Palestinian relatives of 16-year-old Hasan Hmeid mourn during his funeral in the West Bank village of Tuqu, near Bethlehem. Hmeid was shot and killed on September 13 by Israeli troops operating in the village. (Maan Images)

Palestinian children continue to be victims of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence from the both the Israeli occupation and internal Palestinian infighting in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its August report expressed concern for the inadequate protection afforded Palestinian children.

"In one of the gravest incidents in July, a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmad Husam Yousef Mosa, was shot in the head with live ammunition and killed by the Israeli border police following an anti-barrier demonstration in Ni'lin village in the central West Bank," the report says.

The following day, 15-year-old Yousef Ahmad A'mira was declared brain dead after he too was shot in the head at close range with several rubber-coated metal bullets, also by Israel's paramilitary border police.

"Another 44 children were injured this month, all but one in the West Bank. Two children were killed and seven injured in Palestinian internal fighting in the Gaza Strip in July.

"All these incidents brings the number of child fatalities to 95 Palestinians and four Israelis, while the number of child injuries has reached 386 for Palestinians and eight for Israelis since the beginning of the year," the report added.

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IPS spoke to Muhammad Ayman, 18, from the West Bank village of Al-Mazra'a Al-Qiliya near Ramallah who saw his close friend Muhammad Shreitih bleed to death after being shot in the head by an Israeli settler during a demonstration to protest Israel's bloody offensive into Gaza several months ago.

"I struggle to sleep at night as I continue to have nightmares, only to wake up covered in sweat after seeing Muhammed's face in a pool of blood," Ayman said.

Ayman and several friends were shot at by an Israeli settler from the adjacent Israeli settlement of Telmond, but only Shreitih was hit.

"The settler started shooting towards us before we even reached the settlement. He got out of the bus and came towards us and shot from 50 metres away," Ayman said.

The teenagers attempted to evacuate their seriously injured friend to hospital but he was dead on arrival. A subsequent Israeli police investigation ruled the settler had shot "in self-defence".

Marwan Diab, a psychologist from the Gaza Community Health Programme (GCHP) that counsels traumatised children says that the psychological impact of the endemic violence on Palestine's future leaders and adults is dire.

"A generation of Palestinian children face the danger of being psychologically damaged beyond repair unless there is sufficient urgent psychological intervention and an improvement in the political, social and economic conditions in the Gaza Strip," he told IPS.

Patricia McPhillips, special representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in the occupied Palestinian Territories, shared concern over Diab's findings.

To read the full article please visit Inter Press Service.