Israel’s ‘shoot-to-cripple’ policy was bad enough. As retired trauma surgeon David Halpin, who often worked as a volunteer in Gaza hospitals, reported in January 2011: “The deliberate injury of the limbs of 23 boys by high-velocity weapons has been logged and described by Defence for Children International Palestine Branch (DCI-P) since March 2010.”
Extreme poverty among Gazans had forced men and boys to scavenge for broken concrete (gravel) among the rubble of the evacuated Eli Sinai settlement and the industrial zone by the Erez border post where factories had been demolished by Israeli shelling. This material could be used to make blocks and poured concrete with cement imported mostly through the tunnels. They did this reclamation work – with donkey and cart, picks and shovels – for precious shekels in the shadow of Israel’s manned watch towers and under the drones constantly above.
The leg was the target in most cases, said Halpin. And where it wasn’t, the sniper would likely “aim up” so the flank, elbow etc. was hit instead. “No weapons were carried by the gravel workers, so they posed no threat to Israeli occupation force personnel. Instead, they were bending their backs to their menial work within their internment camp.” In many cases, those hit would be disabled for life.
‘Exit wounds the size of a fist’
Then, in 2018, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), who operate in Gaza, reported,
devastating gunshot wounds among hundreds of people injured during protests…. The huge majority of patients – mainly young men, but also some women and children – have unusually severe wounds to the lower extremities. MSF medical teams note the injuries include an extreme level of destruction to bones and soft tissue and large exit wounds that can be the size of a fist.
Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone. These patients will need to have very complex surgical operations and most of them will have disabilities for life. Such high-energy compound tibial fractures from Israeli live fire may require between five and seven surgical procedures, each operation taking three to six hours. The wounds appeared to be caused by ammunition with an expanding ‘butterfly’ effect. Mass lifelong disability is now the prospect for young Gazans who merely gathered in unarmed protest.
In other words, the Israelis use dum-dum bullets even on kids.
According to Gaza’s health ministry about 60% of the thousands injured were hit in the legs by sniper fire. Admissions overwhelmed an already crumbling medical sector. Since then, amputees using crutches have become a common sight on Gaza’s streets. In response, MSF funded a new prosthetics clinic for Gaza residents, and a limb reconstruction centre at al-Awda Hospital.
“It is sad to say we have become experts in this work. We have much better facilities and equipment now than we did in 2018 and we can do most orthopedic and plastic procedures,” said Rami Abu Jasser, one of the centre’s supervisors. “But we still cannot treat more than a handful of people a day.”
Just lately the Israelis have descended still deeper into depravity. A UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (June 2026) says it has evidence that “Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces”. Its chairman commented: “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future. Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured.”
During the first two years of the [so-called] war at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured “as a direct result of the hostilities in Gaza”, and this “was part of a strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian group in Gaza.
And by targeting children, says the Commission’s report, “Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality.” It has not only caused a “severe orphan crisis”, but wounded youngsters face a lifetime of disability which carries serious demographic consequences. What’s more, the blockade of Gaza has undermined reproductive and newborn health and collapsed public health programs, destroying the conditions necessary for a healthy next generation.
The report came days after the UN children’s agency UNICEF said at least 265 children had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The figure had increased to 300 by the beginning of this month, i.e. one child killed every day. UNICEF said children had been shot, bombed and struck by quadcopters, killed in tents, in schools and while playing football or fishing.
An even more shocking report titled “’The essence of childhood has been destroyed’: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023,” was also published in June this year by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. This, for some reason, has received little attention.
Teenage boys used for target practice
It leads with the stark statement that, prior to October 2023, there were 90,000 children living with a disability in Gaza. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) estimated that, between 7 October 2023 and 3 September 2025, at least 21,000 children were made newly disabled in Gaza and approximately 40,500 children suffered “war-related injuries”.
The report quotes a doctor who visited Gaza on a medical mission as saying: “Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice – a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggest this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children].”
It seems that different attack drones have been developed and used in Gaza: attack drones developed by Elbit Systems named “Birds of Prey” and a sniper drone “Predator” [by General Atomics], and an attack drone [nameless] developed by the company Xtend.
The Commission assesses that such quadcopters have been configured to carry a variety of ammunitions, including small bombs, small arms fire and pellets. “The Israeli security forces likely mounted shotguns or other assault rifles on quadcopters modified to use small pellets, which are traditionally made of lead, as well as steel and tungsten of different calibres. Some of the munitions appear to have been designed to behave in a similar manner to ‘cluster munitions’ within a human body. Quadcopters – newly deployed by the Israeli security forces – fire small pellet munitions specifically designed for these weapons. Upon entering the body, the pellets fragment into submunitions, mimicking cluster munitions by damaging multiple organs. In addition to quadcopters, the Commission has also found that the Israeli security forces used sniper rifles to target children in Gaza. The Commission found that the Israeli snipers primarily use the DAN .338 rifle, which is manufactured by the Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) with a high precision range of up to 1200 metres.”
Also from this report, “the Israeli security forces knowingly and foreseeably caused child deaths by launching continuous intensive airstrikes on densely populated areas, deploying large-yield bombs calibrated for maximum casualties, contributing to the fact that 27 percent of those killed or wounded in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025 were children. These deliberate attacks wiped out entire families across two or three or even four generations, with the Israeli security forces fully aware that children would be present and that children, with their small fragile bodies, have a higher chance of death and serious injury in such attacks. The Israeli security forces continued and repeated these attacks over a two-year period, without amending targeting criteria or selection of weapons, while child casualties mounted. This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional.”
The Commission’s concluding remarks include the statement that they have reasonable grounds for believing that, from 7 October 2023 to date, including during pauses in fighting, the Israeli security forces have intentionally directed lethal force against children as such, in violation of the prohibitions on arbitrary deprivation of life and on targeting civilians under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and that “these acts amount to war crime of wilful killing and the crime against humanity of extermination”.
And it found consistent evidence that indicates a clear pattern of the Israeli security forces intentionally targeting Palestinian children in Gaza; and therefore concludes that “killings and maiming of children that it investigated constitute crimes against humanity amounting to extermination, murder and other inhumane acts. These acts also amount to grave violations against children in armed conflict, for which the State of Israel bears responsibility.”
As regards genocide, the Commission says that in a previous report it “found that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit four categories of underlying acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian group, as such. Three of those four categories are especially relevant to children, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
“Much of the harm suffered by Palestinian children was not incidental but intended to destroy the existence of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group. Since children embody the biological and social continuity of the group, the Commission has reasonable grounds to conclude that these acts form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.”
And Israel does this in two distinct ways: “directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons such as quadcopters and snipers; and through use of high impact weapons causing widespread and systematic attacks on residential buildings, schools, and displacement camps crowded with children.”
The report is not for the faint-hearted.
I mentioned David Halpin at the beginning. I was greatly saddened to learn that David, a tireless giant among campaigners for Palestinian justice and freedom and who inspired people like me over the years, passed away earlier this month. It was he who set up The Dove and The Dolphin charity and sailed MV Barbara to Gaza in 2003, surviving a force 9 in the Bay of Biscay on the way, with 55 tonnes of aid for the starving children. The malnutrition rate in Gaza’s children then was 50% and rising. He landed his cargo at Ashdod, the main Israeli port 60 miles north of Gaza, from where it was transferred into the Strip by lorry without too much trouble from the Israeli authorities. I believe he co-ordinated it all through the Foreign Office beforehand, something that’s probably impossible now. Read his fascinating story.