Israeli occupation forces systematically violate the rights of Palestinian children, a new report

Date: 10 / 09 / 2007 Time: 17:48

Bethlehem – Ma'an - 

Israeli occupation police and Israeli occupation forces systematically kidnap, beat, and detain Palestinian children without formally charging them, according to a new report by the advocacy group Defense for Children International (DCI).

The group's semiannual report said that at any given time between January and July 2007, between 382 and 416 Palestinian children were held in Israeli prisons and detention centers. More than half of these received prison sentences of up to a year.

Seventeen year old Sabe' Mouneer Ibrahim Titiy was seized from his home at two in the morning, beaten, and taken in a military jeep to various Israeli detention centers where he was tortured, continuously, for weeks until he signed a confession.

"Interrogation started at 7am," Titiy said, "I was handcuffed and shackled. When I asked for anything like going to the toilet or to drink water, the interrogator replied that I have to tell them everything before they would respond to my requests. The interrogator was screaming at me and told me that I had to confess to everything. He left me in the interrogation room handcuffed … The next morning at about 7am, the interrogator came into my cell to wake me and started to kick me. I was not allowed a shower or a change of clothes."

Sixteen year old Tahani Bin Oudi was shot by Israeli soldiers after running in fear from a checkpoint near Nablus. Israeli soldiers had found a small knife in her bag used for cutting fruit.

Military justice and harsh penalties

Under Military Order 378, a rule that governs the detention of children from the West Bank, a child can be detained and interrogated for up to 90 days without being charged with a crime. Under the same rule, conviction minor offenses can result in lengthy sentences. "Throwing of Objects Including a Rock," for instance, can carry a penalty of 10 to 20 years in prison.

Children under the age of 14, if convicted, can be imprisoned for up to six months. Children under the age of 12 cannot be imprison, but are often arrested and released, their families fined.

The DCI report was based on "approximately 200 cases conducted by DCI Palestine lawyers in the Israeli Military Courts during January to June 2007, and 30 statements taken from Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and interrogation and detention centers."

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Note to Readers:

The Israeli settlements as well as the Land-Grab, Apartheid Wall in the Palestinian occupied territories have been built illegally on confiscated Palestinian lands. These represent a major violation of international law, Geneva Conventions, and they obstruct reaching a peaceful resolution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Israeli occupation forces abduct and kidnap Palestinians from their homes and at checkpoints, on daily basis. Most media refer to these abductions and kidnappings as arrests, which is inaccurate and not true as the Israeli occupation government has no jurisdiction over Palestinian citizens inside their own territories.

Further, when Israeli occupation forces kill Palestinian civilians, particularly when the victims are women and children, this should be referred to as an act of terrorism, and perpetrators should be described as terrorists.

Since the end of the second intifadha in 2005, not a single Israeli civilian was killed by Palestinian resistance organizations. However, Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces, almost on daily basis.

Note to Journalists:

Any journalist who does not describe this as terrorism is biased, unfair, not objective, and a participant in terrorizing the Palestinian people, so the Israeli occupation of Palestine can continue endlessly.

Note to Translators:

The Arabic definite article, Al (or its variant, El) should be written with a hyphen separating it from the noun it is associated with, for example Al-Aqsa. If a hyphen is not used, as in Al Aqsa, it confuses non-Arabic readers. They may think that it is an abbreviation of the name Albert, as many Americans do.

The Arabic definite article Al (or El) should be written as such, whether it is Shamsiyah or Qamariyah in pronunciation, simply because we are dealing with the written form of the language, not the spoken one. Using the Shamsiyah so many forms in writing is inaccurate and confusing to non-Arabic readers, to say the least.

Only standard (fasih) pronunciation of Arabic names should be used. Non-standard ('ammi)  should be avoided avoided. Example: Names like Abu Sunainah, Abu Rudainah, and Abu Shebak are written by some translators in the non-standard forms of Abu Snainah, Abu Rdainah, and Abu Shbak.

The standard pronunciation of the vowel at the end of names is (a), not (e), particularly if it is followed by (h), like in the cases of Haniyah and Rudainah, not Haniyeh and Rudaineh.

The standard pronunciation of vowels in the following names is (ai), not (ei) as written by  some translators: Hussain, not Hussein and Hassanain, not Hassanein. This is the same long vowel pronounced in the English words "rain" and "brain."

 

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