10 Democratic members of Congress introduced legislation last Tuesday that would attempt to prohibit US military and financial aid to Israel from being used to detain and abuse Palestinian children in the West Bank.
According to Haaretz website the bill does not have a high chance of becoming law but its very introduction is a sign of Israel’s political challenges in the corridors of the Democratic Party where criticism is growing over its violations against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The legislation would “require the US secretary of state to certify annually that the country’s funds do not support military detention interrogation abuse or ill-treatment of Palestinian children.”
The sponsors of this bill believe that “the Israeli army detains around 500 to 700 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 each year and prosecutes them before a military court system that lacks basic and fundamental guarantees of due process in violation of international standards.”
They add that while “children under the age of 12 cannot be prosecuted in Israeli military courts” the Israeli military has detained children under that age for interrogations lasting hours. The sponsors rely on information from Human Rights Watch and the United Nations as well as on the state department’s annual human rights report.
They point out that the state department’s 2016 report mentioned “a significant increase in detentions of minors” and accused the Israeli security and military authorities of having Palestinian minors sign confessions written in Hebrew which most of them could not read.
The legislation was proposed by congresswoman Betty McCollum a Democrat from Minnesota who in 2015 wrote a letter asking the previous secretary of state John Kerry to take action on Israel’s detention and abuse of Palestinian minors.
Co-sponsors to McCollum’s legislation include Democrats Earl Blumenauer (Oregon) Peter DeFazio (Oregon) Danny Davis (Illinois) John Conyers (Michigan) and Raul Grijalva (Arizona).
The fact that the legislation is supported by 10 Democrats overall before being formally introduced in the House is seen as a sign of success for pro-Palestinian activists in the US even if the legislation does not pass in the end Haaretz said.
