By Dr. Elias Akleh
The Israelis were not satisfied
with the mere occupation of Palestine, the evictions of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians out of their country, the annihilation of Gaza Palestinians
through a choking economic siege and frequent aerial bombardments, and the
continuous confiscations of Palestinian land and the demolitions of their homes
in the West Bank, so they had developed a very oppressive anti-Palestinian
children policies, that are aimed at intimidating, terrorizing and traumatizing
Palestinian children, whose families dared to stay in the country. These
policies, that seem to be part and parcel of the racist expansionist ideology
of the state of Israel and of its army, aim primarily at driving Palestinian
families out of the country for the sake of their children’s future, and
secondary to traumatize and terrorize Palestinian children while very young so
that they would not dare grow up into revolting young men.
Palestinian Child VS Israeli soldiers
Palestinian children, as young as 8
years old, have become the primary target for the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli occupying forces impose severe
oppressive measures against Palestinian communities. These include barriers and
check points between towns impeding access to schools, universities and
markets. The army routinely demolishes homes, confiscates property, and
forcefully evicts Palestinians out of their homes to give them to extremist
settlers. When Palestinian young men demonstrate in the streets against such practices
Israeli snipers target children in the head and upper body with live ammunition
causing many fatalities. When using rubber coated bullets the Israeli
soldiers break the casing of the bullet making it more fatal. When chasing
children the soldiers use batons hitting heads and extremities to inflict
permanent crippling damages, whose treatment pose severe financial burden on
already impoverished families.
Adopting the Zionist expansionist
scheme extremist Zionist Israelis are pushed to forcefully occupy Palestinian
farm land and establish caravan settlements on top of hills overlooking
Palestinian villages. They, then, start targeting Palestinian villagers and
farmers especially their young children. The extremist settlers start by
cutting down olive trees, burning harvests and shooting farm animals. At times
they kidnap Palestinian farm children, who are attending flocks or tending
crops, take them to their settlement, torture them for the duration of long
hours, at times days, before releasing them.
A similar tactic is adopted in East Jerusalem. The Israeli government want to put its
hands on Silwan; a Palestinian neighborhood adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in
order to build what Israeli officials call “King’s Garden”. Palestinian homes
in this neighborhood are being confiscated, their owners being evicted, and
Israeli extremists moving in. At times Israeli extremists force their way into
one room of the house and start harassing the Palestinian family owner. An
Israeli settlement is being gradually built in the neighborhood. Such
settlements in East Jerusalem constitute a
violation of international law. These extremist settlers create tension and
lead to constant confrontation and violent clashes. Israeli
soldiers use these clashes as an excuse to raid Palestinian homes in the middle
of the night, pull their children out of their beds, shackle and hood them, and
literally drag them to police stations to be interrogated violently and abusively.
An
investigation conducted by the Israeli B’Tselem organization shows that
within one year at least 81 Palestinian children from Silwan were arrested and tortured
by Israeli Special Forces.
Palestinian children VS tanks
The Defense for
Children International-Palestine section conducts interviews of cases of
Palestinian children being violently abused by Israeli soldiers as well as by
Israeli extremist settlers. Their website is full of testimonies by such abused
children and eyewitnesses. A search on youtube.com for “IDF targets children”
lists many videos showing such incidents. Breaking the Silence , an
organization of former Israeli soldiers dedicated to publicizing the day-to-day
actions of the Israeli army in the occupied territories, had published a
booklet of testimonies
of more than 30 former Israeli soldiers, who had disclosed their experiences of
the treatment of Palestinian children during their arrests pointing to a
pattern of abuse.
A routine operation of the Israeli
military forces in the occupied West Bank is
called “Straw Widow”. This includes midnight or pre-dawn heavily armed
raids on Palestinian homes, breaking down the doors, screaming and shouting at
family members, detaining all family members including children in one room,
and use the home as a military post for as long as they deem necessary, then
leave the home fully trashed. Family members, especially children, feel
terrorized, traumatized and severely vulnerable.
Another routine operation of the
Israeli army, similar to “Straw Widow”, is the pre-dawn raids on Palestinian
homes to arrest their children, where they drag the child out of his bed,
tie-wrap his arms, blind fold or hood him, and literally drag him out to
military jeeps while kicking, beating, and verbally abusing him. With face
pushed to the floor of the vehicle the child is driven to a military
interrogation center in Israel,
thrown in a dark and very cold cell for hours and days before being dragged to a
room to be harshly continuously interrogated by different officers for long
hours while being tied to a chair in a stressing position. Such interrogation
is accompanied by intimidation, humiliation, beating, verbal abuse, and threats
of sexual abuse. The child is then led to incriminate himself by forcing him to
sign a confession written in Hebrew, a language that is foreign to him. After
long days and sometimes month of incarceration he is dragged to a military
court with both hands and feet in shackles, where he is usually sentenced to
months or years in prison plus monetary fines. All this time while his family
is not aware of his whereabouts, is not being informed of his legal rights, and
is not represented by a lawyer. Many children are initially jailed with
Israeli offenders, who further beat, intimidate, harass, and at times sexually
abuse him. At best he is thrown in a dark and crowded cell with many other
Palestinian prisoners.
These traumatic abuses have a great
impact on the child’s mental and psychological health and produce varying
abnormal symptoms depending on the child’s age, the type of abuse subjected to,
and the family support he receives after his release. The abuse does not impact
only the children, but also their families. The families feel helpless,
vulnerable, and unable to protect their children. They feel lonely without any
legal or psychological help from any social or governmental organization. With
their budget under the control of Israeli government the Palestinian Authority
is broke and could hardly afford to pay its own essential employees let alone
provide any legal or social services to its citizens.
Israel’s abuse of Palestinian
children had become so dramatic a phenomenon that it attracted the attention of
nine eminent English lawyers, who were led by Sir Stephen Sadley, a former
judge of the highest British court, to visit Israeli courts to study their
practices. The lawyers, then, published their findings in a report titled “Children in Military
Custody”, in which they accuse Israel of grave violations of the UN
Convention on the Rights of Children that include violation of article 2;
discrimination, article 3; child’s best interests, article 37 (B); premature
resort to detention, (C); non-separation from adult family members, and (D);
prompt access to lawyers, and article 40; use of shackles. The Israeli arrest,
detention and interrogation practices are in violation of paragraphs 36 and 37,
and article 37(A) in the prohibition of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.
Transporting a child prisoner from the occupied territories into Israel is in
violation of article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The failure to provide
translated military orders and alleged confession statements from Hebrew to
Arabic is a violation of article 65 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
In their report the lawyers
criticized and greatly condemned the belief and attitude, that were advanced to
them by the military prosecutors, that every Palestinian child is a “potential
terrorist” similar to what the Nazis claimed when criticized for removing
Jewish children at places like Dachau and Auschwitz. The report had prompted
the British Foreign Office to reveal that it would challenge
Israeli courts over their unconscionable practices and violations of the
many articles of UN Convention in their treatment of Palestinian children.
The self-proclaimed humanitarian
American administration and NATO, who carry the banners of “Obligation to
Protect Lives” and “Providing Humanitarian Aid”, are ready to spare no
financial funds and military hardware to attack and destroy countries in
Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East in order to affect a regime
change, yet when it comes to protecting Palestinian lives from illegal Israeli
occupation turn blind eye to the Israeli massacres, terror, annihilation, and
grave violations of international laws and basic humanitarian principles.
Sarcastically the American administration does not spare any of its tax payers’
money and military aid for Israel
despite the fact that Israel
refuses to abide by American restrictions not to use these weapons for
aggression. Such generous American gifts allow Israel to continue its annihilation
of Palestinians and its aggression against neighboring Arab countries. The
American administration is giving Israel
$30 billion of its critically internally-needed tax money for military
assistance without having Israel
abide by any humanitarian principles, international laws or standard of basic
human decency. “Israel
is killing Palestinian children with American tax money” Dennis Kucinich blasted
in the deaf Congress.
The Chinese philosophy of Yang at
its zenith turns into Yin applies to the situation here. The Israeli policy, of
instilling fear and terror into the hearts of the young Palestinian children to
keep them docile and subservient in their adulthood to the Israeli occupation,
had succeeded only into turning such fear into angry courage to resist the
occupation. The Palestinian children had proved to be stronger and more
resilience in the face of the heavily armed terrorist Israeli army. We witness
them facing Israeli war machines with mere rocks. Indeed, David had turned into
Goliath while Goliath had turned into David.
Dr. Elias Akleh
is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was
first evicted from Haifa
after the “Nakba” of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967. He
lives now in the US,
and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.
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