Youth have been engaged in military action since before the creation of Israel . In the 1929 Hebron massacre , 67 Jews were killed , young children among them ; Arab youths initiated the violence by hurling rocks at Jewish students as they walked by . In 1948 , adolescent fighters from the Irgun and Lehi paramilitary groups participated in a massacre of 107 Palestinian residents of the village of Deir Yassin , a number of whom were children . Since the Six-Day War , when the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fell under Israeli military occupation , according to Anton Shammas , the idea of ' childhood ' was abolished and dropped from Israeli military declarations , so that if a 10-year-old happened to be shot , he was referred to as ' a young man of ten ' . With the outbreak of the First Intifada ( 1987 – 1993 ) , stone-throwing was defined as a felony , children began to be arrested with bail set at % 400 , and if this was not paid , they could be held in administrative detention for 1 year . The continued Israeli occupation and the stalled Israeli – Palestinian peace process has led to Palestinian protests and political violence , building up to mass protests during the First Intifada . Many youth were involved in nonviolent demonstrations , sit-ins , walk-outs , boycotts , civil disobedience and strikes organized by popular committees . There also was rioting , grenade throwing , and suicide bombings . J. Kuttab refers to the First Intifada as the " children 's revolt " because youth " possessed a new spirit that challenged the occupation " and inspired even adults to action . James L. Gelvin has written that the " paradigmatic symbol " of the First Intifada was " unarmed Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli tanks . " Approximately 90 percent of young males and 80 percent of young females engaged in some form of activism . The much more violent Second Intifada ( 2000 – 2005 ) was led by adults in the Palestine Liberation Organization following the collapse of the 1993 Oslo Accords
1929 Hebron massacre
1929 Hebron massacre
Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict