An Israeli court on Thursday sentenced two minors for the murder of a Palestinian teenager. The court sentenced one of the minors to life in prison while the other received 21 years as they were believed to have had a lesser role in the crime. A third minor is awaiting his verdict following a psychological examination. The Israeli minors were found guilty [JURIST report] by the court in November of kidnapping Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014 and then burning him to death. The murder was supposedly in response [AP report] to three Israeli teens being abducted and murdered by Hamas earlier that summer. Kdheir’s murder led to an increased amount of violence in the region resulting in a 50-day war that killed more than 2200 Palestinians and 73 Israelis.

The Israel-Palestine conflict [HRW backgrounder] continues to be a significant international issue. In March the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released [JURIST report] its 2014 Annual Humanitarian Overview and noted that Palestinian civilians continue to face daily threats to their physical safety and liberty and 2014 held the highest civilian death toll in the conflict since the annexation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. Also in March the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights told the UN Human Rights Council that human rights violations “fuel and shape the conflict” [JURIST report] in the occupied Palestinian territories. In August, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged both sides of the conflict [JURIST report] to reconcile and move towards peace after an attack occurred in the West Bank village of Duma, where Jewish extremists allegedly set fire to a Palestinian home while the family slept. In April, HRW alleged [report] that Israeli settlement farmers in the occupied West Bank are using Palestinian child laborers in dangerous conditions in violation of international laws.