VIDEO: What is life like for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation?

More than 724 Palestinian children have lost their lives due to Israeli attacks, accounting for one-third of overall fatalities amid no access to food, water, medicine, and other utilities.

“Israeli officials’ statements combined with widespread and systematic attacks carried out by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip raise extreme concern that this is now a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people,” said Brad Parker, attorney, and senior policy adviser at Defence for Children International - Palestine. 

“Israeli military assaults have reached an intensity where they are seemingly intended to deliberately kill large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza, and combined with Israeli total closure policies, show the aim is to destroy Palestinian life in Gaza.”

The 1.1 million Palestinians residing in northern Gaza had 24 hours to leave for the south after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order late on Thursday night. 

As families strive to leave to the south despite the fact that there is no safe path or destination due to the wrecked roads and ongoing Israeli airstrikes and shelling, the Israeli evacuation order has sparked a massive panic in Gaza.

Families are fleeing on foot in large numbers, while others are staying in the north since Israeli officials have made no mention of allowing fugitive Palestinians to return. 

The UN Secretary General's spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, requested that the decision be reversed in order to prevent "what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation."

“Israeli forces have made clear their plans to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, ordering more than a million people to move miles away in less than a day—clearly an impossible task,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. 

“The international community, led by the US and European Union, are actively enabling the Israeli military to carry out a second Nakba and eradicate the Palestinian people.”

“My four children are eating one meal a day: sandwiches. There is no water, no electricity, no internet, no fuel in all of Gaza,” said Mohammad Abu Rukbeh, senior Gaza field researcher at DCIP. 

“I am carrying my children on foot because they are too paralysed in fear to walk as we search for somewhere safe. There is no safe place in Gaza as Israeli forces rain down bombs in every direction, every hour of the day. We are isolated people facing the fiercest war machines.”

There is a delay between the number of documented child fatalities by DCIP and the overall number of child fatalities reported on a regular basis by the Ministry of Health in Gaza as a result of the extensive Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a lack of electricity, Israeli airstrikes on the telecommunications infrastructure, and the unprecedented daily rate of child fatalities.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), over 500,000 individuals in the Gaza Strip have fled their homes as mass displacement grows in response to increasing Israeli attacks.

Under international law, genocide is prohibited. It is defined as the willful death of a large number of members of a certain nation or ethnic group with the intent to completely or partially destroy that nation or group. 

Genocide can be the outcome of murder or the creation of living conditions that are so intolerable that lead to the destruction of the group.