Prisoners' organizations said that the Israeli occupation forces continue to detain more than 350 children in its prisons and camps, including more than 100 children held under administrative detention.

Child detainees face systematic crimes targeting their fate, most notably torture, starvation, and medical neglect, in addition to looting and deprivation, which recently led to the martyrdom of the first child in the occupation's detention centers since the beginning of the genocide. He was Walid Ahmed (17 years old) from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, who was martyred in the "Megiddo" detention center.

The institutions, which are: (the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association), added in a report issued today, Saturday, on the occasion of Palestinian Child’s Day, which falls on the fifth of April of each year, that the issue of detained children has witnessed major transformations since the beginning of the genocide, as arrest campaigns against them have escalated, whether in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, in which no less than (1200) cases were recorded, or in Gaza, where the institutions were unable to know their numbers due to the continuation of the crime of enforced disappearance, and the challenges facing the institutions in following up on the issue of Gaza detainees, including children.

Over the past few months, legal teams have been able to conduct visits to numerous children detained in Ofer, Megiddo, and Damon detention centers, despite the strict restrictions imposed on visits. During these visits, dozens of testimonies were collected from them, revealing the level of brutality they face.

The occupation's prison administration has carried out systematic torture crimes against children, and unprecedented looting operations. We will review a number of facts and figures about the reality of their arrests and the conditions of their detention:

Uprooting them from their families

The aforementioned numbers of child arrests are not the only indicator of the transformations that accompanied the policy of targeting them through arrest operations, which constitute part of the systematic policies aimed at uprooting them from their families and fighting entire generations. We have faced this number of arrests in the West Bank before, and there were several stages in which the arrests of children escalated significantly. We can point here to the stage that followed the popular uprising. However, this data on the current level primarily reflects the level of escalation of crimes and systematic violations against them. We note here that the size of the arrest campaigns against children is concentrated in the areas most in contact with the Israeli occupation soldiers, along with the settlers.

The most prominent of these crimes is their exposure to severe beatings and various forms of threats. Statistics and documented testimonies from detained children indicate that the majority of arrested children were subjected to one or more forms of physical and psychological torture, using a range of systematic tools and methods that contravene international laws, norms, and agreements on children's rights.

In addition to the field executions that accompanied the arrest campaigns, which included the direct and deliberate shooting of children, there were also documented cases in which the occupation used children as hostages to pressure a family member to surrender, and summonses by the occupation intelligence, where the children's families were forced to bring them in for private interviews. In light of the significant escalation in field investigations, children were not isolated from this policy, as dozens of them were subjected to field investigations.

Children are subjected to consistent and systematic policies, from the moment of arrest through detention and subsequent detention in detention centers. These policies take many forms, including: arresting them in the late hours of the night, and many of them were injured and sick. During the arrest process, soldiers used humiliating and degrading methods that degraded their dignity. The majority of them were detained in detention centers under tragic conditions, under threats and insults, and subjected to severe beatings. They were also deprived of food and the use of the bathroom for long hours, in an attempt to pressure them to make confessions. They were also forced to sign papers written in Hebrew.

The occupation continues its series of violations and crimes against children inside detention centers, through starving them, and carrying out repeated attacks against them by storming the sections by the repression units of the occupation army. Specialized institutions have documented many of the storming operations that took place in the children’s sections after the start of the aggression, during which the forces entered their sections heavily armed, and assaulted them with beatings, and many of them were injured, in addition to depriving the sick and wounded of treatment, and there are those who suffer from chronic and serious diseases, and injuries of varying degrees.

The crime of starvation

The starvation practiced against detainees, including children, occupied the front page of their testimonies following the attack. Hunger is looming over children's sections on an unprecedented scale, forcing many to fast for days as a result. What the prison administration calls "meals" are, in fact, mere morsels.

While the detainees had worked for decades to establish certain rules within the detention centers, with adult supervisors, this no longer exists. The detention center administration has isolated the children, with no oversight over what happens to them. The care that the detainees had tried to impose through sacrifice was overturned by the detention center administration, along with all the conditions of detention life that existed before the aggression.

The martyred child Walid Ahmed

The martyred child Walid Ahmed, aged 17, was arrested from his family home in Silwad on September 30, 2024. Over the months he spent in Megiddo prison, he faced systematic crimes - the most prominent of which was starvation - which led to his martyrdom on March 22, 2025. Walid had been infected with scabies for several months, and was subjected to a medical crime, and was deprived of treatment until the last day of his martyrdom. However, according to the medical report after his autopsy, it was confirmed that hunger was the main reason for his martyrdom.

spread of scabies

Over the past few months, child detainees have been afflicted with skin diseases, most notably scabies, which has become a health disaster that has taken over most of the detainee sections and several central detention centers. The occupation has effectively used it as a tool to torture detainees, including children, by denying them treatment, and the administration has deliberately failed to take measures to limit its continued spread.

Scabies is a major concern among detainees recently, with some recovering from the disease having been infected again. According to numerous legal team reports, many of them, including children, went out for visits with boils covering their bodies, complaining of not being able to sleep due to the intense itching that accompanies them around the clock. Despite some efforts by some institutions to pressure the prison administration to provide measures to limit its spread, specifically hygiene, the disease is still spreading at a high rate among detainees, and has led to the deaths of detainees in prisons and camps in recent months.

Occupation courts:

The occupation continues its crimes against children by prosecuting them in a manner that lacks basic fairness guarantees. This is typical of all trials of detainees, which have served as a central tool in violating their rights, whether through military courts in the West Bank or in Jerusalem, where house arrest remains a prominent issue. The occupation authorities have transformed the homes of Jerusalemite children's families into detention centers.

100 children face administrative detention

The crime of administratively detaining children under the pretext of having a "secret file" represents a major shift. The number of children detained amounts to more than 100, including some under the age of 15, adding to the total number of crimes committed against them by the occupation.

The crime of administrative detention has witnessed an unprecedented escalation since the beginning of the genocide, with the total number of administrative detainees reaching 3,498 as of the beginning of April. This figure was unprecedented even during the height of the confrontation during the two most prominent intifadas in our people's history.

The institutions renewed their demand for the international human rights system to take effective decisions to hold the occupation leaders accountable for the war crimes they continue to commit against our people, and to impose sanctions on the occupation that would place it in a state of clear international isolation, and restore to the international human rights system its fundamental role for which it was created, and put an end to the terrifying state of impotence that has afflicted it in light of the genocide and ongoing aggression, and end the state of exceptional immunity for the occupying state as it is above accountability, accountability and punishment.