Opinion Piece By Simonetta Rossi | 20/11/2025. This article was first published by DiEM25 https://diem25.org/the-children-of-palestine-the-neglect-of-rights-and-the-sumud/
On November 20, 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted, becoming the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and, arguably, the most widely violated.
According to the Convention, children have the right to their own identity, including nationality and family relations, and governments have the obligation to protect them from violence, war, abuse and neglect.
Beyond the statistics and reports, Palestinian childhood today is a daily struggle to retain identity, imagination, and dignity – what Palestinians call ‘sumud’, an unwavering refusal to let oppression extinguish their culture.
While governments prepare to celebrate the World Children’s Day on the anniversary of the signing of the Convention, Palestinian children continue to see their rights stripped away by the brutal, terrorist government of Israel and its radical extremist groups, who have been stealing their land, houses, property, identity and culture – and killing or detaining their parents and siblings – since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel is one of the few countries in the world where children – specifically Palestinian children – are systematically tried in military courts, denied their most basic rights, and detained in inhumane conditions in the prisons of Ofer and Megiddo. They are held in dark, damp, cold, dirty and overcrowded cells infested with insects, often in solitary confinement units measuring 1.5 by 1.5 metres, without natural light.
Every year, between 500 and 700 minors are arrested and tried in military courts, in direct violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has arrested around 1,600 children. According to the latest figures from the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, more than 350 children are currently detained in israeli prisons, including at least two minor girls.
Since October 7, Israel has denied the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)access to Palestinian prisoners and no longer provides lists of detainees, in violation of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 and international humanitarian law. Despite repeated appeals from the ICRC, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, HaMoked and Gisha, access continues to be denied.
Ahmad Manasra was arrested at the age of 13 after being brutally beaten by a group of Israelis and run over by an Israeli driver, causing him skull fractures and internal bleeding. Ahmad was released in April 2025 at age 23, suffering from severe mental health problems and trauma resulting from medical neglect, ongoing abuse and torture, and prolonged solitary confinement. He was released in a place far from his family, abandoned alone near a village, where he was taken care by a passerby.
Ahmad symbolises the suffering of all minors arrested and detained by Israel, who are systematically subjected to physical and psychological abuse, beatings, solitary confinement, sexual harassment and collective punishment. They are often forced to sign written confessions in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. Upon release, children traumatised by these experiences suffer from nightmares, insomnia, poor academic performance and violent impulses.
In Palestine, the gates are closed not only for the children inside the prisons but also for those outside, in Gaza and the West Bank. On January 21, 2025, as part of the policy of total occupation of the West Bank, the Israeli army forcibly evacuated the refugee camps of Jenin and Tulkarem. Around 40,000 people were forced out of their homes, unable to take their belongings. A new gate was built at the entrance to the two refugee camps, and anyone attempting to cross it is killed instantly, either by a soldier or a remotely controlled weapon.
Fifteen-year-old Jadallah Jihad Jumaa Jadallah, from Al-Far’a camp south of Tubas, was shot on November 16, 2025, by Israeli soldiers inside the camp. Ambulance crews were prevented from reaching him to provide medical assistance and his body is now withheld by Israeli authorities. There will not be celebration of Child Day for Jadallah nor for all Palestinian children, but this will not stop their resilience, a skill they have to develop since early age.
In Jenin, the Stone Theatre – founded in the refugee camp by Arna Mer Khamis during the First Intifada (1987–1993) – is now closed. But her idea of freedom through education and peaceful resistance remains alive among the many young people who participated in the theatre’s activities and founded the Freedom Theatre to help other children and youth to express themselves creatively and develop the resilience needed to face life’s difficulties. Since the closure of the Jenin refugee camp, children attend playschool and after-school activities at the Creative Cultural Centre, continuing to nurture their joy and sense of freedom.
Twelve-year-old Rakeem was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper when she was seven, while playing outside her house. She now suffers from epilepsy. Rakeem spends her days watching other children play at the Creative Cultural Centre – perhaps dreaming that another world is possible.
While the long predating Zionist occupation seeks to erase Palestinian culture in an attempt to obliterate any symbol of Palestinian presence, the Freedom Theatre and the Creative Cultural Centre, by giving children and youth hope and dreams, stand as symbols of sumud, the Palestinian spirit of steadfastness in the face of oppression and occupation. Palestinian children are an integral part of this sumud, creating new forms of resistance to Israel’s brutal, terroristic occupation.