A record number of Palestinian children were held in Israeli military detention at the end of 2025, and a record proportion of these children were held without charge. Following the International Day of the Palestinian Child (Sunday, April 5) and ahead of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day (April 17), this visual summarizes what they experience.
#FreeTheChildren, a coalition-based initiative, is raising awareness of the systematic abuses Palestinian children face in Israel’s military detention system, and the trauma children carry long after release. To hear the testimonies of released children and the suffering they endured, visit the Instagram page.
Learn how you can participate in the campaign.
Israeli forces killed, maimed, tortured, starved, abducted, and displaced Palestinian children every single day in 2025. There was not a single moment of safety for any Palestinian child, which is the culmination of decades of impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces and authorities, who have faced absolutely no consequences for their crimes against children.
– Khaled Quzmar, general director at DCIP.
This campaign unfolds against a backdrop of rising Israeli brutality against Palestinian prisoners. In March alone, the Israeli Knesset passed a new apartheid law to impose the death penalty against Palestinians; the Israeli military dropped charges against five Israeli soldiers who were filmed raping a Palestinian man in an Israeli military facility; and an unsealed court case revealed that a Palestinian child was starved to death in Israeli custody in 2025, and no one has been held responsible.
Israel continues to hold more than 9,000 Palestinians in torturous and inhumane conditions of military detention. Every year, hundreds of Palestinian children are taken from their families by Israeli forces with no reason given, interrogated without a family member present, beaten, strip searched, held without charge, placed in solitary confinement (i.e. psychological torture), and subjected to other cruel treatment, in violation of international law and the fundamental rights of the child. At least 350 Palestinian children are known to be detained currently, while Israeli officials refuse to disclose the number of children disappeared from Gaza into military custody.
This ongoing reality underscores the urgent need to break the cycle of Israeli impunity that enables such violations and ensure protection for Palestinian children.