Three hundred and seventy Palestinian children are currently detained by Israel and over 2500 have been arrested since the beginning of the Intifada in September 2000.

The youngest Palestinian detained in 2003-2004 was 12-year-old Rakan Ayad Nasrat from Jericho who spent several months in prison. He was arrested on 29 September 2003 at a checkpoint in Bethlehem and taken to an Israeli settlement where he was threatened with electric shocks while under interrogation and then placed for 12 days in solitary confinement in a small room measuring 2m by 2m. He was beaten and sexually assaulted. He tried to commit suicide four times including once when he was hospitalized for two days. In an affidavit to Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, Rakan stated:

“because there was no one I could talk to and I felt incredible frightened and scared I tried to commit suicide while being in solitary confinement. On October 12th I was moved to Ofer military prison camp. When I arrived the soldiers asked me to take off my clothes and I was standing in my underwear. Then one of the soldiers took off even my underwear and started to use the metal detector on my naked body. While he was doing that he used his other hand to touch my body concentrating mainly on my back and bottom. This continued for a while and I was crying being terrified that something would happen.”

Before and during interrogation, Palestinian children face extreme physical and psychological pressure to confess and are often pressured to provide information on the political activities of other Palestinians. Seventeen year old Murad Abu Judeh recounts the abuse to which he was subjected prior to his interrogation in December 2000:

[A masked soldier wearing civilian clothes] took me outside, handcuffed me and put a sack on my head. It was raining. A group of soldiers began punching me and they were telling each other to beat me; speaking in Arabic so that I could understand them. Following that two soldiers carried me and threw me inside a jeep. I fell on someone else in the jeep- another prisoner - and hurt him. The jeep began moving and one of the soldiers started beating us and swearing at us until we reached the Etzion Interrogation Center … Before I entered interrogation, one of the soldiers threatened that he would return back to my house and destroy it if I didn’t confess.

Another 17-year old boy arrested for stone-throwing recounted to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization:

Three more people in masks came into the room. They blindfolded me, put a hood over my head…. They kicked and slapped me. They beat me with a plastic pipe and whatever they could get their hands on. I couldn’t see anything because I was blindfolded. I just felt the blows. That lasted ten to fifteen minutes… later they stood me on a chair and handcuffed me to a pipe that was fixed to the wall. They removed the chair from under me and left me hanging in the air, with my handcuffed hands holding onto the pipe and the weight of my body, hanging in the air, pulling my hands downwards. They left the room.

Given the climate of fear and exposure to physical mistreatment and intimidation, most children tend to confess relatively quickly, even if they are innocent. In many cases children sign confessions without a clear idea of what they contain, especially as the confessions are written in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not understand. Indeed, there are many examples of children confessing to an offence in order to escape torture or other forms of maltreatment.

Another particularly disturbing element in this type of coercion, is the attempt to obtain information from children about other activists within their community or even to recruit children as collaborators with the occupying force in exchange for lighter sentences or early release. Child political prisoners are particularly vulnerable to such coercion. Although this aim of Israel’s detention of children is recognized within the occupied territories it is rarely discussed publicly. One child described his experience of torture in 1998 as linked with attempts to recruit him as a collaborator:

The interrogators would say, ‘If you work with us we’ll give you money and let you go otherwise you’ll be given a very long sentence.’ When I refused they tied me to a small chair with 15-cm legs (kindergarten chair) and tied my hands behind my back and my feet to the chair. They put a filthy sack (with no ventilation) on my head. I was placed in this position for 6-12 hours. Other times I was placed in solitary confinement.

Length of sentencing has also increased for Palestinian child detainees since the beginning of the Intifada. Some examples of sentences given in 2002 are as follows:

• A 17-year old boy convicted of throwing stones, sentenced to 20 months in prison plus 24 months if he should commit the offense again, and a US$1000 fine.
• A 14-year old boy convicted of throwing stones, sentenced to six and a half months in prison and a US$500 fine.
• A 16-year old boy convicted of making - not throwing- a Molotov cocktail sentenced to 53 months in prison plus an extra 18 months if he should do it again within the next 5 years.
• A 17-year old boy who threw stones and a Molotov cocktail sentenced to six years in prison.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am and is filed under Israeli Detention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.