carried out by Palestinian armed groups in Israel and in the Occupied Territories."

Other Israeli children were killed in home invasions. For example, 5-year-old Danielle Shefi was shot and killed in her parents' bed in Adora by Palestinian gunmen in April 2002. In March 2011, two Palestinians infiltrated the town of Itamar and stabbed to death five members of the Fogel family, among them three young children. According to several reports, a three-month-old infant was decapitated.

Rock throwing and firebomb attacks by Palestinians on Israeli residents have been reported in the West Bank, leading to many injuries, including of children. Palestinians have reportedly targeted children on school buses and playgrounds.

Examples include:

• A suicide bombing outside a crowded discothèque on Friday night, 1 June 2001 killed 21 teenagers and injured 132. The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility.

• In 2001, a Palestinian sniper opened fire on the Avraham Avino settlement in Hebron from the Palestinian-controlled Abu Sneineh neighborhood. Ten month-old Shalhevet Pass was shot in the head and killed while sitting in her stroller; her father was wounded. Israeli leaders said that the sniper deliberately aimed for the baby.

• The Sbarro restaurant massacre in August 2001 killed 15 Israelis, among them 7 children and a pregnant woman.

• The Yeshivat Beit Yisrael massacre on 2 March 2002, targeting a group of women and children next to a synagogue, resulted in the deaths of seven children and four adults. Eight of the dead came from the same family.

• The Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in 2003 claimed the lives of four children, including a two-month old baby. Oren Almog, 10, lost his eyesight and five members of his family.

• The 2004 Murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, in which Palestinian militants killed Tali Hatuel, who was eight months pregnant along with her four daughters: Hila (11), Hadar (9), Roni (7) and Merav (2). After shooting at the vehicle in which Hatuel was driving with her daughters, witnesses said the militants approached the vehicle and shot the occupants repeatedly at close range. An alliance of Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the attack.

• In 2008, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed 8 teenagers at the Mercaz HaRav Kook high school in Jerusalem, and wounded 11. A 2009 poll found that 84 percent of Palestinians supported the attack. Support was 91 percent in the Gaza Strip compared to 79 percent in the West Bank.

• In September 2011, 25-year-old Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan were killed when Palestinians threw rocks at their car, causing it to overturn on a highway near Kiryat Arba. The Shin Bet said that it arrested two Palestinians who admitted to throwing the rock that killed the Palmers.

• On 9 July 2012, a Gaza sniper fired on Israeli cars near Yad Mordechai on Israel's side of the Gaza border, shattering the back windscreen of one of the cars and leaving broken glass on the car seat of a 7 month old baby. The Israel Defense Forces stated that 10 bullets were fired at the car in total.

Palestinian children

The first recorded incident of Israel Defense Forces killing Palestinian children was in November 1950 when three Palestinian children from the village of Yalo aged 8, 10 and 12, were shot near Dayr Ayyub in the Latrun salient. According to adult witnesses, "only one man fired at them with a sten-gun but none of the detachment attempted to interfere." In February 1953, one of five Arab shepherds shot in al-Burj was 13 years old. During the 1952 Beit Jala raid, 4 children ranging in age from 6 to 14 were killed by machine gun fire.

According to Amira Hass, 54 minors were brought to UNRWA clinics with head wounds from August 1989 to August 1993. The Association of Israeli and Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel) estimates that a child under the age of six was shot in the head every two weeks during the First Intifada.

According to the Defence for Children International (DCI), of the "595 children killed during the Second Intifada, 383, or 64.4%, died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, during assassination attempts, or when Israeli soldiers opened fire randomly" and "212 children, or 35.6%, died as a result of injuries sustained during clashes with Israeli military forces".

The DCI estimates that from the 1 January 2001 until 1 May 2003, at least 4,816 Palestinian children were injured, with the majority of injuries resulting from Israeli army activity while the children were going about their normal activities.

Amnesty International accused Israeli forces of inadequately investigating killings of children during the Second Intifada Intifada, while also condemning the killings of Israeli children by suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinians.

During Gaza War, a three-week armed conflict in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestinian militants during the winter of 2008–2009, an "unprecedented" number of children were killed or injured, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights which listed 313 killed. The Israel Defense Forces said that 89 "non-combatants" under the age of 18 died. B'Tselem reported that 318 minors below the age of 18 were killed. B'Tselem's numbers were disputed. When the United Nations attempted an investigation of high civilian deaths as a possible war crime, Israelis refused to co-operate.

During the November 2012 Israel-Gaza clashes, 30 children reportedly were killed.

Other examples of casualties include:

• In November 2000, 14-year-old Faris Odeh was shot and killed while clashing with Israeli troops at the Karni crossing.

• In 2001, an 11-year-old boy, Khalil al-Mughrabi, was killed by tank fire, and two others were injured. Al-Mughrabi had been playing football in a field a half mile away.

• In October 2004 Iman Darweesh Al Hams, 13, was killed by Israel Defense Forces fire near a military observation post in a "no-man's" zone near the Philadelphi Route. The commander who shot her was accused by his comrades and Palestinian witnesses of deliberatedly shooting her using automatic fire, leading to and investigation and trial; he later was acquitted.

• During a 2006 Israeli airstrike on alleged militants in an automobile a boy and a girl around five years old and a 16-year-old girl were killed. Several other children in the car were injured.

• During the 2007 assassination of Salah Shahade, a member of Hamas, several civilians were killed, including 8 children.

• In December 2008 two Palestinian school girls were killed in Gaza when a Qassam rocket launched by militants fell short of its Israeli target and into a house.

• During three months of 2010 Israeli troops non-fatally shot 10 children aged 13 to 17 who were collecting rubble for building material inside or even well outside the Gaza border "buffer zone" created by Israel along the Gaza border. Because most of the injuries were to the legs and feet and soldiers likely did not aim to kill, doctors assumed that the soldiers knew they were not militants. During this period an Israeli tank shot and killed a 17-year-old and 16-year-old boy who was harvesting olives outside the official zone.

Foreign children

According to Btselem, 70 foreign citizens were killed in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza between September 2000 and September 2012. 12 (all adults) were killed by Israeli security forces while 58 (adults and children) were killed by Palestinians.

Examples include:

• Aleksei Lupalu, 16, of the Ukraine was killed in the Dolphinarium discotheque suicide bombing on June 2, 2001 along with 20 other civilians. Hamas claimed responsibility.
• Shmuel Taubenfeld, 3 months, of New Square, New York was killed in the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing on August 19, 2003 along with 22 other civilians, of whom 2 were foreign citizens. Over 130 were injured, and 7 fatalities were children. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

• Daniel Wultz, aged 16, of Weston, Florida, USA, was killed in the 2006 Tel Aviv shawarma restaurant bombing. 10 other civilians were killed, of whom 7 were Israeli and 3 were from other countries, and over 70 were injured. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Later, his family filed a lawsuit against Iran and Syria for supporting the attack. They won the case and $323,000,000 in May 2012 in a U.S. District Court.

• In March 2012, a French Muslim attacked the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school, later stating he did it to avenge Palestinians. He shot and killed a Rabbi who taught there and his two sons, Aryeh, aged 6, and Gabriel, aged 3, as well as 8-year-old Miriam Monsonego and severely injured 17-year-old Bryan Bijaoui.

Treatment of Palestinian Children by the IDF

In 2012, Breaking the Silence, an organization founded by former Israeli soldiers whose purpose is to expose alleged abuses committed by the Israeli Defence Forces released a booklet of witness reports written by more than 30 former Israeli soldiers. These reports document of Palestinian children being beaten, intimidated, humiliated, verbally abused and injured by Israeli soldiers. Breaking the Silence is controversial and has been criticized for failing to provide evidence for its claims.

Since the Second Intifada, many human rights and non-governmental organizations have raised concerns over Israel's treatment of Palestinian civilians, specifically children. UNICEF, Amnesty International, B'Tselem and individuals such as the British writer Derek Summerfield, have called for Israel to protect children from violence in accordance with the Geneva conventions. The European Union has linked the suspension of Israel/Europe trade agreement talks to human rights issues, especially in regards to children.

The Code of Conduct of the IDF explicitly prohibits targeting non-combatants and dictates proportional force. It also stipulates that soldiers "use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property."

The Israeli government and the IDF have expressed sympathy but deferred responsibility and blame to the Palestinians. They say the deaths of children are a regrettable consequence of war; Islamic militants use children as human shields or deliberately locate themselves in civilian areas during fighting; children are used as child suicide bombers by Palestinian militant organizations; children engage in acts of extreme violence toward Israeli forces and civilians.

Minors under arrest

In October 2004, 338 Palestinian minors were reported by the Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI) to be under arrest by Israeli security forces. DCI has estimated that there have been 2,650 Palestinian child prisoners since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 and claims that some children aged between 14 and 17 have been locked in solitary confinement and signed confessions under coercion.

The Guardian reported the DCI's statement that Palestinian children are often arrested at night, handcuffed, blindfolded, abused and not given access to family members or legal representation. B'tselem considers that their treatment violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Other sources have denied allegations of abuse and accused the report of downplaying crimes committed by Palestinian minors, which have caused the deaths of Israeli civilians, including children.

Manipulation of children

Georgetown University professor William O'Brien wrote about the active participation of Palestinian children in the First Intifada: "It appears that a substantial number, if not the majority, of troops of the intifada are young people, including elementary schoolchildren. They are engaged in throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and other forms of violence."

In the year 2000 Arab journalist Huda Al-Hussein wrote an opinion piece in the London based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat that: "If what was included in the British Times' report the day before yesterday accurate - that Palestinian children undergo weeks of training stone-throwing in order to confront the Israeli military apparatus and that they are promised to go the heaven - if all this is accurate, it is frightening... some Palestinian leaders show up and consciously issue orders which have the purpose of ending their childhood, even if it means their last breath."

According to Human Rights Watch the major Palestinian armed groups, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas "have publicly disavowed the use of children in military operations, but those stated policies have not always been implemented." In part this is because some leaders state they consider children of 16 to be adults.

Child indoctrination

Anne Speckhard, adjunct associate Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center and Professor of Psychology, Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels, writes:

In the Palestinian territories, there currently exists a "cult of martyrdom". From a very young age children are socialized into a group consciousness that honors "martyrs", including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of "martyrs". Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular "martyrs", posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extol the virtues of bombers. Each act of suicide terrorism is also marked by a last testament and video, which are prepared ahead of time by the "martyr" who can later reach great popularity when the video is played on television. Despite the very deep and real grief of the family and friends left behind, the funerals of “martyrs” are generally accompanied with much fanfare by community and sponsoring organization.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Hamas' bi-weekly on-line magazine for children, al-Fatah (Arabic for "the conqueror"), published since 2002, features stories and columns praising suicide bombers and attacks against the "Jewish enemy."

In 2013, more than 3,000 Palestinian teenagers graduated from Hamas’s first high school military training program in the Gaza Strip. According to Abu Hozifa, a 29-year-old national security officer who teaches in the program, the children are taught to, "honor the national flag and anthem, to strengthen their affinity with the homeland and Jerusalem, the spirit of resistance and the principles of steadfastness. We also prepare them in terms of faith and physical fitness to serve as resistance fighters if they want to be in the future."

Child suicide bombers

According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers "2004 Global Report on the Use of Child Soldiers", there were at least nine documented suicide attacks involving Palestinian minors between October 2000 and March 2004. According to the Israel Defense Forces from September 2000 through 2003, 29 suicide attacks have been carried out by youth under the age of 18, 22 shootings attacks and attacks using explosive devices were carried out by youth under the age of and more than 40 youths under the age of 18 were involved in attempted suicide bombings that were thwarted. According to the Coalition, "here was no evidence of systematic recruitment of children by Palestinian armed groups. However, children are used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. All the main political groups involve children in this way, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine."

In 2004, the Guardian reported that the Israeli military "accused a faction of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement of using an 11-year-old boy as an unwitting human bomb after the child was discovered carrying explosive through an army checkpoint in Nablus. The army says Abdullah Quran's life was saved only because a mobile phone rigged as a detonator failed to set off the explosive when he was stopped." In 2009, Hussam Abdo, 14, was given $23, a suicide bomber's vest containing 18 kilograms of explosives, and sent to kill Israelis. When approached by the boy, Israeli soldiers disarmed the bomb, and all the while Abdo kept telling them that he did not want to die. His family said he was gullible and easily manipulated: "He doesn't know anything (about politics), and he has the intelligence of a 12 year old."

Former UN Under-Secretary General Olara Otunnu stated in 2003: “We have witnessed both ends of these acts:children have been used as suicide bombers and children have been killed by suicide bombings. I call on the Palestinian authorities to do everything within their powers to stop all participation by children in this conflict.”

In 2005 Amnesty International condemned the use of children by Palestinian militant groups as well as violence against civilians: "Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly shown total disregard for the most fundamental human rights, notably the right to life, by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and by using Palestinian children in armed attacks."

According to Shafiq Masalha, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Tel Aviv University's education program, 15% of Palestinian children dream of becoming suicide bombers. According to Eyad Sarraj, Palestinian psychiatrist and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, a survey his group made found that 36% of Palestinians over 12 aspired to die "a martyr's death" fighting Israel.

Effects on children

Medical care

Israel has maintained a system of socialized health care for all Israelis since its establishment in 1948. A National Health Insurance law was passed in 1995. Coverage includes medical diagnosis and treatment, preventive medicine, hospitalization, surgery and transplants, preventive dental care for children, and other benefits.

Since the 1990s, and especially since the violence associated with the Second Intifada, Israel has created hundreds of permanent roadblocks and checkpoints staffed by Israeli military or border police. While some are between Israel and the West Bank to prevent possible terrorist attacks, as of September 2011 most were within the West Bank, with 522 such permanent and an average of 495 temporary "flying checkpoints". A 2009 United Nations reported stated that the checkpoints were evolving into "a more permanent system of control" reducing the space available for Palestinian growth and movement for the benefit of the increasing Israeli settler population. A 2002 incident of a bomb found in a Red Crescent ambulance increased vigilance regarding those vehicles.

In 2004 psychiatrist Derek Summerfield wrote in an opinion piece in the British medical journal BMJ that the then-recent Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza divided communities by "checkpoints", put up massive walls like the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Gaza Strip barrier and demolished 60,000 homes. The World Bank estimated that due to these actions Palestinian poverty had tripled in three years with 60% of the population subsisting at poverty level and over half of households eating just one meal daily. The barrier was isolating 97 primary health clinics and 11 hospitals from Palestinian patients. During that time there were 87 cases in which denial of access to medical treatment caused death, including to 30 children, some babies born while women in labor were kept at checkpoints. Summerfield said that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has criticized the Israel Medical Association for its silence on these issues.

A 2009 The Lancet medical journal report, authored by Dr. Awad Mataria and Dr. Hanan Abdul Rahim, described the healthcare system in the Palestinian territories as "fragmented and incoherent". Dr. Rahim said there were gaps in care, a low level of post-natal care, and little decline infant mortality rates compared with other Arab countries that had been able to bring them down. The report cited a United Nations' report that stated more than 60 Palestinian women had given birth at Israeli checkpoints and 36 of their babies died as a result. The physicians blamed conditions of military occupation, Palestinian political instability, inconsistent and fragmented foreign aid donor policies and a focus on emergency aid, as opposed to long-term development inside the Palestinian territories. The World Health Organization reports regularly on health care in the "occupied Palestinian territory."

In response to the Summerfield opinion piece, Irwin Mansdorf, a member of Task Force on Medical and Public Health Issues, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East wrote an opinion piece about routine care that Palestinians continue to receive in Israeli hospitals and from Israeli physicians, saying that "Palestinians receive care in Israel that they could not receive in any neighboring Arab country. In the last few months alone nearly 200 Palestinian children who were referred under a joint Israeli-Palestinian programme to treat children with serious medical conditions have already undergone major surgery at Israeli hospitals at no cost to the families. Another 350-400 Palestinian children have undergone free diagnostic testing." Simon M Fellerman also wrote one noting that Saving Children, established by the Peres Center for Peace, enables hundreds of Palestinian children to receive free medical care, in particular cardiac surgery, from Israeli surgeons. In response to the Lancet report, an Israeli government spokesperson said that Palestinians in the territories could receive medical care in Israel itself, noting that 28,000 Palestinians from Gaza had been treated in Israel during the two years covered by the Lancet report.

In 2011, the Israeli Civil Administration's Health Coordinator, Dalia Bassa and the Commander of the IDF's Alpine unit jointly organized a ski trip to Mt. Hermon in northern Israel for Palestinian children diagnosed with cancer. The children, who were accompanied by parents, family members, and Israeli soldiers from the Alpine Unit, are undergoing treatment at the Augusta Victoria hospital in Jerusalem.

"Save A Child's Heart" is a program in which any child with heart problems can receive free medical attention and surgery from select doctors and hospitals within Israel. As of 2009 it had operated on 1000 Palestinian children.

Hadassah Medical Center has reported that organ donations in which the recipient is a Palestinian and the donor an Israeli, or vice versa, are not unusual. In one case a Palestinian from Bethlehem received the kidney of an Israeli. The families of Yoni Jesner, a Jewish teenager, and Ahmed Khatib, a Palestinian boy, donated their organs to children from the opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yoni Jesner died in a suicide bombing in 2002, while Ahmed Khatib was killed by IDF gunfire in 2005. In 2002, 16-year-old Israeli Rachel Thaler was killed along with two other teenagers in a suicide bombing. After her death, Thaler's family chose to have her organs donated.

Malnutrition

In a 2003 United Nations report, Special Rapporteur Jean Ziegler reported that over 22 per cent of children under 5 in the Palestinian territories were suffering from malnutrition and 15.6 per cent from acute anaemia." According to the World Bank, food consumption in the Palestinian Territories fell by more than 25 per cent per capita, and food shortages particularly of proteins, were reported. A 2007 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics poll of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza found that as a result of poverty about 10 percent of Palestinian children suffer "permanent effects from malnutrition", including especially stunted growth. In 2010 the Danish government sponsored a survey that found that 10 percent of children in Gaza are malnourished.

In April 2011, the Israel Defense Force spokesperson's office made available to the media comments by the deputy director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip, who the IDF reported had said that there is "no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If you go to the supermarket, there are products. There are restaurants and a nice beach." She further said that problems caused by the blockade were "mainly in maintenance of infrastructure and in access to goods, concrete for example."

Christian Science Monitor staff writer Dan Murphy interviewed the spokeswoman for the Red Cross, Cecilia Goin, who said the comments were not provided in full context and thus gave the inaccurate impression "that everything was OK" when in fact the situation was still "dire." Murphy, who has been to Gaza, wrote that products in supermarkets and restaurants were "out of reach" for most Gazans. He wrote: "In this context the "no humanitarian crisis" means that people in Gaza aren't starving, which is certainly true. The United Nation's Relief and Works Agency provides aid to most of Gaza's 1.5 million people, and has been allowed to bring in food and medical supplies. The Red Cross and other aid groups are active as well." He also noted that a 2008 United States diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks stated that "Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis".

A 2012 report jointly issued by aid organizations Save the Children and Britain's Medical Aid for Palestinians found that 10 percent of Gaza children under five had stunted growth due to malnutrition and that 68 percent of pre-school children and 58 percent of children of school age suffered from anaemia. The report stated that the five-year blockade of Gaza Strip, which has prevented importation of necessary supplies and materials, as well as Israel's Gaza War bombing of infrastructure, has led to water being severely contaminated by fertilizer and human waste. Diseases like typhoid and diarrhea, spread by contaminated water, have doubled in children under the age of 3, which has long-term health implications. Open sewage is a problem and in 2012 three children drowned in pools of it.

In October 2012 an Israeli human rights group forced Israel to disclose a 2008 document that calculated that Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants needed 2,279 calories per person a day to avoid malnutrition and widespread starvation. The Israeli military disputes critics' claims it used the guidelines during its blockade of Gaza to restrict food shipments to Gaza in order to put pressure on Hamas.

Accidents by unexploded ordnance

Unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been a low-level but recurrent threat. The majority of incidents involving unexploded ordnance occurred in the Gaza Strip.

Schooling disruptions

Many Israelis have been killed at or on the way to school. In the 1970 Avivim school bus massacre, Palestinian terrorists killed 12 civilians, 9 of them children, and injured 25. The 1974 Ma'alot massacre by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which resulted in the death of 22 schoolchildren, 3 teachers, and various other civilians took place at the Netiv Meir elementary school. In 1992, 15-year-old Helena Rapp was stabbed to death by Palestinian militant Fouad Abd El Hani El Omrin on her way to school. 7 Israeli schoolgirls were shot dead in the 1997 Island of Peace massacre while on a class field trip, and 6 others were injured. In 2002, Palestinian gunmen killed 3 teenagers at the Hitzim yeshiva high school in Itamar and 4 at Yeshivat Otniel near Hebron. The 2008 Mercaz HaRav massacre, in which a Palestinian attacked a Jerusalem yeshiva, resulted in the deaths of 8 and the injuring of 11.

Schools throughout southern Israel were closed during the March 2012 Gaza–Israel clashes, in which Gaza militants launched over 300 rockets into Israel. Schools in Beersheba, Ashdod and Kiryat Gat closed in March 2011 as a result of rocket fire from Gaza, as did schools in Beersheba and Ashdod in September 2012. Israeli authorities have reported numerous incidents in which schools were damaged by Qassam rockets and mortars.

In April 2011, Hamas bombed a school bus, killing a 16-year-old boy and injuring the driver.

Post-traumatic stress

Researchers are finding high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder among Palestinian children. According to some researchers, the average rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among children from both sides of the Green Line is about 70 per cent. Gaza Community Health Programs carried out a study and found that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) rate for children in Gaza was that 54% suffered from severe PTSD, 33.5% from moderate and 11% from mild and doubtful levels of PTSD. In a report, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, it was estimated that the rate of psychological morbidity in the southern region of Bethlehem in the West Bank, to be 42.3% among Palestinian children. The rate was 46.3% for boys and 37.8% for girls. These rates, the study reported, were twice the rate of psychological morbidity in the Gaza strip.

According to an Israeli child psychiatrist, about half of the children in Jerusalem, the city hit hardest by Palestinian violence, experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, two to three times higher than the rate of children suffering from other causes of trauma. A recent study by Herzog’s trauma centre found that 33 per cent of Israeli youth have been affected personally by terrorism, either by being at the scene of an attack or by knowing someone injured or killed by terrorists. Seventy per cent of those surveyed reported increased subjective fear or hopelessness.

Studies have found high levels of PTSD in southern Israel which is frequently attacked by rockets and mortars from the Gaza Strip. In particular, frequent air-raid sirens and explosions of incoming projectiles have caused severe psychological trauma in the city of Sderot. In 2008, Natal, the Israel Center for Victims of Terror and War, conducted a study on Sderot based on representative sampling. The study found that between 75 percent and 94 percent of Sderot children aged 4–18 exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress while about one-third had post traumatic stress disorder.

About 26% of Israeli minors killed lived in the Israeli settlements in West Bank and Gaza. According to Miriam Shapira, the director of an emergency crisis centre for West Bank settlers, "Almost every school has students who have experienced close losses. One school had 20 students who had lost a parent in terrorist attacks. About half of the teachers also have had a close relative killed or were themselves involved in an attack."

Dr. Avital Laufer of Tel Aviv University reported that 42 percent of Israeli children suffer from PTSD. Laufer further said that 70 percent had been personally impacted by terrorism.

Herzog Hospital's Israel Centre for the Treatment of Psychotrauma, in Jerusalem, and the UJA-Federation of New York held a conference to examine the effects of terrorism on children in Israel and the United States. Their study shows that despite nearly four years of ongoing terrorism, Israeli children have shown resilience for coping with trauma and pressing on with their lives.

Media manipulation

Some images of children in the conflict have been shown to be false, digitally altered, or outdated, and are used to manipulate public sentiment. For instance, during the March 2012 Gaza-Israel clashes, Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted a photo of an Israeli woman and her two children ducking a Gaza rocket describing it as "when a rocket fired by terrorists from Gaza is about to hit their home." When it was proved the photo was from 2009 he said "I never stated that the photo was current."

During that period Khulood Badawi, an Information and Media Coordinator for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, tweeted a picture of a Palestinian child covered in blood. She was criticized because the child was killed in 2006, allegedly in an accident. She later tweeted that she mistakenly had tweeted an old photo. Ma'an News Agency reported the hospital medical report on the dead girl stated she died “due to falling from a high area during the Israeli strike on Gaza”. Interviews with relatives, news reports and investigations by human rights organizations also suggest that her death indirectly was caused by an Israeli airstrike as little as 100 meters away, though accounts differ on how this occurred. Israeli officials have said that the girl's death had nothing to do with Israel.

In early November 2012, Israeli activists reported that several journalists with cameras followed a Palestinian girl as she repeatedly tried without success to provoke a violent reaction from Israeli soldiers. On November 18, Alarab Net, an Arab news site, released a photo of three bloodied children and their mother with the caption “martyred massacred family in Gaza”. This image turned out to be of Syrian children. Pro-Palestinian activists published a photograph on Twitter of an injured infant held by a rescue worker, writing “even this young injured Palestinian child doesn’t seem surprised or scared, used to Israeli terrorism.” The baby in the picture was quickly identified as an Israeli injured in a Hamas rocket attack, which also killed her mother.

Peace projects

Many Arab-Israeli peace projects actively involve children and teenagers. For example, Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 with the goal of creating new generations of leaders in conflict regions that will no longer accept outdated and harmful stereotypes about each other. This would occur by bringing together youth from both sides of conflict regions to literally put a human face on those who were previously perceived as an enemy. The organization, which began with Israeli, Palestinian, and Egyptian teenagers, has expanded to reach Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Maine, Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus/Republic of Cyprus), and the Balkans.

Children of Peace, a charity based in the United Kingdom, is self-described as focused "upon building alliances with like-minded organisations in the Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank projects and programmes in the arts, education, health and sports for Israeli and Palestinian children, aged 4 - 17." Richard Martin, who founded the organization in 2005, has stated that he refuses to take sides because "all children suffer in conflict."

Middle East Education Through Technology (MEET), the Institute for Circlework, TEC-the Center for Teachnologystrives, and Hand in Hand focus on educational efforts. Hand in Hand is a network of bilingual (Hebrew-Arabic) schools in which Jewish and Arab children study together. It was founded in 1997 by two Israelis, one Arab and one Jewish, with the philosophy of breaking negative stereotypes, cultivating mutual respect and understanding, and providing a dynamic example that Jews and Arabs can study, work and live together in peace.

Hand in Hand has also hosted basketball games organized by PeacePlayers International (PPI) between Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, describing them as "baby steps" towards peace. Ala Khatib, a co-principal, said that "Never mind what is going on outside, whether it's bombing in Gaza or if it's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, you can't stop school. You have to go to school, you have to face the other side, you have to say good morning, and you have to talk."

In 2005, the United States-based Kabbalah Center and the Palestinian Abu Assukar Center for Peace and Dialogue organized a children's camp for 115 Israeli children and 115 Palestinian children aged 8 to 12 to take place near Tel Aviv at the Ramat Gan Safari Park. The camp, which lasted for four days, involved children from Bethlehem, Ramallah, East Jerusalem, Tulkarem, Jericho, and Jenin. The Israeli children involved were mostly those who came from severe poverty and violent backgrounds. Joint-organizer Osnat Youdkevitch remarked that, "Our message is that of dignity for all human beings. It's harder for adults to fully understand, since so much has already been built up around us, but kids have the chance to grow up thinking in a healthier way. If you play, eat and sweat for four days with a group of other kids who are supposed to be the 'enemy', it will stay in your heart forever."

See also

• Civilian casualties in the Second Intifada
• List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada
• List of Palestinian civilian casualties in the Second Intifada
• Child suicide bombers in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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220. Children of Peace - What We Do
221. Vosper, Nicole and Walkden, Ruth (March 11, 2011). Children of Peace: new hope for Palestine and Israel. Positive News. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
222. "IIE AWARDS PRIZE TO FOUNDERS OF BILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS", International Institute of Education, Press Release, June 14, 2007.]
223. Arie, Roni (November 18, 2008). Palestinian, Israeli kids find peace on basketball court Haaretz. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
224. Thomas, Amelia (September 2, 2005). Israeli and Palestinian Children Participate in Peace Camp. Common Ground News Service. Retrieved January 26, 2013.

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