Israel Arrest 400 Palestinian Children This Year

Ramallah, MINA – The Israeli Occupation Forces have arrested more than 400 Palestinian children under the age of 18 from the start of this year to the end of last October, most of them from Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a report on Thursday, about 170 Palestinian children were arrested by the occupation and held in the three central prisons of Megiddo, Ofer and Damon.

The Prisoner’s Club report coincides with International Children’s Day which falls on November 20 each year, the same date the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in that year 1989,

As Wafa reported, the agency emphasized that the occupation authorities continue to arrest children and enforce very cruel actions against them, even though the spread of the “Corona” virus continues.

Detainees of children face a double isolation process like adults and they are denied access to their families and lawyers, especially in the first months of the epidemic.

Fespite all the calls made by Palestinian and international human rights organizations for the release of child prisoners and prisoners who are sick and elderly, and ensuring the provision of the necessary preventive measures to protect them from the epidemic, stop arrest operations, including the detention of children, the occupation continues, and even increases it.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club reveals through a number of facts, the existence of a number of violations and transformations carried out by the occupation of child prisoners, as evidenced by their organized detention from home late at night, and their transfer to the investigation and arrest center.

Israel held them without food or drink for hours, and that happened in some documented cases for two days.

The Israeli authorities also committed acts of directing insults and swearing at them, threatening and intimidating them into confessing them, forcing them to sign statements written in Hebrew without translating them.

Israel deprives them of their legal right to be seen by parents and lawyers during investigations, as well as other methods and offenses, including preventing them from completing their studies.

Since 2015, the issue of child prisoners has undergone a continuing transformation, particularly during the period of Jerusalem’s annexation, including the occupation authorities’ approval of racist laws.

In addition, there has been movement towards bills regulating the issuance of high judgments against children, in some cases up to ten years or more, life sentences, and from that year to October this year, cases of detention of children reached over 7,000 cases.

Palestinian children, especially in occupied Jerusalem, face systematic arrests, which adversely affect their fate, through systematic action to destroy the structure of Jerusalem society.

It includes targeting juvenile prisoners, the “home confinement” policy which has affected hundreds of child prisoners over the past few years and is the most dangerous policy imposed on them by turning their homes into prisons.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club calls on international human rights agencies to make serious efforts to protect Palestinian children, most notably the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and requires the occupying authorities to make a series of treaties and laws for the protection of children. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)