Addameer (Prisoners’ Support and Human RIghts Association) statistics (at the end of 2004) found that 40,000 Palestinians had been arrested since the start of the second Intifada in 2000, many during massive round-ups that were carried-out in Palestinian towns, that grabbed all males above the age of 15. Addameer’s data also reveals that 117 of the prisoners were women and 344 were children (under the age of 18). At least 70 of these children were under the age of 16.
The world did nothing.
Most child arrests continue to be carried out in the dead of night, during usually warrantless house raids that destroy property and terrorise residents. Children can legally be tortured for 4-days, renewable for another 4-days, then are supposed to be brought before a military judge. Israel maintains “military centers in the OPT. These military tribunals are presided over by a panel of three judges appointed by the military, two of who often do not have any legal training or background. These tribunals rarely fall within the required international standards of fair trial.” “Israeli children living in the OPT are governed by Israel’s 1971 Youth Law.”
Most children are forced to confess to stone throwing, an offence that results in sentences, when finally handed down, of six-months to six-years, that are often justified by signed admissions of guilt, written in Hebrew, that “confessors” do not understand. Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh and Adah Kay, all formerly affiliated with Defence for Children International, deciding that the world must have been unaware of the extreme injustices and suffering that Palestinian children endured, wrote a book, published in 2004, Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children, informing “that the brutal treatment of Palestinian children is a deliberate strategy of state sanctioned violence upheld by institutionalised discrimination.” The authours documented, “the wider double standards and institutional discrimination inherent in the legal system governing the OPT,” and considered, “why the international human rights standards developed to protect children are not enforced by the international community.”
“The soldiers took me to a room and sat me down on a chair. One of them took off the handcuffs and tied my hands and feet to the chair’s legs. My eyes remained covered. About half an hour later they removed the blindfold. I saw five or six people in civilian clothes. They asked me questions about my involvement in clashes with soldiers. They asked me if I threw stones at army vehicles on the main road. At first I denied that I did. But two or three of them started to beat me in the face and head. The interrogation lasted for around five hours. I was very tired from sitting all the time on the chair and from the beatings. At the end, they took me to the bathroom near the interrogation room. One of the interrogators grabbed me by the hair and put my head in the toilet. I was frightened. When they took me back to the interrogation room I decided to confess. I told them I threw five stones at a settler’s vehicle. They wrote up a detailed testimony and forced me to sign it.”
SM., 15 years old from the Hebron area.
The informed world did nothing, despite the horror stories:
The youngest Palestinian detained in 2003-2004 was 12-year-old Rakan Ayad Nasrat from Jericho who spent several months in prison. He was arrested on 29 September 2003 at a checkpoint in Bethlehem and taken to an Israeli settlement where he was threatened with electric shocks while under interrogation and then placed for 12 days in solitary confinement in a small room measuring 2m by 2m. He was beaten and sexually assaulted. He tried to commit suicide four times including once when he was hospitalized for two days. In an affidavit to Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, Rakan stated:
“because there was no one I could talk to and I felt incredible frightened and scared I tried to commit suicide while being in solitary confinement. On October 12th I was moved to Ofer military prison camp. When I arrived the soldiers asked me to take off my clothes and I was standing in my underwear. Then one of the soldiers took off even my underwear and started to use the metal detector on my naked body. While he was doing that he used his other hand to touch my body concentrating mainly on my back and bottom. This continued for a while and I was crying being terrified that something would happen.”
“One child described his experience of torture in 1998 as linked with attempts to recruit him as a collaborator”:
The interrogators would say, ‘If you work with us we’ll give you money and let you go otherwise you’ll be given a very long sentence.’ When I refused they tied me to a small chair with 15-cm legs (kindergarten chair) and tied my hands behind my back and my feet to the chair. They put a filthy sack (with no ventilation) on my head. I was placed in this position for 6-12 hours. Other times I was placed in solitary confinement.
Women are often arrested to pressure their husbands.
Asma’ Abu el-Hayja, for example, who is 40 years old and is suffering from brain cancer, is being held in an administrative detention in order to pressure her husband who is also under detention. Mrs. Ablaa’ Saadat was arrested on 21 January 2003 as she travelled as a Palestinian representative to the World Social Forum in Brazil. Saadat is the wife of the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She was give four months administrative detention following her arrest. She was told by an interrogator that her arrest was merely a demonstration that ‘they’ can do whatever they want. She was also told that if her husband had ‘blood on his hands’ they would kill her children.
These statistics are above and beyond the number of children who were killed between September 2000 and the time of the report, June 2004:
The Right to Life | 17 June 2004
Since the start of the second Intifada, at least 584 Palestinian children have died and thousands more seriously injured as a direct consequence of Israel ‘s continued and reinforced occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among those to have died from the escalating conflict are 67 Palestinian girls. Since girls in Palestinian society traditionally spend more time inside the family house, and are generally discouraged from attending, let alone participating in resistance activities such as throwing stones, it is to be expected that fatalities among girls are relatively lower than among Palestinian boys. However, statistics show that even inside their homes, Palestinian children are not safe from the dangers of the Israeli occupation. Many of the 24 girls to have died during Israeli air and ground attacks were in their homes at the time of their death. The 13 girls to have died from random gunfire were also innocently undertaking everyday activities in the moments before they were killed.
Mona Hamadi Abu Tabaq, 10 years old, Beit Hanoun, Gaza
Mona was returning from the supermarket with her younger brother Hassan when she was killed on 22 April. “There were no clashes going on and we’d not heard any shooting,” Hassan told DCI/PS. “All of a sudden there was the sound of gunfire and Mona was shot in her left leg. She tried to run away but she was shot again in her right arm. Seconds later she was shot for the third time, this time in the abdomen. She fell and I tried to carry her but I couldn’t – I screamed her name and a neighbour rushed to help, picking her up. I began to cry and ran home to tell my father what had happened. We went to hospital but Mona died five hours later.”
That was 2004. Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday, in the midst of Israel’s illegitimate, vicious, ongoing assault upon Gaza, that it is “high time” that Hamas release Gilad Shalit.
When will it be time for the international community to condemn Israel’s treatment of prisoners, most especially the children it tortures and abuses? Why not now?