OUR DAILY THREAD: Children Of The Grave
Israel's waging a war on the future
THE SET-UP: Israel has killed 981 Gazans in the eight months since Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. Of those, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has “verified the killing of 574 Palestinians,” including “183 children, five of whom were infants under the age of one.” Forty-eight of those “verified child fatalities” were the result of “incidents in which only children were killed.”
One of the more egregious examples of this pattern happened in February when, as the OHCHR detailed in a June 12th report:
Israeli forces opened fire on an encampment for displaced people in Al Tuffah, Gaza City, killing five Palestinians, including two women and two baby girls: 5-month-old Mira Al Khabbaz and Watein Al Khabbaz, born less than a week before.
That’s one of the many Israeli attacks that have killed children in Gaza in spite of a ceasefire the Israelis are loathe to honor. To wit, in the handful of days since the OHCHR released its latest update, the IDF has pushed the overall number killed during the so-called ceasefire closer to 1,000. In one incident, the IDF killed an emergency room nurse at al-Shifa Hospital and his six year-old son while his was filling water tanks on the roof of their home.
In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot a three year-old boy and his father while they were walking outside of the IDF’s no-go zone. The boy’s grandfather described the kill shot to Aljazeera:
“My grandson, Rayan, was killed by a gunshot to the head; the bullet entered his head and exited through his eye,” Jaber [Abu al-Ajeen] told Al Jazeera. “His mother is devastated by what happened.”
Jaber’s son was carrying his grandson when the boy was shot. He took a bullet in the leg. But, accord to Jaber, his wounded son was picked up by Israeli soldiers and, Haaretz reported, he was “held for several hours before being released overnight near a concrete barrier at Kissufim, still handcuffed and bleeding.” He finally made it to a hospital, but, as of June 15th, he had not been stabilized.
Those killings were part of deadly 24 hours that pushed the total to 992 killed during the so-called ceasefire. Antiwar.com reported 3,144 Gazans have also been injured by Israel’s ceaseless military campaign, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Just two weeks ago, Bibi Netanyahu confirmed that he ordered the IDF to expand its operation to control 70% of the Strip.
Prior to that, the IDF controlled 60% of the territory behind its “Yellow Line.” The area behind that line is largely depopulated, which means an area that had long been one of the world’s most densely populated areas is becoming ever-more concentrated as internally displaced Gazans are forced into camps crammed along a tiny strip of the Strip. That concentration of camps lacks the water and sanitation necessary to sustain the refugees created by Israel’s widespread demolition of apartment blocks, water and sewage systems, and power plants.
On June 10th, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) described the disease-harboring conditions:
Health partners report widespread proliferation of rats, cockroaches, flies, lice and bedbugs, further increasing the risks of communicable disease transmission. A growing outbreak of skin diseases is surging across the camps, including scabies, chickenpox and dermatitis. More recently, cases of rodent bites have also risen sharply — more than 70,000 cases of rodent and ectoparasitic infestations have been reported in 2026 alone.
Of course, Israel has made sure that “limited access to essential medications” also makes it “difficult to respond to all cases.” Water is similarly limited:
Drinking water distributions are reaching up to 1.5 million people, often through water trucking. Despite these efforts, most families (82 percent) remain water insecure and up to 70 percent are unable to collect the minimum six liters per day for drinking and cooking.
The struggle for food, water and medicine. An absence of basic sanitation. And near daily drone and missile attacks. It all adds up to the phoniest ceasefire in recent memory.
Even more telling, though, is Israel’s creeping Yellow Line. Like the Death Star’s trash compactor, it’s obviously designed to squeeze Gazans until they die or find a way to escape. If their lives are behind the line, it is likely they’ll never see it again if Israel has its way. One family’s experience portends the kind of perpetual displacement that has incubated desperation and militancy for nearly eight decades:
Like almost everyone else in Gaza, we have been permanently homeless now for many months. During the previous ceasefire – from mid-January to mid-March 2025 – we returned to our home in Khan Younis, which was still partially habitable. We spent more than $7,000 on repairs. It was far from adequate. We told ourselves it would be enough. But in May 2025 – only five months after we had returned – the Israeli military ordered us to leave again.
Following the ceasefire agreement signed last October, we were finally able to return to check on our house again. It was completely demolished. Not partially damaged as before. Gone.
Now, my family of seven – myself, my wife, and our five children: Dana; 15-year-old Liyan; 13-year-old Raza; eight-year-old Lama; and Imran, who has not yet turned four – have moved from our two-storey, 200-square-metre home into a tent for the foreseeable future.
Despite the US-brokered ceasefire agreement, Israel is barring cement and all construction materials and heavy machinery from entering Gaza. There is no reconstruction. There are only tents, some sturdier than others. The sturdier version is what I am now trying to build for my family, and it comes at a steep cost.
Given Trump’s split with Netanyahu over Iran and Lebanon, and the predictable disappearing act by Trump’s Board of Peace, it is likely that Netanyahu will continue enjoy Washington’s tacit approval of its ethnic cleansing, its continued killing and of the collective traumas being inflicted on a generation of children. It is Israel’s criminally inhumane treatment of children that gives away its game.
For every “four year-old girl with a head wound from Israeli gunfire,” there are dozens more who’ve lost their limbs, their families and their futures. They will carry these traumas with them for the rest of their lives. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying to have a future … and, because they are children, that means trying to get an education when 97% of the schools are damaged or destroyed. As Ali Rogin observed in a heartbreaking report for PBS’s NewsHour:
The United Nations says, with high demand and limited space, most children in Gaza are only able to attend a few hours of classes three days of the week. But so many children in Gaza will never return to a classroom.
Put more bluntly:
For many of Gaza's youngest residents, attending funerals is now more common than attending class.
The one lesson they all have learned or will learn soon enough is that the word ceasefire doesn’t mean a damn thing.
Violence and killings at Gaza’s food distribution points leave survivors suffering one year on
https://www.msf.org/horrors-ghf-sites-gaza-leave-survivors-suffering-one-year
7-year-old mourns father and brother killed in Israeli strike on Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/6/15/7-year-old-mourns-father-and-brother-killed-in-israeli-strike-on-gaza
Israeli military takes more territory, kills two people in Gaza, medics and witnesses say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-takes-more-territory-kills-two-people-gaza-medics-witnesses-say-2026-06-16/
As a father in Gaza, the new home I am building for my children is a nylon tent
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/first-person/2026/06/16/father-gaza-new-home-i-am-building-my-children-nylon-tent
Why Are Children Still Suffering in Gaza?
https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/why-are-children-still-suffering-gaza
‘Wall of Tears’ mural in Dearborn lists Palestinian children killed in Gaza
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2026/06/15/names-palestinian-children-killed-gaza-dearborn-park/90521915007/