Gaza -

From the scene of the killing of Muhammad al-Durra at the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada until the martyrdom of Alaa Qaddum at the beginning of the current Israeli aggression, the pictures of the martyred children have turned into "icons of blood", after they were caught in the fire of the Israeli killing machine.

And between the martyrdom of Al-Durra and Alaa Qaddum, two decades during which hundreds of Palestinian children spent, leaving behind them in every escalation of their peers, any of them might be the “next victim” of an Israeli raid, with which the walls of their humble homes in the camps and neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip shook.

According to official Palestinian data, the death toll of children since the martyrdom of the child Al-Durra at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (the second intifada) in 2000, amounted to 2,230 martyrs, most of them were martyred in the previous four wars on Gaza.

Symbols of the tragedy

In every war and Israeli military escalation on Gaza in the past two decades, the child victims become "symbols" that immortalize the tragedy experienced by the children of Gaza, and the killing, wounding and siege they are subjected to.

With the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, the 12-year-old child Muhammad Al-Durra was immortalized in his picture, who roamed the globe, sheltering with his father's back from the Israeli bullets raining down on them at the "Netzarim Junction", which still bears the name of the Israeli settlement that was adjacent to it. West Gaza, which was dismantled with the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

Since then, a long series of child victims, most notably Iman Hajjo, Hoda Ghalya, Jamila Al-Habbash, and others who were completely wiped out by Israel and their families from the Palestinian civil registry, were buried under the rubble of their homes during the past four wars on Gaza.

In the last of those wars, which erupted in May 2021, the name of the martyred child Hamza Nassar, 12, who was fasting and left his home in the Shejaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza, appeared hours before breakfast time to buy some vegetables for his family from the neighborhood market, which is about one kilometer away. He left the house, but he did not return, due to an Israeli air strike that took his little body and threw him meters away.

At that time, the image of Hamza spread in his small shroud with an innocent smile on his face.

With the first moments of the current Israeli escalation in Gaza, Alaa Qaddoum, 5, was killed by a shrapnel of an Israeli missile that penetrated her head, while she was playing in front of her house in the same neighborhood of Shejaia.

And about Alaa, Palestinian writer and novelist Yusri Al-Ghoul told Al Jazeera Net, "Alaa died, and with her the dream of reaching school and becoming a great teacher. The occupying state always kills children's dreams."

The stories of Alaa and her ilk, victims of the Israeli wars on Gaza, are seen by Al-Ghoul as “a humanitarian material that must be focused on, and published in all the languages ​​of the world, to expose the ugliness of the occupation and its crimes that do not differentiate between one Palestinian and another.


They are not numbers

Al-Ghoul hates dealing with victims, especially children, as figures in the death records, and says, "They are the future; A potential victim even inside his home.

The Ghoul has daily stories with his children during the wars. He lives in an area near the sea in Gaza City, which has been repeatedly targeted by the Israelis. "Our children are dying of death, injury and fear," he said.

Al-Ghoul is keen - in every possible way - to "isolate" his children from what is going on in the field, and to spare them scenes of killing and destruction in the streets, despite realizing the difficulty of this in the small and modest homes of Gaza, which lack shelters, and suffer from electricity cuts for long hours. I feel lost even inside my home, and I don't know where to hide my family and my children."

A Palestinian girl injured by Israeli shelling of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip (Anatolia)

A thousand children were killed

According to official Palestinian data, the number of children martyrs since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (the second intifada) in 2000 until this year has reached 2,230, a thousand of them in 5 wars:

  • Of these, 315 children were killed during the first Israeli war on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

  • In the aggression that Israel began with the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari - the second commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) - in 2012, its military strikes killed 43 children and 15 women, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

  • In its longest war on the Gaza Strip in 2014, which lasted for more than 50 days, Israel killed 546 children.

  • 72 children were killed in the aggression launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip in May 2021, and it lasted for 11 days.

  • According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the military strikes directed by Israel into the Gaza Strip since the afternoon of last Friday, led to the death of about 30 Palestinians, including 6 children, as of Sunday morning.


Targeting them is an Israeli tactic

The director of the "Accountability Program of the International Movement for Defense of Children in Palestine" Ayed Abu Qutaish - to Al Jazeera Net - said that "the military tactics of the occupation army always make Palestinian children victims, by targeting populated areas."

Israel commits its crimes against Palestinian children without any regard for childhood or international laws, which emphasize the protection of children and not exposing them to dangers.

According to activist Abu Qtaish, the opposite is what is happening with the occupation army, whose soldiers and commanders enjoy absolute Israeli protection, which prevents them from being punished for their crimes against civilians, especially children.

This protection - in the opinion of Abu Qutaish - helped the leaders of the occupation army to adopt the so-called "Dahiya Doctrine", which is based on intensifying bombing and targeting populated civilian areas, without regard to casualties, including children, with the aim of putting pressure on the population to exert pressure on their part on the Palestinian resistance. .

Abu Qutaish says that the children of Gaza do not face death alone, but have been living in constant danger for many years as a result of the suffocating Israeli siege, which deprives them of many rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and has significantly and dangerously affected their mental health.