You are here
Children Under Occupation (38)
Posted: March 14, 2009
Hanan F Abdul Rahim, Laura Wick, Samia Halileh, Sahar Hassan-Bitar, Hafedh Chekir, Graham Watt, Marwan Khawaja
The Countdown to 2015 intervention coverage indicators in the occupied Palestinian territory are similar to those of other Arab countries, although there are gaps in continuity and quality of services across the continuum of the perinatal period. Since the mid-1990s, however, access to maternity facilities has become increasingly unpredictable. 
Mortality rates for infants (age ≤1 year) and children younger than 5 years have changed little, and the prevalence of stunting in children has increased. Living conditions have worsened since 2006, when the elected Palestinian administration became politically and economically boycotted, resulting in unprecedented levels of Palestinian unemployment, poverty, and internal conflict, and increased restrictions to health-care access. Although a political solution is imperative for poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and the universal right to health care,
women and children should not have to wait. Urgent action from international and local decision makers is needed for sustainable access to high-quality care and basic health entitlements.
Introduction
Maternal and child health are important components of present and future population health in the occupied Palestinian territory, where roughly 40% of the
population are women of reproductive age and children younger than 5 years.1 Although the economic situation had been on a downward trend since the second intifada (popular uprising against occupation) in 2000,2 living conditions worsened after the elections in January, 2006, which gave the political party Hamas control of the Palestinian Legislative Council and brought about a political and economic boycott by several countries in the international community.3Poverty in the occupied Palestinian territory has risen sharply, and more than a third of the population is classified as food insecure.4
The Israeli-imposed system of several hundred checkpoints and barriers to movement has severely restricted access to services,5 and these restrictions can be especially crucial in perinatal and child-health emergencies.6
In this report, we discuss the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory with respect to the fourth and fifth Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for reduction of child mortality and improvement of maternal health, respectively, and we use the Countdown to 20157 indicators to assess coverage of priority interventions.
However, because coverage indicators alone do not indicate the complexity of maternal and child health-care provision in a specific context, 8 we describe the broad context of service provision, which is characterized by challenges common to many low-income and middle-income countries, such as poverty, poor nutrition, and an overburdened public-health system, but which is also unique in terms of the presence of a military occupation and a state of protracted conflict.9
Within the constraints of the present economic and political conditions, we propose changes for improvement of the services provided to women and children in the short term, and we make long-term recommendations that presuppose a conducive political situation.
References
1 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Palestinian family health survey, 2006: preliminary report. Ramallah: Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007.
2 World Bank. West Bank and Gaza economic developments and prospects —March, 2008. West Bank and Gaza: World Bank, 2008.
http://go.worldbank.org/A6Y2KDMCJ0 (accessed Dec 1, 2008).
3 Stanforth R. Poverty in Palestine: the human cost of the financial boycott. April 2007. Oxfam briefing note. Oxford, UK: Oxfam International Secretariat, 2007. http://www.oxfam.de/download/Palestinian_Aid_Crisis.pdf (accessed March 31, 2008).
4 Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and United Nations World Food Program. Comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis. Jerusalem: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and United Nations World Food Program, 2007.
5 UN Relief and Works Agency. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), November 2007. UNRWA emergency appeal 2008. Gaza Strip: United Nations Relief and Works Agency, 2008. http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/appeals/2008-appeal.pdf (accessed Feb 11, 2008).
6 Murray S, Pearson S. Maternity referral systems in developing countries: current knowledge and future research needs. Soc Sci Med 2006; 62: 2205–15.
7 Countdown Coverage Writing Group and on behalf of the Countdown to 2015 Core Group. Countdown to 2015 for maternal, newborn, and child survival: the 2008 report on tracking coverage of interventions. Lancet 2008; 371: 1247–58.
8 Countdown Working Group on Health Policy and Health Systems. Assessment of the health system and policy environment as a critical complement to tracking intervention coverage for maternal, newborn, and child health. Lancet 2008; 371: 1284–93.
Report´s name: Maternal and hild health in the Occupied territory.
By: Hanan F Abdul Rahim, Laura Wick, Samia Halileh, Sahar Hassan-Bitar, Hafedh Chekir, Graham Watt, Marwan Khawaja
Year: 2009
Source:
http://www.thelancet.com
By Annie Robbins
It appears Israel’s ongoing incitement of Palestinian children has taken a particularly macabre turn.
Skunk spraying, apparently on West Bank
These videos have surfaced of Jerusalem police driving calmly through quiet empty East Jerusalem neighborhoods drenching elementary schools and residences with a putrid liquid with the stench of feces and rotting animal carcass, commonly referenced as “skunk spray”. 972+ has the story. “The skunk water targeted the A-Tur [Mount of Olives neighborhood] elementary school for boys, the elementary and high school for girls, a high school for boys and the ‘Basma’ elementary school for disabled children. All four schools are located on the neighborhood’s main street.”
As a result 4,500 children stayed home from school the following day: In the A-Tur neighborhood, the police shot skunk water at four large schools, forcing the parents of 4,500 students to leave their children at home due to the unbearable smell. “It was this past Friday, at around 5:30 p.m.,” says Khader Abu Sabitan, a member of the parents’ committee in the neighborhood. “I was on the road and saw them pass with their machine, and saw how they began shooting water at the school. I’m telling you – there was nothing there. It is Friday at 5:30 in the evening, and there was no one in the school or on the streets. Nothing. Everyone was home. They went to all four schools in the neighborhood, shot the water, and left.”
This form of collective punishment seems sadistic. I’m at a loss for a better term. Haggi Mater reports that “words cannot express” the stench, that “gagging is almost inevitable” and that it’s almost impossible to get rid of the smell.
The videos were given to 972+ to support resident claims that Jerusalem police had been using the spray routinely and arbitrarily. Evidently the practice of spraying the East Jerusalem neighborhoods has been going on for awhile and a complaint was filed with the police last August by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) . Palestinian residents have been meeting with human rights organizations but many are afraid to come forward and give testimony for fear of retribution. Because the practice is being used routinely, regardless of circumstance, the residence are at a loss as to how to respond.
The police claim that spraying the schools and homes is used according to regulations. Inquiries have been made seeking an explanation what those regulations are but the police have refused to tell them. Mater reports “ACRI has attempted to force the police to publish the regulations vis-a-vis the skunk” and that 972+ has also made inquires with the police and plan on publishing their response.
Read 972+’s full report here.
We’ve reported on the Israeli military’s practice of spraying villages in Occupied Palestine, but this is the first we’ve heard of police routinely spraying quiet Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Posted: 08/23/2013
By Ali Abunimah
Palestinian children are systematically subjected to torture and violence, including threats of rape, by Israeli interrogators, in order to force them to confess to stone-throwing.
Palestinian children are systematically subjected to torture and violence, including threats of rape |
The brutality, at the Etzion police station, in an illegal Israeli colony near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, is documented in a new report by the Israeli group B’Tselem:
In November 2009, B’Tselem began receiving reports of violence against Palestinian minors during interrogation at the Etzion police station. Until July 2013, B’Tselem field researchers collected 64 testimonies from residents of eight communities in the southern West Bank who reported such incidents. Fifty-six of them were minors at the time of their interrogation. The testimonies described severe physical violence during the interrogation or preliminary questioning, which, in some cases, amounted to torture. The violence included slaps, punches and kicks to all parts of the body, and blows with objects, such as a gun or a stick. Some of the former interrogatees also reported threats: in twelve cases, they claimed that the interrogator had threatened them or female relatives with sexual assault, such as rape and genital injury. In six cases, the interrogatees claimed that the interrogators had threatened to execute them; in eight cases, the interrogators allegedly threatened to harm family members; and in five other cases, they allegedly threatened to electrocute the interrogatees, including in a way that would damage their fertility.
I’ll murder you if you don’t confess”
B’Tselem included the testimony of M.A., a 15-year-old boy, from Husan village near Bethlehem:
The interrogator “Daud” took me outside with a soldier. They blindfolded me. The plastic cable ties were still on my hands. They put me in a car and started driving. I don’t know where they took me. We reached some place outside Etzion and they forced me out of the car. My hands really hurt because of the cable ties. They took off my blindfold. I didn’t know where I was. They tied me to a tree, and then they raised my cuffed hands and tied them to the tree, too. It hurt a lot. “Daud” started punching me. After a few minutes, he took out a gun and said: “I’ll murder you if you don’t confess! Out here, no one will find you. We’ll kill you and leave you here.
Video
<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2f5tPd3NtF0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
While the revelations from B’Tselem are shocking, they are, sadly, hardly new. The accounts of the Palestinian children are consistent with those collected in dozens of cases in 2012 alone by Defence for Children International – Palestine Section (DCI).
These cases include routine use of solitary confinement with no access to family or lawyers, as well as physical violence, to force children to confess.
Last year, DCI released the brief video above, Alone, highlighting the experience and testimonies of Palestinian children abused and tortured by the occupation forces.
The film makes the point that Palestinian children subjected to military occupation have no one to protect them from such abuses by Israeli forces.
As of June this year, there are 193 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons of whom 41 were between the ages of 12 and 15.
Some 7,500 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli occupation forces since the year 2000, according to DCI.
Systematic violence and near total impunity
B´Tselem reports that its efforts to obtain accountability for Palestinian victims in dozens of cases have been met with stone-walling.
The group said its appeals to the occupation to deal “systemically” with the phenomenon of torture and violence at Etzion have gone nowhere:
Although B´Tselem contacted the Israel Police on this matter repeatedly, no official answer was given to the question whether any steps had been taken to address the phenomenon and, if so, what they were. All our communications with the police on the matter were met with denial.
B´Tselem said that the high number of consistent reports of torture suggest a systematic process:
The high number of reports B´Tselem has received regarding violent interrogations at the Etzion station, and the fact that they span several years, gives rise to heavy suspicion that this is not a case of a single interrogator who chose to use illegal interrogation methods, but rather an entire apparatus that backs him up and allows such conduct to take place.
B´Tselem itself issued a report about the torture of children at Etzion police station as far back as 2001.
Again, B´Tselem’s experience matches that of other Israeli groups, such as Yesh Din, that have found that efforts to obstain justice for Palestinians from their oppressors result in almost total and systematic impunity for the abusers.
Source:
http://electronicintifada.net
Posted: 17 June 2009
By Jonathan Cook
The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces
The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits. The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including children.Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said. As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”. Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people”.Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the Breaking the Silence project, which highlights army brutality.Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, south-west of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.During a 12-hour operation that began at 3am, 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators. One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me. ”Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts. Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue – even if not intentionally – that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing. Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days. Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors. According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods. Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups. In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand. Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education. Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers rarely faced disciplinary action over illegal behaviour. Army data from2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
Source:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net
Posted on: 7 Apr 2008
On World Health Day, DCI/PS is publishing a report on the impact of the Israeli imposed blockade on Gaza on children suffering from cancer and blood diseases in the Strip.
Impact of the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza on the provision of health services in the Gaza Strip.
This report highlights the impact of the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza on the provision of health services in the Gaza Strip. In particular, it focuses on children suffering from cancer and blood diseases, and their inability to access life saving medicines and treatment inside or outside Gaza. Children have the right to enjoy “the highest attainable standard of health”, as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which Israel, as the occupying power, has a duty to facilitate. However, the closing of almost all of Gaza‟s border crossings constitutes a threat to the right of Palestinian children to receive appropriate medical treatment, and a direct threat to their right to life.
A. Introduction: The Gaza blockade
The Gaza Strip has 1.48 million inhabitants and one of the highest population densities in the world. Since the election of the Hamas government in January 2006, drastic restrictions have been imposed on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip. The restrictions were significantly tightened when an Israeli soldier was captured by three Palestinian factions in June 2006, and again in June 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza strip. Further sanctions were imposed following Israel‟s decision to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” in September 2007, and reductions in fuel and electricity supplies were implemented in September 2007 and January 2008.
Read the full report click here
By: Defence for Children International /Palestine.
Year: 2008
Link: http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/gaza_child_cancer_report_2008.PDF
The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is prohibited under international law.
DCI-Palestine has released the report:Recruitment and Use of Palestinian Children in Armed Conflict. The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is prohibited under international law, and can take many forms, ranging from direct involvement in fighting, to subsidiary roles, such as acting as informants. The prohibition also includes using children as human shields. The report finds that in the context of the military occupation of the Palestinian Territory, both Israel and Palestinian armed groups have violated the prohibition.
The report covers an eight year period between 2004 and 2011 (the reporting period), and identifies three circumstances where children are particularly vulnerable to recruitment by both parties to the conflict:
- The use of children as human shields by the Israeli army;
- The recruitment of children as informants by Israeli interrogators; and
- The use of children in hostilities by Palestinian armed groups.
The key findings of the report include:
1. In 16 out of the 17 cases documented involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields, the event occurred after a ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice declared the practice illegal. This suggests that the Israeli army is either ignoring the court’s judgment, or not properly ensuring compliance with its ruling. It is also significant to note that in only one case, was anybody held accountable for using a child as a human shield.
2. The report identifies 16 cases in which attempts were made by Israeli interrogators to recruit children as informants. Most attempts at recruitment occur during interrogation following arrest and the report identifies a number of methods, including the offer of money and early release. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject and the reluctance to talk, it is difficult to ascertain the scale of the problem, although there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the practice is widespread.
3. Finally, the report identifies 26 cases involving the recruitment and use of children by Palestinian armed groups during the reporting period. It is significant to note that in 23 out of 26 cases (88 percent), the children were from the Gaza Strip. It is also significant that in all 26 cases (100 percent) the evidence indicates that the children were not forcefully conscripted, but volunteered to join a group or to participate in hostilities. When asked why they volunteered, the children gave reasons ranging from patriotism to the “oppression” of the occupation and the killing and imprisonment of family members. The report finds that the recruitment and use of children by Palestinian armed groups increases during large scale incursions by the Israeli army, but such involvement does not appear to be either widespread or systematic.
Read the full report here
Report´s name: Recruitment and use of Palestinian children in armed conflicto
By: Defence for Children International /Palestine
Year: 2012
Link: http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/recruitment_report_-_final.pdf
Posted on: 2014
An Israeli human rights organization has accused the country of torturing Palestinian minors, with reported cases of public 
caging as well as threats and acts of sexual violence.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) condemned Israel’s failure to protect Palestinian minors from the alleged torture. The group demanded authorities introduce specific provisions for the protection of all children against torture in Israeli domestic law.
The human rights group states that international law against torture, as outlined in the Istanbul Protocol Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture, is not reflected by Israel’s domestic legislature.
PCATI argues that “torture is a means of attacking an individual’s fundamental modes of psychological and social functioning” as described in the Istanbul Protocol. Furthermore, “torture can impact a child directly or indirectly. The impact can be due to the child’s having been tortured or detained, the torture of parents or close family members or witnessing torture and violence.”
The group’s report was published ahead of Tuesday’s hearing by the Knesset’s Public Petitions Committee on related issues. PACTI based their complaint on data from filed reports of abuses against children collected over the past decade.
The practice of placing the children in outdoor cages was stopped once Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni intervened following the discovery, the Jerusalem Post reports.
PCATI states that it continues to actively investigate cases concerning children’s torture and ill treatment by IDF soldiers and interrogators. They are investigating threats and acts of sexual violence, caging prisoners in iron cages (including children), military conduct during detentions and arrests of Palestinians. Their collected data is also supported by a number of NGO’s also involved in documentation of torture allegations.
According to the Israeli Public Defender’s Office, knowledge of people being kept in iron cages surfaced during a night-time inspection of a prison at the height of a recent winter storm. Children were found kept outside in freezing temperatures for hours overnight following their arrest, and until they faced court charges the following morning.
“During our visit, held during a fierce storm that hit the state, attorneys met detainees who described to them a shocking picture: in the middle of the night dozens of detainees were transferred to the external iron cages built outside the IPS transition facility in Ramla,” the Public Defender’s Office wrote on its website.
“It turns out that this procedure, under which prisoners waited outside in cages, lasted for several months, and was verified by other officials.”
PCATI emphasizes that “failure to allow the arrested child or minor to full enjoyment of his or her rights, including the failure to allow for an attorney or accompanying adult at the time of arrest and interrogation places the child in a state of helplessness, distress and increases the pressure being applied to the child by the security forces in order to achieve a confession or information during the interrogation.”
PCATI says that the threshold for an “act of abuse” by Israel must be lowered when it comes to children. The NGO also believes that children and adults have the right to rehabilitation. The human rights group also says that abuse cases have the right to have their complaints fully examined and be “accompanied by a representative of their choosing when giving testimony to an Israeli investigator.”
Citing this year’s report by Defense of Children International (DCI-Palestine) and Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR), PACTI reiterated that “Israel is the only nation to automatically and systematically prosecute children in military courts that lack basic and fundamental fair trial guarantees.”
The human rights association estimates that up to 700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years-old, are subject to Israeli military detention system each year.
“The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 percent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation,” according to evidence collected by Defence for Children International Palestine. Furthermore, “no Israeli children come into contact with the military court system.”
Source: RT news
Posted: December 20, 2014
By Samer Badawi
Diyaa was knocked to the floor of his family home, kicked, and beaten by Israeli soldiers.
For speaking these words, Diyaa was knocked to the floor of his family home, kicked, and beaten by Israeli soldiers who, two weeks earlier, had done the same to his two friends. It was 3 am, and Diyaa’s parents could only watch as their 16-year-old son was dragged to an army jeep, blindfolded, and—like thousands of Palestinian children before him—forced into a military detention center in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
What happened next, according to affidavits given by Diyaa and his friends, fits a pattern of Israeli abuse designed to coerce confessions from Palestinian children. Among the most troubling of their experiences were prolonged periods of solitary confinement, a correctional tactic usually reserved for adult prisoners—and, even then, only after they are convicted.
“Although it’s true that, in the United States, children and juvenile offenders are sometimes held in solitary confinement—either as a disciplinary measure or to separate them from adult populations—in Israeli military detention, Palestinian children are held in solitary confinement for interrogation purposes,” said Brad Parker, international advocacy officer and attorney for DCI-Palestine.
That, says Parker, “amounts to torture under international law.”
Isolation, interrogation, and beatings
On the day of his detention, 16-year-old Diyaa remembers being thrown into a windowless cell, where he was to spend the next 15 days. During that time, he emerged only to be escorted to an interrogation room. He estimates that he was interrogated 15 times, for two hours each—all with his feet and hands bound to “a low metal chair.”
The interrogator accused Diyaa of throwing stones, an offense that, according to a November 2009 Israeli military order, could carry a sentence of up to 20 years. “I kept saying I wanted to see a lawyer,” Diyaa recalls.
“He asked me when I threw stones and with whom, but I did not answer. He interrogated me for about two hours. He did the same the following five days.”
On the fifth day, Diyaa relented. “I had to confess to throwing stones because of my horrible detention conditions in the cell. I also thought they would transfer me to a regular prison if I confessed.” But even after his “confession,” Diyaa was thrown back into his cell. His isolation was to last another 10 days, punctuated by more interrogations and, this time, beatings.
“One of the jailers used to beat me whenever I knocked on the door to ask for something,” Diyaa told DCI-Palestine. “He would come to the cell with another jailer, tie my hands and feet, and kick me hard while I was on the floor, and punch me on my stomach and head without any mercy.”
Forced confessions
The aim, it turned out, was to extract another confession—for a specific stone-throwing incident to which Diyaa’s friend had, according to the interrogator, already admitted.
But in sworn testimony to DCI-Palestine, Diyaa denied any involvement in the incident:
“The interrogator said that my friend Thabet accused me in his statement of throwing stones with him at a settler car, that the car overturned and the passengers were injured. I told him that was not true, and that I was at the local supermarket when I heard about the incident.”
Diyaa’s friend Thabet, it turns out, had just admitted to stoning a car carrying residents of an illegal settlement near his hometown of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But the 16-year-old’s “confession” came after four days of solitary confinement and abuse, culminating in a threat so terrifying that Thabet immediately agreed to whatever charges had been leveled against him.
According to Thabet, an Israeli interrogator told him: “If you don’t confess, I’ll have both of your parents arrested, brought here to this room, and killed.”
“I was scared they would actually do what they said they would do about arresting and killing my parents,” Thabet told DCI-Palestine. “So I confessed. I confessed to throwing stones several times at a settler car, and the stones hit the car and overturned it, and that the passengers were injured, as I [recall].”
Fending for themselves
Until their “confessions,” Diyaa, Thabet, and a third friend—17-year-old Bashar, also accused of stone-throwing—were left to fend for themselves, deprived of family visits and legal counsel. Parker says this, too, is part of a pattern of Israeli abuse:
“[Child detainees] are often denied access to an attorney until after being subjected to several days of prolonged interrogation and isolation,” according to Parker. “The apparent goal,” he says, “is to obtain a confession” at all costs.
Between the three of them, Diyaa, Thabet, and Bashar spent a combined total of 62 days in solitary confinement. In 40 similar cases documented by DCI-Palestine between 2012 and 2013, the average time an individual child spent in solitary confinement was 10 days. The longest period of confinement documented in a single case was 29 total days in 2012 while, in 2013, another child was held in isolation for 28 total days.
“This pattern of abuse by Israel is grave,” said Richard Falk, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Falk, who is also a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, called Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children “inhumane, cruel, degrading, and unlawful; and, most worryingly, it is likely to adversely affect the mental and physical health of underage detainees.”
An October 2013 report by The New York Times on the use of interrogations among teenagers held in US prisons concluded that the detainees were “too young to know better,” often incriminating themselves without understanding their legal rights.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, child detainees have no such rights. Between 2008 and 2013, DCI-Palestine documented 80 cases of Palestinian children held in solitary confinement prior to being charged with any offense.
Torture
“Using solitary confinement in this way is conduct that amounts to torture under international law,” says Parker. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has explicitly found that solitary confinement, when “used intentionally during pretrial detention as a technique for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession” amounts to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
In more than 97 percent of cases documented by DCI-Palestine between 2012 and 2013, “children held in solitary confinement were not properly informed of their right to silence, were denied access to legal counsel and did not have a family member present during interrogation,” according to a May 2014 report prepared by the organization. In the same time period, more than three-quarters of child detainees were strip searched, subject to physical abuse, and denied access to food and water.
In some cases, Israeli authorities use solitary confinement to punish children already detained as political prisoners. In April of this year, a 15-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, who had been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for stone-throwing, was subject to 25 days of isolation for refusing food—a desperate measure that, he says, was intended to protest the harsh conditions in which he was being held. Obaida, whose last name was withheld at his family’s request, told DCI-Palestine that his jailers threatened to tie him to his bed and force-feed him if he did not end his hunger strike.
Widespread abuse
According to the cases DCI-Palestine documented in 2012 and 2013, some 20 percent of Palestinian child detainees were subjected to solitary confinement during their interrogations. Any “confessions” extracted by this practice are suspect, say legal experts. Yet, like older political detainees, Palestinian children stand little chance of defending themselves in Israeli military courts, which function under a set of directives designed explicitly to “administer” Israel’s occupation.
“Israeli military court judges rarely exclude confessions or other evidence extracted from coercive interrogations,” says Parker. “Palestinian child detainees are denied access to counsel, ill-treated and tortured, and then find themselves before a military court process that falls drastically short of international juvenile justice standards.”
As of September, DCI-Palestine recorded 182 Palestinian children in Israeli detention. Since 2000, an estimated 8,000 Palestinian children have been detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system.
As for Diyaa, Thabet, and Bashar, the three friends have since appeared before a military judge to face charges for stone-throwing. The three have been removed from solitary confinement, but they face an uncertain fate in a court system that is not their own. Meanwhile, the three continue to be haunted by the memory of their arrest and interrogation.
“I was very scared of them,” Thabet said of his interrogators. “There were five of them, and they were huge compared to me.”
* Samer Badawi is a freelance contributor to Defense for Children International Palestine. Based in Washington, DC, he spent the summer reporting in Gaza for +972 Mag. Follow him@samwithaner.
Posted on: 20 Apr 2013
Palestinian teenager as a human shield during confrontations with protesters in the West Bank.
Muhammad R, 17, was used as a human shield by Israeli border police during clashes with protesters in the West Bank town of Abu Dis. (Photo courtesy of Huthifa Jamous)
Ramallah, April 20, 2013—Defence for Children International Palestine is disturbed by Israeli border police using a Palestinian teenager as a human shield during confrontations with protesters in the West Bank town of Abu Dis on Friday.
British journalist Kate Arno caught Israeli border police on video as they grabbed Muhammad R, 17, out of their armored vehicle onto the street and forced him to stand with them while they fired at protesters. His hands remained tied with a single plastic cord and held above his head throughout the incident. One of the policemen can be seen flashing the V-for-victory sign. The clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli forces erupted during a demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, according to news report.
“We’re outraged that Israeli soldiers continue to use Palestinian children as human shields with impunity,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at DCI-Palestine. “The teen in this case was deliberately exposed to danger after he had been taken into custody. Israeli authorities must conduct a prompt, transparent and impartial investigation and hold the perpetrators accountable.”
Israeli border police spokesman Shai Hachimi told Agence France-Presse that the police officer in charge only wanted to show the youth was unharmed during his arrest. He denied that the teenager was used as a human shield.
While transferring Muhammad to the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the West Bank for interrogation, the border policemen allegedly roughed him up. His father told DCI-Palestine that he caught up with his son at the police station and saw him at a distance. Muhammad was struggling to stand on his right leg and his face was bruised, the father said. After questioning, Muhammad was taken to Ofer prison in the West Bank, according to his lawyer, Shadi Zaatreh.
Muhammad has enlarged tonsils and adenoids that restrict his breathing, according to his father. He requires medication to sleep at night and uses an inhaler throughout the day.
In February, DCI-Palestine documented a case where Israeli soldiers forced a 9-year-old Palestinian boy at gunpoint to walk among them while they confronted Palestinian demonstrators near Ofer prison outside Ramallah.
Since 2004, DCI-Palestine has documented 21 cases of Palestinian children used as human shields by Israeli forces, 20 of which occurred after the 2005 decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice prohibiting the practice under Israeli domestic law.
The use of human shields is prohibited by international humanitarian law, and involves the forced presence of civilians to shield an area or soldiers from harm or forcing civilians to directly assist in military operations.
Video:
@Kate_arno abudes
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VWY-dTfas#t=75
Posted on: 27 Aug 2012
Violence against Palestinian children
The Israel Defence Force’s arbitrary use of violence against Palestinian children, including forcing them to act as human shields in military operations, has been exposed by veteran soldiers in detailed statements chronicling dozens of brutal incidents.
The most disturbing trend that emerges from the soldiers’ testimonies relates to the wounding and killing of children in the occupied West Bank and Gaza by either targeted shooting or by failing to protect minors during military operations, the report from veteran soldiers’ group Breaking the Silence says.
“If I am frightened of the soldiers I will not live my life, so it is better not to be afraid.”
“The commander gripped the kid, stuck his gun in his mouth . . . The kid was hardly able to walk. We dragged him further, and then he said again: ‘One more time this kid lifts a stone, anything, I kill him. No mercy’,” one former soldier states.
Video
Another recalls: “There was an ambush where a kid coming up with a Molotov cocktail had his leg blown off. They laid ambush exactly at that spot. Kids came, the soldiers were there, the kids lit a bottle, and they were shot in the leg.”
The release of the testimonies follows the publication of two damning reports — one from a group of eminent British lawyers who visited Israel’s military courts and the other from the human rights organisation Defence of Children International — that detail multiple violations of international law by Israel in its treatment of children.
These include Israel’s practice of holding Palestinian children in solitary confinement and denying them legal representation, as well as its use of physical violence, shackles and coerced confessions in interrogations.
“It is crucial that people in Israel are confronted about what it means for Palestinian children to live under military occupation,” says Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence.
All the incidents detailed in the report occurred in what Israel admits is a “quiet period” — from 2005 to 2011, after the violence and suicide bombings of the second Palestinian intifada, in which at least 972 Israelis and 3315 Palestinians died.
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children come into regular conflict as Israel seeks to maintain its control over areas of the West Bank where 300,000 settlers live across the 1967 “Green Line” in contravention of international law.
Children throw stones to protest against the presence of soldiers and settlers, sometimes with deadly consequences, soldiers say.
But that does not excuse the use of excessive force against children or the military’s consistent arbitrary invasion of villages and homes as part of a campaign to suppress the Palestinian population of the West Bank, Mr Shaul says.
“Every soldier who has served in the occupied territories has these images of breaking into a house in the middle of the night, little children are crying, you wake up the family,” he says.
“That is 24 hours a day, seven days a week you have patrols that bump into random houses and disrupt the life of people — that is idea — it is what we call in the military litzur tchushat nirdafaut’ or ‘to create the feeling of being chased’.”
Mr Shaul says it is only once soldiers have finished their active duty and begin to think as civilians that they can see the military’s actions in a different light — when the order to shoot to kill a child who is 200 metres away and not threatening anyone stops making sense. “This is what our society is made of, you cannot ignore it, you cannot just run away from it — this is who we are as people and I think this is something we should face.”
But according to the Israeli government, Palestinian children pose a grave threat to the country’s security.
“Over a period of years now we have seen Palestinian minors involved in violence against Israeli civilians, whether it is throwing rocks at cars, whether it is throwing petrol bombs or Molotov cocktails,” says Mark Regev, the spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We have established a parallel system to deal with minors because we recognise minors have special needs and . . . we are trying to do this in a manner that is as sensitive as possible in very difficult conditions.”
It was unfortunate, Mr Regev said, that militant Palestinian organisations chose to put minors “on the front line”.
He urged anyone with a complaint against the Israel Defence Forces to come forward.
“We have a very strict code of behaviour under which our soldiers are allowed to act and if there are violations of that code of behaviour soldiers face discipline and they can go to jail.
“There is an independent part of the military that investigates all such allegations . . . I don’t think it is the norm but in any large system there are aberrations and we have to stamp them out.”
Sixteen-year-old Anan Tamimi has been arrested three times by the IDF, and released each time without charge.
He lives in the West Bank village of al-Nabi Saleh, where there are weekly clashes between the army and residents, who are protesting against attempts by Israelis from the Halamish settlement and its outposts to take over the al-Qawas Spring and the surrounding land.
Two human rights organisations — B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel — have consistently expressed grave concerns about the behaviour of the IDF at al-Nabi Saleh.
The first time Anan was taken by the IDF, the soldiers came at 3am. His mother, Bushra Tamimi, says at one point there were more than 30 soldiers, some with dogs, on the second floor of the family’s home.
The soldiers had a photograph and they were searching Anan’s closet and drawers to try to find clothes that matched the person in the photograph, Mrs Tamimi told the Age. They found nothing to link her son to the photograph, but they took him anyway.
“When they took me outside the house . . . they turned my hands back to my back and they tied my hands with this plastic tie and blindfolded my eyes immediately,” Anan says.
“I spent 17 hours in the settlement here . . . then they transferred me to Ofer [Prison] . . . on the fourth day they took me to the court and . . . I was released.”
The second time he was arrested, he was again taken to the nearby settlement of Halamish, where after several hours he was released, still with his hands tied tightly behind his back and blindfolded, on the side of the road and left to find his own way home, Anan says.
Soon after, using the same photograph that had been found by the IDF’s own military court to have no link to Anan, he was again arrested.
This time the 16-year-old spent 15 days in Ofer Prison before he was released without charge.
With the quiet bravado of a teenage boy, he says he is not worried about whether the Israeli army will raid his house again at night and take him away.
“If I am frightened of the soldiers I will not live my life, so it is better not to be afraid.”
The most common offence children are accused of is throwing stones, says Gerard Horton, head of Defence of Children International in Palestine.
“But in many cases it is very difficult for the army to actually identify who was throwing the stones . . . so the modus operandi of the army appears to be that when an incident of stone-throwing does occur someone has to be punished for that even if you cannot identify who the perpetrator is.
“The army needs to maintain control in the West Bank and they need provide protection to 300,000 settlers who are living in the West Bank, contrary to international law. In order to do that they need to make sure that any form of resistance, no matter what form that takes, has to be crushed.”
The IDF’s spokesman, Major Arye Shalicar, said the security situation in the West Bank had improved significantly because of the army’s work.
“In the end if you compare it to 10 years ago we have had a decline in suicide attacks,” he said.
“We had hundreds of suicide murders in 2002 and none in 2012. It shows that there is some kind of effectiveness in the actions of the security establishment and its coordination with the Palestinian security forces.”
If there was maltreatment of Palestinian children it was important that the IDF investigate the claims, he said.
He expressed frustration that Breaking the Silence did not provide the IDF or other relevant bodies with the information necessary to launch an investigation.
But Mr Shaul said it was important that Breaking the Silence protected the identity of its sources, many of whom were breaching IDF policy to expose the system of abuse.
Extracts from testimonies of Israeli soldiers
First Sergeant, Kfir Brigade
“The commander gripped the kid, stuck his gun in his mouth, yelled … The kid was hardly able to walk. We dragged him further, and then he said again: ‘One more time this kid lifts a stone, anything, I kill him. No mercy’.”
Kfir Brigade, Ramallah
“We had lots of X’s (marked on the side of a soldier’s rifle, indicating the number of people he’s killed] at that time. The battalion loved it. There was an ambush around there where a kid coming up with a Molotov cocktail had his leg blown off. They laid ambush exactly at that spot. Kids came, the soldiers were there, the kids lit a bottle, and they were shot in the leg.”
First Sergeant, Nablus
“We would enter villages on a daily basis, at least twice or three times a day, to make our presence felt, and … it was like we were occupying them. Showing we’re there, that the area is ours, not theirs. At first you point your gun at some five-year-old kid, and feel bad afterward, saying it’s not right. Then you get to a point where … you get so nervous and sick of going into a village and getting stones thrown at you.”
First Sergeant, Hebrón
“So there’s a school there. We’d often provoke riots there. We’d be on patrol, walking in the village, bored, so we’d trash shops, find a detonator, beat someone to a pulp, you know how it is. Search, mess it all up. Say we’d want a riot? We’d go up to the windows of a mosque, smash the panes, throw in a stun grenade, make a big boom, then we’d get a riot.”
Source:
http://www.dci-palestine.org
risus enim amet nibh faucibus ante purus mollis quam, lobortis tempus donec urna ornare duis nisi curae ante sit vitae, nisl vivamus cubilia fringilla ligula faucibus nam vestibulum diam. mattis sollicitudin nam phasellus in magna metus, mollis est porta venenatis phasellus curabitur gravida, curae non congue in nisi.
Suscipit sapien vivamus eu neque egestas nulla aliquam risus ad mattis elementum, tincidunt sociosqu nunc nisi dictumst volutpat feugiat euismod lobortis curabitur. consectetur aenean lacinia auctor habitant enim sem ligula lacinia himenaeos, velit ullamcorper suspendisse ante leo magna ad conubia egestas donec, facilisis taciti placerat inceptos arcu id imperdiet curabitur.
Cursus lacinia fusce ut mi pretium convallis nulla turpis, taciti facilisis conubia consequat est aliquam eu fermentum convallis, at fermentum at tortor integer nisl vestibulum. ante aenean scelerisque tellus faucibus facilisis sagittis augue donec, sapien morbi quis cursus dui platea etiam enim nisl, curae elementum posuere eget habitasse lobortis nostra.