Under the leadership of MKs Michal Rozin (Meretz), Ayman Odeh and Dov Khenin (Joint List) and Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Union), a conference will be held tomorrow, Monday, at the Knesset, about the lives of Arab children under Israeli “occupation.”
According to a report in Yediot Aharonot, the conference will discuss "various aspects of the lives of children under Israeli occupation: poverty, restrictions on movement, lack of electricity, water and educational means, as well as child arrests, discriminatory laws that hinder family unification and the effects of the blockade on the Gaza Strip."
Alongside the left-wing Knesset members, senior members of left-wing organizations, including B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace, Physicians for Human Rights, Hamoked and others, will take part in the conference.
The newspaper also reported that international figures such as the European Union ambassador to Israel, the Dutch ambassador and the British deputy ambassador are expected to participate in the event.
"51 years of occupation have left an entire generation of children without a future,” the invitation to the event reads. “The governments are producing a smokescreen for the direct impact of the occupation on the civilian population in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Children on both sides of the conflict did not choose to be born into a bloody reality, and we can’t create a different future for them without dialogue. The only way out of the cycle of violence is to end the occupation."
During the conference, Arab children from eastern Jerusalem will talk about their lives, and a film screened for the conference will present data on the lives of Arab children from the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.