Today, Saturday, the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies recorded 1,000 arrests by the occupation of Palestinian minors since the beginning of this year, including 73 children under the age of 14.
The center said in a statement that the occupation authorities escalated the targeting of Palestinian children by arrest, with the aim of deterring them from participating in resisting the occupation, losing their educational opportunities, and destroying their future.
The center pointed out that all the detained children were subjected to torture and abuse from the first moment of arrest by being taken from their homes in the late hours of the night, or kidnapped from the streets and at checkpoints, and they are also subjected to various forms of abuse and humiliation, including severe beatings, threats, and the use of savage police dogs to terrorize them. .
He pointed out that the occupation did not hesitate to arrest wounded children after shooting at them and injuring them with various injuries, some of them dangerous, and transporting them in difficult conditions. Rather, it came to interrogating them in hospitals, and blackmailing them by providing confessions in exchange for treatment and medical care. The occupation also arrested children with special needs.
The center stated that the number of child prisoners rose to 230 as a result of the intensive arrests that targeted them since the beginning of the year, noting that they are distributed among the lions sections in the prisons (Megiddo, Ofer and Damoun), in addition to the presence of a number of them in detention and investigation centers suffering from very harsh detention conditions and deteriorating conditions. It is inhuman and lacks the most basic necessities of life.
He pointed out that among the children, there are 3 children who are being held in renewed administrative detention without being charged, while 102 of them have received various sentences, including prison sentences for tens of years, and others are still in detention awaiting trials.
The center stated that the occupation made amendments to Military Order No. 1651, with the aim of lifting protection for children in the age group between 12 to 14 years, and thus allowing the ceiling of their detention to be raised, as the maximum imposed on this category before the amendment did not exceed six actual months or with Suspension of implementation, and after the new amendment, there is no longer a protection or time limit for the punishment that may be imposed on children who are tried before the military courts of the occupation and may reach tens of years or life.
And the new amendment means, in practice, that children under 14 years of age lose protection, and this clearly contradicts international standards and principles that were established to protect the rights of juveniles, and thus it fundamentally contradicts the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As mentioned by the center.
He stated that the financial fines imposed on children in Ofer Court during the current year amounted to 300,000 shekels, the equivalent of $90,000.
