By Steven Erlanger, International Herald Tribune, 11 March 2007
NABLUS, West Bank: Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence, and most despairing.
They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented up by barriers and checkpoints.
To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope.
“Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel, ” said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.
Issa Khalil, 25, broke in, agitated. “We never see anything good in our lives,” he said. He was arrested for throwing stones in the first intifada, the uprising of mass civil disobedience that began in the late 1980s and led to the 1993 Oslo accord with Israel. He was arrested again in the second uprising as the agreement faltered.
Report: Palestinian child prisoners in 2006
Report, DCI/PS, 10 March 2007
In 2006, Israel continued its policy of arresting and imprisoning Palestinian children. Some 700 Palestinian children (under 18) were arrested by Israeli soldiers over the course of the year. Of these, around 25 children were held on administrative detention orders, imprisonment without charge or trial. The overwhelming majority of those arrested in 2006 were boys; there were eight girl child prisoners who served sentences at different points during the year. Of these, four had been arrested in 2006.
At any given point during the year, there were between 340 and 420 Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons and detention centers in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), with around 380 held at the end of the year. Of these, around 300 were being held in central prisons, either pending trial or after having been sentenced. The remaining 80 were being held in interrogation and detention centers. The number of children arrested in 2006 brings the total number of Palestinian children arrested by Israel since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 to approximately 5,200.
“We hoped, or wanted to hope that it happens less often now. That ongoing ritual that continues for years of little children throwing stones or not, and soldiers shooting at them and they die.”
– soldiers shoot daily at children of qalandiya refugee camp