The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called on Israel to hand over Palestinian children who were forcibly transferred by the Israeli occupation army out of the Gaza Strip in another form of the crime of genocide that has been continuing since the seventh of last October.

In a statement on Tuesday, Euro-Med urged the international community to shoulder its responsibilities regarding the horrific crime of kidnapping children, which comes at a time when the Israeli authorities continue to forcibly disappear hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip under mysterious circumstances.

The Observatory said that it views with great seriousness what was reported by Israeli Army Radio on January 1, 2024, about an Israeli officer named “Harel Itah” - who holds the position of division commander in the army’s Givati Brigade - kidnapping a Palestinian infant from inside her home in the Gaza Strip, after her family members were killed in an Israeli raid, without specifying the date of the incident.

It pointed out that the kidnapping incident was revealed by a friend of the Israeli officer after it was announced that the officer was killed as a result of his injury on 12/22/2023 during clashes in Gaza, while the fate and whereabouts of the infant girl are still unknown.

Euro-Med expressed its deep fear and concern that the incident of the officer and the Palestinian girl would not be an isolated case. It stressed that many of the testimonies he received indicated that the Israeli occupation army repeatedly detained and transferred Palestinian children without knowing their later fate.

It also referred to the repeated reports he follows and receives from Palestinian families who have lost contact with their children, especially in areas witnessing Israeli ground incursions.

Euro-Med stressed that the risk of the Israeli army committing the crime of forcibly transferring and disappearing children increases with the presence of more than 7,000 missing Palestinians, the difficulty of removing rubble, and the inability of communications and the Internet in most of the Gaza Strip, in addition to the dispersal of families due to forced displacement, and hundreds of Palestinian families reporting the loss of their children with the difficulty of verifying their fate due to the continued Israeli incursion.

In this context, the Observatory highlighted the testimony of the released detainee Rushdi Al-Zhaza, who was arrested by the Israeli army and his family a month ago from his home in the “Zaytoun” neighborhood south of Gaza City. He was released a few days ago to the Gaza Strip, while the fate of his wife and two children remained unknown.

Al-Zhaza reported that the Israeli army arrested him, his wife, Hadeel Youssef Al-Dahdouh, and their two children, one of whom was “Zain,” 6 months old, and the other, “Mohammed,” 4 years old, from inside their house.

He stated that the soldiers snatched the two children from their mother’s arms, and when she objected, they tied her up and took her after removing her hijab, while they were separated from each other, and later, weeks later, they released him without knowing anything about the fate of his wife and two children.

Al-Zhaza added that when the Israeli army kidnapped his two children, he claimed that it would conduct an analysis on the two children, claiming that they were likely to be among the Israelis detained in the Gaza Strip.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory stressed that committing this crime is prohibited under international law in all cases and circumstances, regardless of its motives or reasons.

Euro-Med reported that it had received another testimony from a Palestinian woman that during her exodus from Gaza to the south of the valley, through the Netzarim checkpoint a few weeks ago, Israeli soldiers stopped a 12-year-old girl with blonde hair, and that her parents tried to intercept the matter, and she heard the soldiers telling them that this child would be taken away on the grounds that she is one of the Israeli detainees, even though she was speaking in Arabic and her parents were with her, adding that she continued walking and did not know what happened with the child or her parents.

Euro-Med confirmed that it is constantly monitoring reports and announcements published by people displaced from northern Gaza, or the incursion areas in Khan Yunis, about the loss of their children, during the displacement process or after their homes were bombed, and these reports are being published on social media sites and in WhatsApp groups for activists and journalists, in the hope to find them.

Euro-Med said: About 7,000 are missing, including several thousand children and women, whose fate is still unknown, and it is believed that the majority of them were killed under the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli bombing, or in the streets, or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, in neighborhoods witnessing incursions by the Israeli army.

Euro-Med indicated that there is no accurate count of the number of Palestinian detainees from Gaza yet, given the crimes of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance committed by Israel, and the difficulty of receiving reports in the Gaza Strip due to the dispersal of the population and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet. However, preliminary estimates indicate that more than 3,000 cases of arrest, including at least 200 women and children. There is no official information about their detention sites, conditions or charges against them, in flagrant violation of the principles of international law.

Euro-Med called on the international community to oblige Israel to hand over the child whom the Israeli officer admitted to kidnapping, and whose fate or whereabouts are not yet known, and to reveal all cases of kidnapping and forcible transfer committed against Palestinian children, and to hand them over immediately.

The Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that “forcibly transferring the group’s children to another group” - as Israeli soldiers do - is considered a form of the crime of genocide, in accordance with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a party, and under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the arbitrary and unlawful deportation and transfer of children, as part of the population, also constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime under the Rome Statute.

Euro-Med called for immediate action to end the arbitrary detention and forced disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip so that residents can know their fate.

It pointed out that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2006, which entered into force starting in 2010, obligates states to consider enforced disappearance a crime punishable by law with appropriate penalties that take into account its extreme seriousness.

The agreement affirms that enforced disappearance is a crime that rises to the level of “crimes against humanity,” if it is practiced on a large scale or in a systematic manner, which is what the Israeli occupation army forces are currently doing in the areas they are penetrating in the Gaza Strip, where they have arrested thousands and continue to detain some. At least 3 thousand people whose fate is unknown and there is no information about them.

In a related context, Euro-Med called on the international community to oblige Israel to enable civil defense crews to recover bodies from under the rubble and from the streets in Gaza, and to expedite the provision of the necessary machinery and equipment for this, in order to count the number of missing persons who are suspected to have been detained and hidden by Israeli forces, in order to demand the disclosure of their fate.