[E-rundbrief] Info 863 - Palestinian Children Jailed

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 863 - Mel Frykberg (IPS): MIDEAST: More Palestinian 
Children Getting Jailed.

Bad Ischl, 27.9.2009

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MIDEAST: More Palestinian Children Getting Jailed

Mel Frykberg

BI'ILIN, West Bank, Sep 24  (IPS)  - Eight children between the ages of
10 and 17 were arrested and detained by Israeli soldiers during military
raids Monday night and Tuesday morning in the northern West Bank cities
Nablus and Qalqilia.

Defence for Children International (DCI) Palestine has released a
statement that the number of children detained in Israeli jails and
temporary Israeli army detention centres this year has risen by 17.5
percent compared with 2008.

”The average number of Palestinian children held in Israeli detention in
2009 remains high, at 375 per month compared with an average of 319 in
2008,” says DCI.

”Disturbingly, 39 young children between the ages of 12 and 15 were
detained in August 2009. This is up 85 percent compared to the
corresponding period in 2008 of 21 children.”

Israel is a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child which states that ”the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a
child shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the
shortest appropriate period of time.”

Nashmi Muhammad Abu Rahme, 14, from the West Bank village of Bi'ilin
near Ramallah was arrested and dragged from his bed at 3 am Aug. 15
after Israeli soldiers raided his home.

The village of Bi'ilin has been involved in a protracted campaign of
non-
violent civil disobedience against Israel's building of a wall which
cuts through village land, separating villagers and farmers from their
agricultural fields.

The villagers successfully petitioned an Israeli court to have the wall
re- routed several years ago, but the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have
failed to comply with the court's orders.

”My family was awoken by the sounds of Israeli soldiers yelling and
starting to smash down the door. I was blindfolded and tightly
handcuffed by the soldiers and then thrown into the back of a jeep,”
recalls Abu Rahme.

”During the journey to the military base I was repeatedly slapped,
beaten and kicked until I was bleeding. I was very scared,” Abu
Rahme told IPS.

Israeli medics treated Abu Rahme for bleeding and contusions before
he was brought before an interrogator, again blindfolded and
handcuffed. His interrogation lasted three hours, during which he was
accused of throwing stones at soldiers near the wall on Bi'ilin's
agricultural land.

Abu Rahme was kept in jail for a week before he was brought before
a military prosecutor. He was fined 5,000 shekels (1,340 dollars)
and released.

”We have had about 12 children from our village arrested and detained by
the Israelis,” Hassan Moussa, a schoolteacher from the neighbouring
village of Ni'ilin told IPS.

Under Israeli administrative detention, Palestinians can be held for
three months without trial, and this can be renewed at the end of that
period for another three months.

”It interrupts their education when they are detained for weeks and
months without being brought to trial,” says Moussa.

Most Palestinian children are held for stone-throwing. Israeli Military
Order 378 carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment for this,
five years less than the average murder sentence in Israel.

”During interrogation, children as young as 12 years are denied access
to a lawyer and visits from their families,” says DCI.

”Whilst under interrogation children are subjected to a number of
prohibited techniques. These include the excessive use of blindfolds and
handcuffs, slapping and kicking, painful position abuse for long periods
of time, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and a combination of
physical and psychological threats,” says DCI.

Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem describes the tiny cells
where Palestinian children are often held in solitary confinement.

These include the 'lock-up', a dark cell of 1.5 by 1.5 metres. The
'closet' is a narrow cell the height of a person that one can stand in
but not sit or move. The 'grave' is a box closed by a door from the
top and measuring approximately one metre by 60 cm with a depth of
about 80 cm.

DCI has documented at least seven cases during Israel's war on Gaza at
the beginning of the year where Gazan children were used as human
shields by Israeli soldiers.

”There is a big difference in the way Palestinian and Israeli minors are
treated by Israeli law,” Khaled Quzmar from DCI Palestine told IPS.

Palestinian children as young as 12 years are prosecuted in the Israeli
military courts and are treated as adults as soon as they turn 16, in
contrast to the situation under Israeli domestic law, whereby majority
is attained at 18.

The IDF announced in July that it would be setting up a separate
military court for juveniles. Hitherto both Palestinian adults and
children had been tried together.

”The good news is that after 42 years of occupation the Israelis have
recognised that their legal treatment of Palestinian children has been
morally indefensible,” says Quzmar.

”The bad news is that the changes are merely semantic. Children
will continue to be tried by the same judges in the same jails. The
only difference is juveniles will be tried at separate times,”
Quzmar told IPS.

Previously, according to military law, there was no statute of
limitations on offences by Palestinians, even if the suspect committed
the offence when he or she was a minor.

”While the new order ostensibly sets a two-year statute of limitations
for offences committed by minors, it also allows the military prosecutor
to overrule this. The prosecution will generally be given the benefit of
the doubt,” added Quzmar.

*****

+ Defence for Children International (www.dci-pal.org)

  (END/IPS/MM/IP/HD/CG/PI/MF/SS/09)

NNNN

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federico nier-fischer
fnf-comunicaciones

- editor ips-columnists service (german desk);
- consultant/project management intercultural communications;
- acadmic lectures on Kulturindustrie, alternative media/international 
news agencies;

fnf_comunicaciones [at] fastmail.fm

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