The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has arrested more than 9000 Palestinian children since 2015 till the end of March 2022 according to the Palestinian prisoner society.
In a report on the occasion of the Palestinian Child’s Day the society said that 160 Palestinian minors are currently held in Ofer Damon and Megiddo prisons.
“The IOA arrested about 19000 children under the age of 18 since Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 including children less than ten years old. Arresting children is one of the established policies of the IOA” it added.
Arresting Palestinian children has escalated since 2015 and has been accompanied by fundamental amendments to the Israeli Juvenile Law mainly reducing the age of punishment for Palestinian children from 14 years old to 12. Hundreds of Palestinian children were also arrested during the 1987 Intifada and Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.
471 children were placed under arrest including children from the 1948 occupied territories in May 2021 alone.
Brutal Torture
The Palestinian prisoner society said that the IOA tortures Palestinian children during the arrest in interrogation centers and in jails. The IOA arrests children at night severely beat them shoot on them handcuff them deprive them of food and drink and even deprive them of receiving legal assistance.
“The IOA forcibly extracts confessions from Palestinian children and make them sign papers without knowing their content. Palestinian children are held under detention under the so-called completion of judicial procedures. Israeli courts deliberately keep them in prison during the trial” the society explained.
“Israeli prison administrations hold children in detention centers and prisons that lack the elements of basic hygiene. They also raid the children’s cells” it added.
After systematic transfers of child prisoners from Ofer prison to Damon prison children are severely beaten threatened and punished with isolation and withdrawal of personal items according to the society’s report.
Racism
The IOA continues to discriminate against Palestinian child detainees and impose racist systems against them. In the West Bank children are subjected to military trials. These Israeli courts set a racist definition of the Palestinian child defining them as adults from the age of 16 while they define Israelis as adults from the age of 18.
The IOA deliberately issues sentences against detained children after they pass the age of childhood. Omar Al-Rimawi and Ayham Sabah are two children who were subjected to this among hundreds of other Palestinian children.
An entire generation of Palestinian children especially children from Jerusalem is threatened with arrest held without legal basis released then summoned for investigation again.
Home Confinement
Home confinement and deportation from the holy city is the most dangerous policy that the IOA had pursued as an alternative punishment. It turned homes into jails.
The society touched on the issue of the prisoner Ahmed Manasra who was arrested as a child and spent his childhood in Israeli prisons. The Israeli prison authority continues to isolate him in difficult conditions and delay his treatment which severely affected his physical and psychological health.
“Despite the efforts that Palestinian institutions restlessly make in the issue of arresting Palestinian children yet the international human rights organization did not budge to lessen the phenomenon” the society added.
