Khalil Mustafa is a 15-year-old Palestinian boy whose innocence has not saved him the cruelty of the Israeli occupation as he was arrested the same way dozens of other Palestinian children were detained.
To the east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank the Israeli occupation forces stormed the house of Mustafa’s family who was kidnapped from his warm bed under the claim of throwing stones at settlers’ cars.
“Throwing stones” is the most frequent charge directed at child prisoners a charge that the occupation tries through which to create a state of fear and panic among them according to lawyers who follow their cases.
Indictment charge
In occupied Jerusalem the charge of incitement is a form of targeting children. A few days ago the Israeli occupation’s court in Jerusalem held a hearing on a new case filed by the Israeli prosecution against the 15-year-old Shadi Farah from Jerusalem claiming that the boy was inciting against the occupation authorities inside Tamra minors’ detention center where he is held since 30 December 2015.
Lawyer Al-Haj added that the Israeli prosecution demanded during the hearing that the boy be transferred to one of the Israeli occupation military camps yet the court decided to keep him at the minors’ center to serve his sentence of two years keeping in mind that the court when sentencing the boy to two years didn’t count a full year he spent in detention before delivering his final verdict in 2016.
A story for every child
Every child prisoner has a story. The 13-year-old Raed Ahmed a resident of Deir Qaddis did not waste much time looking at the Israeli military judge as he was shackled in an overcrowded courtroom at Ofer military court but rather he was trying to greet his father who was watching him.
According to the Geneva-based Defense for Children International some children are never put to trial and they are held without a charge. They are treated like adults during the investigation to force them to confess things they did not do. The case of Mohammed is one of hundreds of cases which explain the situation of Palestinian children under occupation.
Human rights sources confirm that Palestinian child prisoners are arrested for being accused of throwing stones at the occupation forces who are protected inside control towers and armored vehicles.
According to DCI the arrest and detention of Palestinian children violates international child rights laws signed by Israel. The DCI also said “The use of certain types of torture and ill-treatment is part of the investigation process”.
Lawyer Buthania Dokmak says that “the occupation authorities deprive child prisoners of the most basic rights granted to them by international conventions.”
“Despite the fact that international conventions on human rights particularly the Convention on the Rights of the Child stressed the need to protect children and their lives survival and development and restricted the deprivation of child’s freedom and made it a last resort and for the shortest possible period the Israeli occupation made killing and arresting Palestinian children its first option.”
According to the Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails until February 28 2018 was about “6500 of which 62 were women 8 were minor girls in addition to 350 male children.”
