Since its establishment in 1991, one of the most reliable messengers about life for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation had been a group called Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP).
But on April 7 the group ended its operations due to what it said were “challenges resulting from Israel’s targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations.”
It’s a testament to the dedication of its staff that DCIP persevered so long.
The Israeli military outlawed DCIP and five other Palestinian human rights and civil society groups in 2021, declaring them “terrorist organizations.” The military’s charges were bogus—as international human rights groups, the United Nations, and governments that investigated them found—but they were hard to fight because, as is often the case in Israeli military prosecutions, they were based on “secret evidence.”
European states suspended their funding to the group, took more than a year to investigate the Israeli accusations, and finally concluded they were baseless. A month after the EU concluded its investigation, Israeli forces raided DCIP’s offices in Ramallah, confiscated equipment and clients’ files, and welded the doors shut. As DCIP noted, the United States remained silent.
It’s not hard to see why DCIP was a target. Day in, day out, for decades, DCIP has documented Israeli military abuses against children, from arbitrary arrests, torture, coerced confessions, and unfair trials, to the needless use of lethal force.
The group’s work informed a 2013 UNICEF report that found “ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized.”
DCIP reports have played a critical role in shining a spotlight on Israeli abuses of children and many have garnered global attention and outrage. One such case is that of Mohammed Bani Odeh, 5, his brother Othman, 6, and their parents Wa’ad and Ali, who were returning home from a holiday shopping trip last month when Israeli forces riddled their car with bullets, killing them all. As DCIP noted, two other brothers, 8-year-old Mustafa and Khaled, 11, were wounded but survived. When they staggered from the car, Israeli forces beat them.
In scores and scores of cases, were it not for DCIP’s invaluable documentation and reporting, abuses against Palestinian children, of lives cut short and bodies withheld from their families, might never have come to light.
The rate of children being forcibly displaced, arbitrarily jailed, and killed by Israeli forces in both Gaza and the West Bank is at extraordinary high levels. Other criminalized and targeted Palestinian rights groups are, somehow, still hanging on. These vital messengers, like DCIP, are needed now more than ever.
