The European Union (EU) has criticized Israel’s use of lethal force for crowd control against protesting Palestinians and called for showing restraint and investigating every fatality.
In a recent statement the Office of the European Union Representative to the West Bank and Gaza Strip noted that several Palestinian minors have been killed in recent months by Israeli forces.
“The EU continues to be deeply alarmed about the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces as a means of crowd control” the statement said.
“The EU reiterates its calls on Israeli authorities to employ proportionate force in their response to demonstrations to exercise the utmost restraint in its use of force for law enforcement to open adequate investigations following each fatality and to initiate prosecution where appropriate.”
The EU also raised its concerns over the arrest and detention of Palestinian minors including Ahed Tamimi now 17 whose defense last month agreed to an eight-month plea deal after a video went viral in December showing her slapping an Israeli soldier on her family’s property in the West Bank.
“Israel has obligations under international law to respect the rights of the child which inter alia confirm that the arrest detention or imprisonment of a child shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate time” the statement said.
Speaking of Tamimi the EU expressed “deep concern regarding the circumstances of her arrest the duration and the conditions of the detention and how the proceedings were conducted in her specific case as well as in other similar cases processed in the military court system.”
