Palestinian children feel abandoned amid home demolitions: NGO

Palestinian children whose homes were demolished by Israeli authorities ‘feel abandoned by the world’, report finds.

Four out of five children in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem whose homes have been demolished by Israeli authorities say they have lost faith that anyone can help or protect them and feel “abandoned by the world”, child rights organisation Save the Children has found. The report published on Monday comes as Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem face expulsion from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers, pending decisions by the Israeli Supreme Court. The report, titled Hope under the rubble: the impact of Israel’s home demolition policy on Palestinian children and their families, consulted 217 Palestinian families across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, all of whom had their homes demolished by Israeli authorities in the past ten years.