Israeli Forces Killed More Than 240 Palestinian Children in West Bank Since 2023

Between October 7, 2023 and June 28, 2026, Israeli forces killed more than 240 Palestinian children and teenagers in the occupied West Bank, with 54 killed in 2025 alone, according to a report published by B’Tselem titled Unshielded Childhood.

Truthout says the report argues the “unprecedented scale of killing of Palestinian children and teenagers by Israeli forces” is the result of “a reckless open-fire policy” that B’Tselem says was expanded to be “even more permissive than in the past” in the West Bank.

Al Jazeera

B’Tselem’s report quotes Israel’s top West Bank commander, Avi Bluth, who boasted that Israeli forces are “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967,” referencing the Six-Day War in which Israel seized the West Bank.

The report also says that among those killed between the start of 2025 and June 7, 2026 were two brothers—one 5 years old and the other 6—and a seven-month-old baby, and it links the West Bank killings to “Israel’s killing of more than 21,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.”

Arab News adds that B’Tselem said nearly one in every four Palestinians killed by Israel in the West Bank during this period was a minor, calling it “the highest rate of Palestinian children and teenagers killed in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.”

B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said in a statement that “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,” and CNN reports that B’Tselem blamed the deaths on “a broader Israeli policy that enables killing Palestinians with little or no accountability.”

CNN also reports that the Israeli army rejected B’Tselem’s findings, saying it “does not intentionally target civilians,” and that any claim of harm “is being carefully reviewed and investigated by the competent authorities.”

Al Jazeera

Truthout says B’Tselem cited fellow Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din and noted that “no indictments are known to have been filed in cases involving killings in the West Bank” since October 2023.

Arab News frames the same B’Tselem report by saying it is “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 where the victims were children and teenagers.

In Gaza, Al Jazeera reports that Israeli attacks killed at least eight Palestinians including two children in Gaza, and it describes an Israeli drone attack on the Wadi al-Salqa bridge on al-Baraka Street in central Gaza that killed eight-year-old Malik Wael Abu Shaweesh.

B’Tselem says the West Bank killings “cannot be separated from Israel’s killing of more than 21,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” and it argues that “By allowing Israel to kill on such a scale in Gaza without consequences, the international community has effectively given it a green light to pursue the same lethal policy in the West Bank.”

“- Human rights group highlights 54 cases in which Israeli forces killed minors in occupied territory in 2025 RAMALLAH: B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, released a new report detailing the 54 cases in which Israeli forces killed Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank in 2025”

Arab News

Arab News adds that B’Tselem said in almost one-quarter of the cases documented in 2025, Israeli forces delayed or prevented medical teams or local residents from reaching wounded children and teenagers to provide life-saving assistance, and it says Israel is still withholding the bodies of 18 of the 54 children and teenagers killed in 2025.

Truthout reports that B’Tselem linked the spike in killings to “the military’s declared easing of open-fire regulations at the end of 2021,” and it says the new regulations permitted lethal fire even at individuals fleeing after suspectedly throwing stones.

CNN reports that B’Tselem said no charges have been brought in cases involving children killed in the West Bank since the start of the war on Gaza, while it also notes that the Israeli army said it carried out wide-scale counterterrorism operations in the West Bank and claimed that 96% of Palestinians killed in the West Bank from 2023 to 2024 were “involved in terrorist activity.”

Senego reports that thirteen United Nations experts called for an immediate halt to Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians displaced in the Gaza Strip and to eviction measures in the occupied West Bank, and it says they denounced a global policy of “ethnic cleansing” in the occupied Palestinian territories.