Breaking the Palestinian Youth

Mohammad and Abdul Rahman, not even teenagers, have spent more than a week in jail and were taken to trial on Tuesday in the Court of the Ofer jail, an Israeli prison that is located in the town of Beitunya in the central West Bank.

“The trial of the two children from the Khawaja family is a crime and a flagrant violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and disclose the real intentions of Israel,” said the Deputy Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative.

By arresting children and taking them to trial, Israel is proving once again its disrespect and violations of rights of the Palestinian children, even if those rights are guaranteed by international conventions and treaties such the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the Geneva Convention.

According to local sources, the two children were arrested when they were on the roof of their houses, while the village was stormed at night by the IOF troops.

Ironically, Abdel Rahman, spent yesterday is thirteenh birthday in detention in an Israeli jail, rather than spending that celebration day surrounded by joy with his family. Furthermore, for more than a week, the children have been prevented from attending classes at school. This leads Dr. Barghouthi to say that ”the Israeli government is stealing the innocence and the future of Palestinian kids.”

Tuesday saw the trial of the children who were judged by the Israeli Military Court in the military compound of Ofar, a couple of kilometres away from Ramallah. Mohammad, the 11-year-old boy from Ni’lin, was set free after his family paid 3000 shekels (the equivalent of 800 dollars) for him to be released on bail. The fate of his companion of misfortune Abdul Rahman is uncertain as yet he will be judge later.

The children come from Ni’lin, a village South West of Ramallah that has been facing violent Israeli occupation and retaliation against the popular non-violent struggles that the village has been carrying out for the last 5 months. In May, the Israeli started the building of a new section of the apartheid Wall. The path of the Wall that concerns Ni’lin will cut the village in two separated areas and isolate it from the rest of the West Bank, as well as confiscating more than 50.000 dunums of agricultural land of the villagers.

But it is not only the children from Ni’lin who are concerned with arbitrary Israeli detention. Today, they are 293 Palestinian children in detention in the Israeli jails, according the Palestinian section of Defence Children International. During the year of 2005, the Israeli forces arrested 700 children. This number is still increasing.

Israeli authorities currently detain some 8,000 Palestinian prisoners. According to a 2006 report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners ’face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities’. According to recent figures the Palestinian prison population includes an average of 400 children and 100 women detainees.

International organisations, human right groups and legal observers have documented systematic violation of international laws experienced by Palestinian children under 18 years old, including torture, interrogation, physical beatings, deplorable living conditions and no access to fair trial.

Under the Israeli military orders that are in force inside the occupied West Bank and Gaza, any Palestinian over the age of 16 is considered an adult even though Israel is a signatory to the International Convention of the Rights of the Child, which defines all children under 18 years old.

But on the ground, reality is even harsher. Like the case of Mohammad and Abdul Rahman, Palestinian children under 16 are tried and arrested as adults, judged by the Israeli Military Court, and detained in jail with adults. No special infrastructures are made for them; ignoring completely their young age and the consequences of detention might have on their future psychological development.

Once again, Israel is also proving its policy of double standards, as in the state of Israel, anyone is considered as a child under the age of 18.

Since the beginning of the Annapolis negotiations in last November, 91 Palestinian children have been killed. This number rises above 100 children since the end of the second Intifada.

While Israel is outrageously bypassing several international laws, by building the apartheid Wall, confiscating the land of Palestinians and arresting and detaining arbitrarily Palestinian children; it is the duty of the international institutions and community to undertake their responsibilities and pressure Israel to respect the fundamental human rights standards.