Israeli forces killed 54 Palestinian children and teenagers in the occupied West Bank in 2025, the highest annual toll since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said, amid a surge in Israeli violence that has killed more than 1,080 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023.
B’Tselem: 54 Palestinian children killed in 2025
B’Tselem, which documents human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, said that from October 7, 2023, to June 28, 2026, Israel killed 1,086 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 241 children, or nearly one in four of all Palestinians killed in the territory during that period.
The organisation said it was not aware of a single indictment filed in Israel since October 2023 in connection with the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, including cases involving children.
The report also found that in nearly one quarter of cases documented in 2025, Israeli forces delayed or prevented medical teams from reaching wounded minors. Israel is also withholding the bodies of 18 of the 54 children killed that year, B’Tselem said.
Child death toll remains among highest on record
For comparison, from the end of the second intifada on February 9, 2005, to the end of 2021—almost 17 years—Israeli forces killed 194 Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank. Ten others were killed by Israeli settlers during that period, while two more were killed by an Israeli actor whom B’Tselem was unable to determine whether he was a soldier or civilian.
The years 2023 and 2024 recorded unprecedented child fatalities. In 2023, Israeli forces killed 120 Palestinian children and teenagers, including 80 in the less than three months following October 7. In 2024, another 89 children and teenagers were killed.
Although the number of Palestinian children and teenagers killed by Israel declined in 2025 compared with the previous two years, it remains one of the deadliest years recorded over the past two decades.
Compared with the period between 2005 and 2021, when an average of 13 Palestinian children and teenagers were killed each year by Israeli soldiers and civilians, the figures for 2025 more than quadrupled.
Of the 54 children killed in 2025, three were between the ages of two and nine, nine were between 10 and 13, 17 were aged 14 or 15, 16 were aged 16, and nine were aged 17.
UN inquiry says Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children
The B’Tselem report came days after an independent UN inquiry concluded that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the occupied West Bank.
The report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023.
Around 30 percent of those killed in the Gaza assault were children, the report found.
A previous report by the commission in September 2025 concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had incited these acts.
The commission said Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed throughout the war, including after a ceasefire came into effect in October 2025. It said this was a key element establishing genocidal intent by Israeli occupation authorities and forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair.
The report found that between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2025, at least 20,179 children were killed, accounting for around 30 percent of the overall death toll.
By comparison, during Israel’s assaults on Gaza in 2008—2009 and 2014, children accounted for approximately 24 percent of conflict-related fatalities.
Children continue to suffer after ceasefire
More than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since Israel began its war on Gaza, according to the UN children’s agency (UNICEF).
The agency said one Palestinian child has been killed every day on average for more than eight months in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire took effect in October 2025.
On Monday, the UN also warned that children are being left “increasingly unprotected” as humanitarian organisations and rights defenders are forced to scale back operations in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The commission said Israeli forces continued using high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties.
“This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” the report said.
It added that Israeli forces appeared to target children collectively because they viewed the civilian population as associated with Palestinian resistance factions.
The report further concluded that Israel’s widespread attacks, repeated displacement and blockade of aid, food and medicine severely harmed children’s health and development, resulting in preventable deaths and lasting trauma.
It also found attacks on healthcare and reproductive facilities affected newborn survival, increased miscarriages, and left nearly all children in Gaza in need of psychological support.
Torture and abuse of Palestinian children in the West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the commission documented a sharp rise in Israeli settler violence against Palestinian children and evidence of torture, including sexual and gender-based violence, during mass arrests and detention.
It found Palestinian children, particularly boys, were systematically subjected to forced stripping, beatings and food deprivation while in Israeli detention.
The commission concluded these practices amounted to the crimes against humanity of torture and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury.
Palestinians across the occupied territory, including children, have faced a sharp rise in arrests since Israel launched the war on Gaza.
According to Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), more than half of Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons at the end of last year were detained without charge or trial.
“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” Muralidhar said.
The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.
Violence continues across the West Bank
The Palestinian Health Ministry said around 72 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of this year, including 17 children, five women and two elderly people.
Israeli military raids and settler violence have intensified sharply since Israel launched its war on Gaza.
“The widespread, unprecedented killing of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank is the result of a broader Israeli policy that enables the killing of Palestinians with virtually no accountability,” said B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak.
UN warns of worsening displacement and settler violence
A separate UN report warned that the occupied West Bank is facing its worst displacement crisis since 1967, driven by expanding illegal settlements and escalating settler violence.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Israeli settler groups could be added to the UN’s global blacklist for violations against children if the pattern continues.
The UN’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report recorded 38,558 grave violations globally in 2025, affecting a record 24,174 children.
The report verified the killing of 2,668 Palestinian children in Gaza and 57 in the West Bank.
“I am appalled by the magnitude of grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel,” Guterres said.
I am deeply alarmed at the staggering rise in attacks carried out by Israeli settlers resulting in grave violations against Palestinian children.
The report attributed 9,465 grave violations to Israeli forces and another 326 to Israeli settlers.
Oxfam: More Palestinians killed than in previous 17 years
A new Oxfam report found more Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank during Israel’s genocide in Gaza than in any year over the previous 17 years.
Analysing UN data, Oxfam found that 1,036 Palestinians, including 225 children, were killed between 2006 and 2022.
By comparison, 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, were killed between 2023 and 2025.
The charity also found that nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced across the West Bank during the past three years, compared with just over 13,000 during the previous 14 years.
Movement restrictions have also reached record levels, with 925 permanent or temporary obstacles restricting the movement of three million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
“The mounting killing of civilians in the West Bank is tragic and horrifying,” said Bushra Khalidi, an Oxfam humanitarian policy specialist.
While the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, attacks in the West Bank have been accelerating.
UN: Israeli authorities enable settler attacks
The UN Commission of Inquiry also found that the Israeli government is directly involved in settler attacks through financial and military support and by fostering a climate of impunity.
The report said settler attacks on Palestinian villages and agricultural land have risen by 130 percent since 2023, with Israeli forces routinely accompanying settlers and shielding them during attacks.
It documented assaults, abductions and abuse of Palestinian children by settlers, including an incident on April 19, 2025, in which a 12-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother were abducted at knifepoint, dragged to an olive grove and tied to a tree until relatives intervened.
The commission also documented threats of sexual violence against Palestinian women.
“The relentless, daily assaults by Israeli settlers against Palestinians are intolerable—and must end,” Muralidhar said.
The report concluded that Israeli security forces’ increasing participation in settler attacks has effectively erased the distinction between settlers and soldiers and that such violence is being used to advance state policy aimed at occupation, displacement and annexation.
Settlement expansion and annexation accelerate
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.
OCHA separately recorded 1,081 Palestinians killed between October 7, 2023 and April 22, 2026, including at least 235 children.
Settlement expansion has accelerated under Israel’s current government, with nearly 47,390 housing units advanced, approved or tendered in 2025 alone.
The Israeli cabinet has also adopted measures designed to accelerate settlement expansion and deepen Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank by making it easier for settlers to purchase land and expanding Israeli administrative authority over Palestinians.
“To force Palestinians out, settlers resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, with the backing of the Israeli government and military,” Peace Now said.
Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, said settlers feel they enjoy complete impunity because of the absence of international pressure on Israel.
Rights groups warn of ethnic cleansing
The UN Human Rights Council recently warned that Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank, including systematic unlawful use of force and unlawful demolitions, are creating a coercive environment that amounts to forced displacement.
“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.
It added that the policies are aimed at altering “the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank,” raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing.
B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding settler violence as part of a strategy to cement control over Palestinian land, while Amnesty International said the displacement of Palestinians forms part of a deliberate state policy of ethnic cleansing rather than the actions of a few rogue settlers.
“The ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven and state-implemented; it seeks to accelerate the Israeli government’s annexation agenda and settlement expansion through war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Amnesty said.
The organisation called on the international community to prevent “the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank.”