Children in Fear!
AFP News Agency reported on March 13th, 2003, that an Israeli official document acknowledged that the Israeli occupation troops killed more than /130/ Palestinian Children since the outbreak of Sept. 2000 Palestinian Intifada, according to Palestinian sources the number exceeded / 4000/ children. Earlier, The Mandela Human Rights Institute report on “Palestinian Juveniles in Israeli Custody” (January 2003) states, “Police interrogators often resort to the method of ‘Carrots and sticks.’ Juveniles were duped into signing confessions. Nevertheless, interrogation involves ill treatment including beating and insults and profanities. For instance, the report added, in one case interrogators placed three ready-made confessions in front of the detainees. The first included confession to throwing 100 stones, the second 200 stones and the third included confessing to throwing 300 stones. Children who had actually thrown a couple of stones were thus duped into choosing the lesser amount of stones.” The report also noted to the “dramatic increase in the detention of youngsters 13 and older” since 2000 Intifada, not to mention the psychological and physical pain inflicted upon the children because of the continued Israeli onslaught!
For example, since November 28, 2002, a Palestinian child, whose name is Ali, according to Al-Wda Org Website, who was then only 14 years old, and Jihad, 17, have been sitting in Israeli military prisons. Ali is charged with throwing stones at Army jeeps and with being the lookout for someone planning to throw a Molotov cocktail. Like nearly all kids who are taken for “questioning,” he “confessed” to the stone throwing. Ali is one of over 2000 children under 17 who have been arrested by the since the beginning of the Second Intifada two and a half years ago. Defense for Children International estimates that 300-350 are currently being detained. Several dozen are held in the infamous Ketziot prison in the Negev desert, where prisoners were recently beaten and tear gassed for protesting the inhuman conditions under which they are forced to live.
Moreover, a recent report by the Palestinian organization LAW concludes that children held at Telmond are subjected to “brute physical violence from Israeli guards, denial of family visits and communication with the outside world, a shortage of clothing, appropriate medical attention, hazardous living conditions, and extremely long prison sentences. LAW’s lawyer said the children report they were suspected of having mobile phones. Israeli guards threatened to beat them with electric and wooden sticks. The children were strip-searched and police dogs were used. The guards threw Qur’ans on the floor, while dogs sniffed their prayer clothes and other religious items.” Further, the children of Palestine are denied of the right to education. Since the start of the Intifada, nearly 200 Palestinian schools have been invaded, shelled or damaged, including the school in Hares, which since last year has bars on the windows because the Israeli army threw tear gas and sound bombs into the school almost every school day in 2001. LAW stated that in the final day of last term, the Israeli army invaded the school in A-Ras, which children are already being prevented from reaching because of the construction on the apartheid wall, and tore down the Palestinian flag which flies over every school in Palestine. The principal was told that if the flag was replaced, the school would be demolished. Students in D’aba, another village being devastated by the wall construction, have also been threatened with the demolition of their school if a single student is believed to have thrown one stone.
Amira Hass, the renowned Israeli Journalist known for her objective and accurate analyses in ha’aretz, titled her article on April 15th, 2003: "Tell me, soldier, do you kill kids?" in answer to a question repeatedly asked by Israeli interrogators to Palestinian Children: “Tell me, kid, did you throw stones?. Hass wrote: At midnight on February 20, the soldiers "came down to the village from the mountains," surrounded Ja'far's house, banged hard on the door, woke everyone up and demanded that Ja'far come along for interrogation. In the months prior to his arrest, several of his friends were similarly detained - all residents of the village of Kharbatha al Musbah, which nestles among the hills, ravines, olive groves, army roadblocks and dirt tracks southwest of Ramallah. Last year, at least some of these arrests were effected using the "neighbor routine": Two brothers, Nader and Mamduh, were arrested that way in July 2002. Someone knocked on the door sometime after 2 A.M. "The army is here, the neighbor told them, whereupon the army took them away for immediate interrogation in the middle of the night. And at Nahhalin, west of Bethlehem, on March 24 at night, a boy named Bilal was hustled away to be interrogated.
Over the last two years, hundreds of minors under 18 and even under 16 have been detained in this fashion. Israeli jails, prisons and detention facilities now hold some 300 Palestinian minors: Some are awaiting trial, some have already been tried for various security-related offenses - from rock-throwing (the majority) to an intent to perpetrate, or help perpetrate, a suicide attack. Attorney Khaled Quzmar of Defense for Children International (DCI), which has represented minors for years at Israeli military judicial proceedings, notes that before the Intifada, 95 percent of the cases his office handled dealt with suspected stone-throwing. In the last two years, he says, "more than 15 percent" of the cases involving minors that reach his organization concern alleged involvement with weapons, throwing Molotov cocktails, or terror incidents. In the data from his organization, 71 percent of minor Palestinian detainees in 2001 were under 14; in 2002, the figure was 22 percent. Meanwhile, there has been a drop in the proportion of 15- and 16-year-olds: from 43 percent in 2001 to 30 percent in 2002. The proportion of 17-year-olds rose from 40 percent to 49 percent. The principal new element: Some of these minors, including some younger than 16, are sent to administrative detention: no actual charges, no rights, not even a minimal defense of their rights.
Quzmar has noticed that, in the first three months of 2003, the trend has reversed itself: Once again, allegations of rock-throwing are on the upswing, while allegations involving more serious offenses have diminished. The average age, however, continues to drop. Nearly every time he returns from a military trial, he tells of a "13-and-a-half-year-old child" brought up for an extension of his detention for throwing rocks. "The 1990 model" is what Attorney Quzmar calls these children. Some draw six- or seven-month sentences; others, shorter periods. It depends on where the case is being tried. In some places, the prosecution demands heavier punishment - at the Adorayim military court, for instance - and the judges rule accordingly. Elsewhere, at Beit El, for example, prosecutors dealing with the same offenses are satisfied with prison terms shorter by several months.
The interrogator began questioning me: `You throw rocks?' I said, `No, maybe once, when I was little.' He started shouting at me. He pushed me. He said I threw 300 rocks. He insisted I did, and I kept saying no. I told him again that I did when I was little, but not now. He wrote something on a paper and said I had to sign. I don't know what I signed." "the soldiers beat us." Outside the cell, and in the cell itself. A few soldiers all at once, and sometimes only one. The reports of beatings are recurrent: especially in the detention cells at army bases. A slap here, a fist there, a kick, pushing, a blow to the head. The lawyers know it's pointless to make specific complaints: They wait so long to see the prisoner and have so little time with him; the matter of beatings falls by the wayside. Is this testimony credible or part of anti-Semitism!
BY
Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim