Hamas Calls on Palestinian Minors to Fight Israeli ‘Aggression’ as Teenagers Mount Attacks in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas has urged young Palestinians to step up their fight against Israel on the day that one Israeli was killed and another injured in two separate attacks carried out by Palestinian teenagers.

Muhammad Bassel Fathi Zalbani, a 13-year old resident of the Shuafat refugee camp in eastern Jerusalem, was detained by security forces after he stabbed a police officer at the camp’s entrance on Monday night. The wounded officer, named as Asil Suaed, underwent treatment at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where he later died.

The attack in Shuafat came just hours after a 17-year-old Israeli male was stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City by a 14-year-old Palestinian who is also a Shuafat resident. The victim told police he was knifed in the back while walking near the Temple Mount and that he managed to flee to the Western Wall after being attacked. He is reported to now be in a stable condition.

Both assailants were apprehended by the police and are now in custody.

In a statement on Monday, Hamas lauded the attacks as “heroic operations” that had been provoked by the Israeli government’s decision on Sunday to legalize nine Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank.

“Our youth will deal with the occupation’s aggression and the extremist government’s fascism with courage and violence,” Hamas declared.

The terrorist organization has long supported the use of minors in its armed operations against Israeli targets, holding annual summer camps where children under 18 are indoctrinated with anti-Zionist ideology and introduced to guns and other weapons. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a US-based think-tank, Hamas organized more than 500 summer camps last year attended by over 100,000 Palestinian children.

The use of children as combatants by states and armed groups is strictly prohibited under international law.

The UN’s Office for Children and Armed Conflict notes that “human rights law declares 18 as the minimum legal age for recruitment and use of children in hostilities. Recruiting and using children under the age of 15 as soldiers is prohibited under international humanitarian law – treaty and custom – and is defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.”

Moreover, a UN protocol introduced in 2000 states that “armed groups distinct from the armed forces of a country should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities anyone under 18.”

Monday’s attacks came a day after an Israeli television channel broadcast an interview with two Palestinian teenagers in Jerusalem who expressed their enthusiasm for violence against Israelis.

Asked by a journalist from the Kan network whether they wanted “to study and grow,” one of the youths answered that “we want Hamas and riots.”

“To die like martyrs, that is the most important thing,” the youth continued.

After the youth said that he regretted that more Jews had not been killed during the Jan. 30 gun attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood, in which seven people lost their lives, the reporter asked, “And if I had also been killed?”

After pausing briefly, the youth blew a kiss and said, “Inshallah” — Arabic for “if God wills it.”