Documenting the abuse of Palestinian children
Who thinks children should be tortured or prosecuted systematically in a military court? Who believes children should be shoved into crowded jail cells during the coronavirus pandemic and denied family visits? Me neither. Yet Israel, that supposed solitary beacon of democracy in the Middle East, does exactly that to Palestinian children, and more.
Much of this has been reported on by the UN and human rights groups for some time, but it is brought into sharp focus following a report from Save the Children (SCF), published last week, titled: “The impact of the Israeli military detention system on Palestinian children.” It is a searing indictment of the Israeli authorities, and a worthy addition to the voluminous but damning high-quality research into this issue. SCF surveyed more than 470 Palestinian children across the West Bank. They were
12-21 years old at the time, and had all been arrested or detained as children, between the ages of 10 and 17 years.
“A majority reported they had endured a distressing or violent arrest or detention, in most cases at night; a coercive interrogation environment; physical and emotional abuse in detention; and a denial of essential services including an adequate education — all of which constitute a breach of their rights enshrined in international law,” SCF said.
The report somewhat surprisingly backs off when using the term coercive interrogation. It is torture, plain and simple. SCF is not the first to make this charge, but Palestinians wonder why American and European ministers, among others, say nothing?
The report states that the occupation has
“impacted every aspect of their lives, from their safety and development to their psychosocial wellbeing and mental health.” Even going to school, past settlements and military checkpoints, can be traumatic.
The impact is huge, with the children suffering from “anxiety, depression, behavioral changes, eating and sleeping disorders, and physical symptoms including chest pains, exhaustion, and numbness,” SCF said. According to international law, detaining children should be an option of last resort. What is seen consistently with the Israeli occupation is that this is systematic, used not just as a means of controlling a subject population, but dominating and intimidating it. On my first visit to one of these courts, I was convinced my eyes were playing tricks. A 14-year-old was led into the court, at the heart of an Israeli military base, in leg-irons. A senior British politician I was accompanying described it as a processing center. Justice and rule of law were glaringly absent.
The period of detention is shattering for the children. About 60 percent are imprisoned in Israel, a violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Conditions are poor in overcrowded cells, but children are also placed in solitary confinement. According to Amina, who was 15 when detained: “You do not feel like a human being in that place. We were treated like animals.”
Detention has become normalized for Palestinian children. It is a painful rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. What has also become normalized is the international reaction. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far from being resolved, but surely the minimum one should expect is clear opposition to the abuse of children.