The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has disclosed that the Israeli military’s killing and wounding of Palestinian children with live ammunition has surged in the occupied West Bank since October 7 as compared to the previous 10 months.

It stated that since October 7 and the Hamas attack on southern Israel and Israel’s war on Gaza, 115 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli gunfire.

In the previous 10 months up to October, the number of Palestinian children slain by Israeli live fire stood at 39.

According to the office, the number of Palestinian children wounded by Israeli ammunition in the occupied territory has also doubled during the same period, with 1,411 children injured by bullets since October 7 compared to 615 over the previous 10 months.

The UN also recorded 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians since October, including some 120 settler attacks that led to the death and injury of Palestinians.

The UN reported that in one attack on August 12, 2024, Israeli settlers with knives abducted two 15-year-old shepherds, and forced them into an illegal settler outpost where they “assaulted the boys, broke their legs, and urinated on them.”

The UN added that “afterwards, the settlers handcuffed the boys, put them in a vehicle and threw them in an open area” where they were later found.

Also on Thursday, two Palestinian men were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Balata refugee camp – located adjacent to Balata village on the outskirts of Nablus – which also wounded four other people, including a woman and a child.

The two men killed in the drone attack were named Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil and Wael Mish. Both were residents of the refugee camp.

Israel’s military said that its air forces “attacked and eliminated” two Palestinian fighters during an operation in the Nablus area.

The killings took place while Israeli soldiers and “special forces” escorted and “secured the entrance of worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus tonight.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society told the news agency that Israeli forces detained its ambulance crew as they transported the wounded from Balata to a hospital for medical care.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the killing of two Palestinian men in the Balata refugee camp brought the total number of those killed in the occupied territory since October 7 to 632.

Israel’s military also arrested 30 Palestinians, including a female student, in its latest round of raids throughout the occupied West Bank.

Most of those detained since last night were taken from the Hebron governorate.

Others were apprehended in the governorates of Ramallah, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Nablus and Jerusalem.

Israel Aimed At Fragmenting Palestinian Communities

Separately, Muhannad Ayyash, a policy analyst with the Palestinian think tank, Al Shabaka, criticised Israel’s approval of a new illegal settlement in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Ayyash said that the plan – approved by Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – aims to break up Palestinian communities and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

“This is a part of the Israeli state’s strategy to fragment Palestinian communities from one another. So in effect, this is part of a larger strategy to isolate Bethlehem from the rest of the Palestinian territories and in fact, also further isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

“So, the strategic utility for Israel is always the same, whether it is in this site or another site. It’s always fragment the Palestinian population and critically, create what it calls facts on the ground […] in order to stop the creation of the Palestinian state.”
Muhannad Ayyash

He asserted that Israel’s “ultimate goal” was to “expand Israeli Jewish sovereignty over the entirety of the land, from the river to the sea.”