In a damning new report released Monday, leading Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has exposed an unprecedented crisis of civilian harm in the occupied West Bank, documenting that Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children at a rate not seen since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the territory began. The group’s figures show 54 Palestinian children have been shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2025 alone, with minors accounting for nearly one in every four Palestinians killed by Israeli troops in the territory since October 2023 – the highest share of child fatalities recorded in 58 years of occupation.
Crucially, B’Tselem emphasizes that these child deaths are not accidental or rogue violations of military protocol. Instead, the organization attributes the soaring fatalities to a deliberate Israeli state policy that enforces loose rules of engagement, broadly labels Palestinian people as “terrorists” to justify lethal force, and systematically shields soldiers from legal consequences for unlawful killings. As of the report’s release, no Israeli service members have faced indictment or any form of accountability for child killings in the West Bank carried out since October 2023.
“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,” stated Yuli Novak, Executive Director of B’Tselem. Novak pointed to recent public comments from Israel’s top military commander for the West Bank that confirm this institutional pattern: when commander Avi Bluth openly boasted that Israeli forces are killing Palestinians “like we haven’t killed since 1967”, he inadvertently confirmed that the Israeli system not only backs troops who use lethal force, but grants them effective license to kill.
Bluth, a West Bank settler who has led Israeli military operations in the territory since 2024, made the remarks during a closed-door forum earlier this year. In those comments, he explicitly defended the relaxed rules of engagement that allow troops to open fire on unarmed Palestinians, and acknowledged a stark discriminatory double standard: Jewish Israeli civilians who engage in stone-throwing are never targeted with lethal force, while Palestinians who carry out the same action are shot. Bluth also framed the escalating killing campaign as a deterrence strategy, claiming that the high death toll has prevented a new mass uprising, noting “the Arabs understand that ‘if someone rises to kill you, kill him first’ is part of the rules of the Middle East, and therefore we are killing like we have not killed since 1967.”
Beyond the permissive rules of engagement and discriminatory targeting, B’Tselem documented additional contributing factors to the child death toll. In nearly 25 percent of the cases the organization investigated, Israeli forces deliberately delayed or denied access for medical teams to reach wounded children, directly worsening fatality outcomes. Israeli authorities have also seized the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in operations, and as of the report, 18 of the children killed in 2025 remain withheld from their families for burial.
Official United Nations data aligns with the scope of the crisis outlined by B’Tselem: the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirms that Israeli forces have killed 1,105 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, 2023, a count that includes at least 242 children.
B’Tselem also draws a direct connection between the escalating killings in the West Bank and the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of genocide that has disproportionately targeted children. The organization notes that more than 21,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza to date, and argues that the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable for mass casualties in Gaza has directly encouraged the expansion of the same lethal policy into the West Bank.
“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,” the report reads. “As long as Israel continues to enjoy near-total impunity in the world, the lives of Palestinians – including children – will remain unprotected and exposed.”