The Palestinian Authority criticizes the UN for not including Israel in the list of violations against children

June 29 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry criticized the UN on Wednesday for not including Israel on its list of countries that commit “serious violations” against children in the context of armed conflicts.

“The Palestinian state is shocked by the decision of the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, to once again omit the Israeli occupation army and settler militias from the list of violators of children’s rights, despite the fact that their reports detail the overwhelming evidence of Israel’s systematic violations of the rights of Palestinian children,” the ministry posted on its Twitter account.

“Israel is a serial violator of the rights of Palestinian children. The evidence is clear and unequivocal. Israel, its occupation forces and settler militias have killed and injured more than 7,000 Palestinian children in the last eight years alone, with total impunity. (…) He detains and tortures children up to the age of twelve and deprives them of their basic rights to a lawyer and family visits,” he added.

In addition, the Palestinian authorities have ensured that these violations are “thoroughly documented” by different UN agencies and that, therefore, Guterres’s decision is “unacceptable.”

For its part, the United Nations has justified the “non-inclusion in the list of offenders from both territories” due to the decrease in attacks launched throughout 2022 compared to those of the previous year. However, he has expressed concern about the “high level of violence” in the West Bank and other “occupied territories” so far in 2023.