Each year on June 4, the United Nations (UN) commemorates the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression.

This occasion places political, humanitarian, and rights responsibility on all states and human rights and humanitarian organisations to effectively act to expose the Israeli occupation's crimes and violations against Palestinian children and work on putting an end to such systematic crimes and hold their perpetrators accountable at international courts. 

This international day comes to remind the world once again of the continued humanitarian suffering, oppression, and violations that Palestinian children have been subjected to due to the unabated Israeli aggression.

So far this year, the Israeli occupation has killed 28 Palestinian children.  

The Israeli occupation continues to terrorise Palestinian children and commit violations against them. 

As a result of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children are being denied access to treatment, food and medicine. 

The Israeli occupation is also targeting Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem through abduction, detention, fatal shootings, house arrest, and using them as human shields. 

Meanwhile, more than 166 Palestinian children are languishing in Israeli occupation prisons – six of whom are being held under administrative detention without charge or trial –, where they are subjected to the most heinous forms of physical and psychological torture in a stark violation of all international conventions, norms and laws. 

On this day, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas states the following:    

First: The growing Israeli crimes against Palestinian children will neither break the Palestinian people's will nor will they undermine their determination to continue fighting for their legitimate rights and defending their homeland and Jerusalem. 

Second: The continued international silence over and inaction towards Israeli violations against Palestinian children, coupled with double standards policies towards such matter, give the Israeli occupation and its fascist government a green light to practice further terrorism against innocent Palestinian children. 

Third: Hamas calls on all states, human rights groups and humanitarian organisations to assume their responsibilities towards Palestinian children, protect them from the growing Israeli aggression and terrorism against them, and work on releasing jailed Palestinian children from Israeli occupation prisons, in addition to enabling Palestinian children to live a decent and dignified life and exercise their natural rights just like all children around the world.  

Hamas Movement 
Sunday, 4 June 2023