Israeli army troops assualted nine-year old Palestinian Saqer al-'Aramen from Jerusalem in April this year. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are confronted with Israeli soldiers, checkpoints and violence every single day (Photo: IMEMC).
The world in which
Palestinian children grow up is one dominated by Israeli soldiers, checkpoints,
fear and the ever-present possibility of violence. Add to this already
traumatic environment is the Israeli practice of arresting and imprisoning
Palestinian children in alarming numbers and in conditions which violate every
international human rights and children rights conventions that Israel has
signed and ratified. During 2007, according to Defence for Children
International/Palestine Section (www.dci-pal.org),
some 700 Palestinian children were arrested by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank alone. Almost 6000 Palestinian children have
been arrested since the September 2000 start of the Al Aqsa Intifada. 350 Palestinian
children between the ages of 14 and 18 years are currently imprisoned by Israel. It is
worth noting that whilst both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child, which Israel has
signed, and Israeli law define a child as any person under the age of 18 years,
Israeli military law applicable in the West Bank
defines a child as any person under the age of 16 years.
I met with Hashem Abu
Maria of DCI's Hebron
office to discuss the issue of Palestinian child prisoners, specifically how
they reintegrate into society upon their release from jail. According to Hashem,
just under half the cases handled by the DCI in 2007 were of children under the
age of 17 and that a quarter of the children imprisoned were charged with stone
throwing – an offence which carries a possible prison sentence of up to 10
years, depending on the age of the child. The age taken into account by Israel is not,
as one might assume, the age of the child at the time the offence was committed,
but rather the age of the child at the time of sentencing. According to DCI,
once a child prisoner appears for sentencing, the evidence used against them,
in the majority of cases, is the signed confession of the child, which is
written in Hebrew (which few Palestinian children understand), extracted after
prolonged periods of physical and psychological abuse and without access to a
lawyer or any other competent adult during the interrogation process.
Palestinian children
are often imprisoned with adult criminal prisoners. Hashem tells me that since
the year 2000 most children are sent to Telmond prison, which, Hashem is at
pains to explain, is a prison used for civil cases only, not political cases.
So the Palestinian children are held with adult criminal prisoners – murderers,
drug dealers, thieves etc. When the children are in prison they face deplorable
conditions, in addition to often having been beaten and psychologically abused
during their arrest and subsequent transfer to an interrogation center or
prison. Adding to the severe damage that these conditions can cause a child,
they are also frequently denied family visits. All but one of the prisons,
Ofer, in which the children are held are located inside Israel (in violation of
Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which forbids the transfer of
prisoners from the occupied territory to the territory of the occupier),
meaning that their family members must obtain travel permits in order to visit
them. Hashem tells me that these permits are routinely denied and that 3 or 4
months often pass between visits. Hashem notes that this is a "deliberate
tactic" to make the child feel isolated so that they become "more
willing to cooperate or confess."
Hashem notes that there
has been a change from the First Intifada to the Second Intifada in how
Palestinian society views child prisoners. After the First Intifada, children
who had been imprisoned by Israel
were viewed as heroes which, according to Hashem, is unfortunate. During the
Second Intifada many organizations, including DCI, tried to work with wider
society to change public perspective. "The child does not have to be
involved in a ground conflict with the Israelis in order to be a hero," states
Hashem. Now, he says, with the dramatic increase in the number of children
imprisoned and the number of children martyred, Palestinian communities are
more protective of their children once they are released.
When Palestinian
children are released from prison they face not only psychological and physical
problems, but a host of societal problems as well. Whilst in the prison the
children are provided with little to no education, and upon their release they
are often kept back at school. This is especially the case if a child has spent
a few months or more in prison, as the Palestinian Directorate of Education
requires any student who has missed more than 70 days of school in any one year
to repeat that year. Many children do not feel comfortable being in a class
where everyone is younger than them, especially given the psychological
problems that many children face after their release, and so they drop out of
school before finishing.
Hashem also explains
that finding work is extremely difficult for former prisoners. There is
widespread unemployment in Palestinian society and added to the fierce
competition for jobs is a lack of education and skills, fear of re-arrest and
restrictions on movement. Former prisoners cannot travel to Israel to work, whilst Palestinians who have not
been imprisoned can, in theory at least, find work outside the West Bank. Readjusting to family life is also a serious
problem for children who have been imprisoned. Many families, according to
Hashem, feel their children return from prison more isolated and more
aggressive. The family tends to try to protect the child and control their
behaviour. The problem with this approach, for Hashem, is that this leads the
child to "explode again" in a violent way. The most worrying problem
for Hashem is that there are a growing number of children who find it so
difficult to cope once they are released that they actually try to get arrested
again. More startling still is that the majority of these cases are girls. When
I ask why, Hashem notes that the reputation of imprisoned girls in society is
not the same as that of the boys because the community has its own suspicions
of what the Israelis have done to girl children while they were in prison.
Unfortunately, there exist very few programs or institutions to help the
children and their families adjust to life after imprisonment.
Hashem concluded by
adding that children who have been imprisoned tend to turn to violence or
extremism in later life. The child no longer trusts adults and they have,
Hashem says, an "internal pain" that has evolved from the
psychological conditions of prison and they try to "discharge it" on
those around them. Hashem also tells me that in his opinion, the Israelis
deliberately foster the negative psychological situation of the child; they
foster a destructive personality in the child in order to break their spirit.
John W. Whitehead once
said that "children are the living messages we send to a time we will not
see" (The Stealing of America, 1983). The Palestinian children are the
ones who must carry on the struggle for peace and freedom. The chances of
reaching a peaceful settlement in the future depends upon a society in which
children can grow up in security, not be arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and
left isolated – this road leads to violence, strife and a continuation of this
tragic conflict.
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