21 - 27 July 2011 Issue No. 1057, Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg
Israeli occupation authorities are imprisoning Palestinian children at will, often on bogus or trumped-up charges, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
With the most aggressively racist government ever in power, the Israeli occupation authorities have been prosecuting and imprisoning Palestinian children at will, mostly on bogus charges such as throwing stones at Israeli military vehicles and endangering the security and safety of the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.
According to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, nearly 100 per cent of Palestinian children charged with stone-throwing are convicted due to overwhelming pressure to plea bargain. Only one Palestinian minor out of 853 charged with stone-throwing between 2005-2010 was acquitted.
On 18 July, B'tselem issued a detailed report explaining some of the reasons behind the unusually draconian approach taken towards Palestinian children, many of whom have not reached 13 years of age.
"The nearly 100 per cent conviction rate stems from, among other things, the willingness of the detainees to plead guilty as part of a plea bargain agreement. The pressure to plead guilty is great because minors charged with throwing stones are held in custody until the end of legal proceedings and a regular trial could keep the detained for longer than the sentence they receive after pleading guilty, which is usually no more than a few months," the report said.
Nidal Harb, a lawyer from the Hebron region, said that the detained Palestinian children are incarcerated in "sub-human conditions". As a result, Harb said, "it is quite natural that these kids would confess to anything to rid themselves of the miserable and unbearable detention conditions."
Of the arrested, 18 were aged 12-13 and 255 were 14-15. Sixty per cent of the 12-13 year group received prison terms ranging from a few days to up to two months. Fifteen per cent of all the children served terms of more than six months and one per cent served longer than a year.
The report did not detail the cases of dozens of other children and minors who were shot dead or seriously injured during the designated period.
An Israeli military judge quoted in the report admitted that "it is a very problematic situation. Nearly all minors are convicted of stone-throwing because they have no choice but to sign a plea bargain agreement, for which the punishment is usually between one and two months in jail, and if they insist on evidence they'll stay longer."
"Of course, it is terrible that they arrest them in the middle of the night and question them without their lawyers," the Israeli judge said.
Jewish settler children convicted of stone-throwing or even graver charges usually receive little more than a slap on the wrist, and the kid-glove treatment given to them stands in sharp contrast to the harsh and vindictive treatment meted out to the Palestinians.
In cases where a settler is convicted, usually on misdemeanor charges such as disturbing the peace, even if he causes grave bodily harm he often benefits from extenuating circumstances that are never available for non-Jews.
More to the point, it has become increasingly clear in recent years that many of the military courts in the West Bank are staffed by Jewish settler or pro-settler judges, who, in the words of one Palestinian lawyer, consider an accused Palestinian guilty even if proven innocent while considering a Jewish defendant innocent even if proven guilty.
This inherently racist justice system serves Palestinian child defendants with harsh incarceration terms as the only or primary means of punishment. The incarcerated children receive very few or no family visits, and they face restrictions on their ability to complete their studies.
B'tselem illustrated the discriminatory nature of Israeli military law in the West Bank, especially when compared with Israel's own laws. For example, in the West Bank the age of adulthood, as defined under military law, is 16, whereas it is 18 in Israel proper.
This week, a high-ranking army commander warned of the "growing Jewish terror and intimidation" by Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population.
The commander, Avi Mizrahi, was quoted as demanding the dismantling of the Yitzhar colony in the northern West Bank, which he said was a hotbed of terror against the Palestinians.
Over recent days and weeks, settlers from the settlement have torched Palestinian fields and olive groves, but none of the perpetrators have been arrested.
In another development, the Israeli Interior Ministry recently extended military orders banning the reunification of Palestinians living inside Israel proper, including in occupied East Jerusalem, with their families in the West Bank.
The draconian measure has caused immense difficulties for relatives and spouses, as many marriages have had to be broken up because husband and wife have not been able to live together.
Israel claims the motive behind this inhuman policy is the need to fight "terror". However, scrutiny of the issue reveals that the real reason has to do with Israel's obsession with keeping the non-Jewish population as subservient and subordinate as possible.
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