2 January 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
A Palestinian activist and three teenagers were arrested by Israeli occupation forces this morning during an early morning raid on the village of Beit Ummar in the West Bank.
Soldiers entered the village at around 1 am to capture Yousef Abu Maria, the coordinator of the recently formed Popular Movement Against the Wall and a father of three children. He was arrested because of his presence in a military zone during a demonstration in June 2012.
Yousef was made to stand outside the police station in the illegal Israel settlement of Karmei Tzur from the time of his arrest until 10 am. He was released on a charge of 1000 shekels (270 USD) and made to sign an agreement not to go near the illegal settlement, some of which is built on Yousef’s farmland.
Yousef Abu Maria
In separate family homes, three teenagers, Eyad Omer Sbarna, 17, Ehab Omer Awad, 18, and Mohammad Hussain Ade, 17, were arrested for an unsubstantiated charge of throwing stones at Isreali army vehicles. The incident was supposed to have happened during a recent demonstration. As of this afternoon, the teenagers were still imprisoned.
Beit Ummar, like many villages and towns in the West Bank, receives constant violent harassment from the illegal Israeli settlers. Early on Tuesday morning settlers set fire to a Palestinian car and a tractor and painted “The only good Arab is a dead Arab” on a wall.
Team Khalil is a group of volunteers of International Solidarity Movement based in Hebron (al Khalil)
The number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention has increased 40 percent since last September. (Ryan Rodrick Beiler)
A new report funded and supported by the UK government that accuses Israel of violating international law with its treatment of Palestinian child detainees was launched in London by a high-profile group of human rights lawyers on Tuesday.
But there is pessimism in some quarters that the report’s recommendations will be implemented. The document has been criticized as “toothless” by a prominent Palestinian human rights activist.
“Children in Military Custody” was funded and backed by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and written by an ad hoc group including a former attorney general, a former court of appeal judge and several prominent attorneys known as QCs. The delegation visited Palestine in September and met with Palestinian, Israeli and international nongovernmental organizations, British diplomats and a wide range of Israeli government and military officials.
The report details the military law Israel applies to all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including children, and how it differs from the civilian law applied to Israeli settlers who live in the same territory. It states there it was “uncontested [by Israel] that there are major differentials between the law governing the treatment of Palestinian children and the law governing treatment of Israeli children.”
Unequal treatment of children
At the heart of the report are three core recommendations to the Israeli government: start applying international law to the West Bank (which Israel refuses to do), the best interests of the child should come first and, crucially, that Israel “should deal with Palestinian children on an equal footing with Israeli children.”
Israel currently applies two separate and unequal systems of laws in the West Bank. Palestinians are subject to a harsh military regime in which Israeli army officers and police, arrest, interrogate, judge and sentence, while Israeli settlers colonizing the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law.
These systematic inequalities include: the minimum age for Palestinian children to receive a custodial sentence is 12, but for Israelis it is 14; Palestinian children have no right to have a parent present during interrogation, while Israeli children generally do.
The most stark inequalities are evident in the time it takes for the two systems to work. Palestinian children could have to wait up to eight days before being brought before a judge, while Israeli children have a right to see one within 24 hours; Palestinian children can be detained without charge for 188 days, while for Israelis the limit is 40.
In a press release about the report, Council for Arab-British Understanding director Chris Doyle describes witnessing in Palestine “nothing less than a kangaroo court that does nothing to improve Israel’s security while criminalizing an entire generation of Palestinian children.”
Children kept in solitary confinement
Drawing on their meetings with nongovernmental organizations such as Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, the authors detail the shocking treatment of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
Arrested in nighttime raids, Palestinian children are often physically and verbally abused, brought before adult military courts, shackled, given little choice than taking a plea bargain, and can be sentenced to as many as 20 years for “crimes” as trivial as stone throwing. Some are even kept in solitary confinement, according to DCI.
When Palestinian children file complaints about their abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers, they are almost always ignored. Israeli occupation authorities were able to give to the delegation “only one example of a complaint being upheld.” The authors report that there are “a significant number of allegations of physical and emotional abuse of child detainees by the military which neither the complaints system nor the justice system is addressing satisfactorily.”
The report compiles some shocking statistics. As many as 94 percent of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank are denied bail, according to nongovernmental organizations. Some 97-98 percent of such cases end with a plea bargain, meaning they go to jail without even reaching the trial stage (as flawed as military courts are).
A key conclusion reached by the report’s authors is that Israel is in breach of articles of UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that prohibit: national or ethnic discrimination; ignoring a child’s best interests; the premature resort to detention, imprisonment and trial alongside adult prisoners; preventing prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles.
While the report notes “the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion [on Israel’s wall in the West Bank] which concludes categorically that the UNCRC is applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Israeli officials the delegation met with refused to recognize this.
“Every Palestinian child a ‘potential terrorist’”
“In our meetings with the various Israeli Government agencies, we found the universal stance by contrast was that the Convention has no application beyond Israel’s own [pre-1967] borders,” the authors write, noting their disagreement.
They emphasize: “[t]he population of the West Bank is within the physical power and control of Israel, and Israel has effective control of the territory. Our visit dispelled any doubts we might have had about this.”
In its conclusions, the report notes that this refusal to fulfill its international law obligations with respect to Palestinian children probably “stems from a belief, which was advanced to us by [an Israeli] military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a ‘potential terrorist.’”
Questions about report’s future
Renowned Palestinian writer, activist and academic Ghada Karmi was at the report’s launch on Tuesday. She asked the panel if it would be doing a follow-up visit, or monitoring implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The answer was less than conclusive, with co-author Greg Davies saying they would have to “wait and see” what the Israeli government’s response would be. He later spoke to The Electronic Intifada over the phone about the report’s future: “the format in which that follow-up work takes place, I don’t know at this stage, it’s too early to tell … I’m committed to seeing as far as it’s possible these recommendations coming into effect. If that requires further work I’m prepared to organize that.”
Karmi later told The Electronic Intifada that the report is “toothless in the end” because there is no way to compel Israel to comply.
“Palestinians are fed up of being studied,” she said. What they really want to know is “how will I get help to end” the abuses of the military occupation. Karmi did however conclude the report was a good thing and the delegation was a “very interesting mission” because it was backed by the foreign office, who could not be accused of anti-Israel bias in the same way that Israel has managed to taint UN missions with “the usual slanders.”
UK government approached report’s authors
Lawyer Greg Davies was responsible for putting the ad hoc delegation together. He told The Electronic Intifada that while he was doing so, he was approached by the British Consulate in Jerusalem, who offered government funding. Davies replied in the affirmative, but on condition that the group be independent.
In response to such criticisms as Karmi’s, Davies said: “there have been a number of [such] reports submitted… those reports have largely gone unanswered [by Israel] … it was that lack of response that prompted this.”
“There isn’t an enforceability as such without the political will, and that’s where our remit stops,” he said, pointing to an Early Day Motion on the report tabled in parliament Wednesday. EDM 280 welcomes the report and “asks the Foreign Secretary to make a statement to the House [of Commons] setting out his proposals for persuading Israel to comply in practice with international law relating to the treatment of children.” Davies said of the EDM “we welcome that and are hugely encouraged by that.”
Advancing the debate
The Palestine section of Defence for Children International, through its reports and its meetings with the delegation, is one of the most quoted sources in the report. DCI-PS spokesperson Gerard Horton admitted to The Electronic Intifada that the report’s recommendations “won’t end the abuse,” but argued that some of them “will make it very difficult for the military court system to function effectively” if they were implemented.
He wrote in an email that the report’s list of forty recommendations include those DCI-PS have been demanding for years (parents present during interrogation; prompt access to a lawyer; audio-visual recording of interrogations; and an end to forcible transfer of children to prisons inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention).
Horton also highlighted the high profile of the report’s authors and backers: “the importance of this report is who wrote it … before real change can occur the debate has to become mainstream. People in the center and center-right have to start taking an interest and expressing a concern. To my mind this report goes some way to advancing that by helping to shift the debate to the center.”
“Justice is not a negotiable commodity”
Among the report’s forty specific recommendations are: an end to night arrests, an end to blindfolding and shackling, observing the prohibition on “violent, threatening or coercive” conduct, the presence of a parent during interrogation and “[c]hildren should not be required to sign confessions” in Hebrew, since they do not understand it.
The report notes that since the delegation’s visit, a new military order has upped to 18 the age at which Palestinian children can be tried as adults. Previously, it had been 16 (then another inequality with Israeli children who are treated as children until 18).
But there are concerns this change has been rendered void in practice. While welcoming the change, the report expresses concern “that the change does not appear to apply to sentencing provisions.”
Seemingly deliberate loopholes in the law means that “adult sentencing provisions still apply to 16 [and] 17 year olds” and that children 14-17 years old can be sentenced as adults when the maximum penalty for the offense is five years or more. The maximum penalty for throwing stones (the most common offense) ranges from 10 to 20 years,
Asked by The Electronic Intifada at the Tuesday launch why there were no specific recommendations in the report to end this inequality, Judy Khan QC said it was covered by core recommendation three, which calls for an end to the current inequalities between Israeli and Palestinian child detainees.
In their meetings with the delegation, the Israeli Ministry of Justice “described [such changes] as conditional on there being no significant unrest or ‘third intifada.’” The report objects: “[a] major cause of future unrest may well be the resentment of continuing injustice … justice is not a negotiable commodity but a fundamental human right.”
Sharp rise in child detainees
Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Lord Justice — senior appeal judge — underlined at Tuesday’s launch that there has been a 40 percent rise in child detainees since their visit in September, so the problem has only got worse since they returned to the UK.
While the report seems to have received some media coverage in the UK, it yet remains to be seen what practical impact it will have. More fundamentally, it does not call for an end to the occupation, considering political solutions beyond the authors’ mandate. It does note however that: “We have no reason to differ from the view of Her Majesty’s Government and the international community that these [Israeli] settlements [in the West Bank] are illegal. For the purposes of this report however we treat them, like the occupation, as a fact.”
But the question remains: a fact for how much longer?
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist from London who has lived and reported from occupied Palestine. His website is www.winstanleys.org.
Name: Izat J. Date of Incident: 10 March 2012 Age: 16 Location: Hebron, occupied West Bank Nature of Incident: Settler/soldier violence/detention
On 10 March 2012, a 16-year-old boy from Hebron is attacked by an Israeli border policeman and then detained at Kiryat Arba’s police station after his family’s mule cart is stolen by settlers.
“I live in the old city of Hebron, about 100 metres from the Ibrahimi Mosque [burial site of Abraham],” says 16-year-old Izat. “There is an Israeli checkpoint about 30 metres from us, and the settlers who live in the settlement of Kiryat Arba use the street in front of our house to go to the shrine.”
At around 11:00 am on Saturday, 10 March 2012, “my mother looked out the window and saw around 10 settlers stealing my father’s mule cart,” explains Izat. “There were soldiers at the checkpoint and in the street but they stood by and did not intervene.”
Izat rushed outside and saw that the settlers had left the cart in the street near the soldiers. His father was arguing with the soldiers because he wanted to take the cart back to the house, but the soldiers would not allow him until the settlers were finished with their Saturday prayers. “That could be at around 8:00 pm,” says Izat, “so I started arguing with the soldiers and I told them we would not leave without the mule cart.”
A border policeman standing at the checkpoint suddenly approached and started beating Izat. “Without any prior warning,” says Izat, “he started punching me in the face and knocked me down. Then, he kicked me hard in the head, chest and legs, and called me ‘Arab trash ‘ and other names. I was shouting in pain and trying to get up, but he kept kicking me while I was still lying on the ground. […] My mouth was bleeding.”
Another police officer arrived at the scene and ordered the policeman to stop beating Izat. “Why did you hit the boy? It’s against the rules,’” the officer said to the policeman. “After that they tied my hands behind my back very tightly with two plastic cords. It was very painful. They did the same to my father and my cousin,” says Izat.
Izat, his father and his cousin were taken to the police station inside the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Their hands were untied and they were taken for interrogation. “The interrogator asked me about the incident and I told him about the settlers and the argument we had with the soldiers,” recalls Izat. “I also told him that the policeman had beaten me hard. […] The interrogator said he had spoken to the border policeman who assaulted me, and that the policeman said that I had pushed and insulted him first. I told him that was not true; that the policeman assaulted me as soon as he arrived at the scene, before we even spoke.”
After interrogating Izat, his father and his cousin, the interrogator told them that the three of them were under arrest until the following day. “He said we were under arrest based on the statement of the border policeman, who accused me of insulting him and pushing him first,” says Izat.
Izat’s father begged the officer to let Izat go so he could go to the hospital. After consulting with his superior, the officer agreed to release Izat on 500 shekels bail. “I was taken to ‘Alia Hospital,” says Izat. “They gave me first aid and treated my wounds. Luckily, I did not have any internal injury. I only sustained bruises to my head and shoulders, and an injury in my mouth.”
Izat’s father filed a complaint against the border policeman who assaulted Izat, and was released later that night. His cousin, however, was detained in Etzion interrogation centre for eight days. Izat’s trial in a military court has been scheduled for September 2012.
26 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Eight children between the ages of 14 to 17 years old were arrested in Beit Ummar during night raids from 6th to 11th of March conducted by the Israeli occupation forces following a nonviolent solidarity demonstration for the hungerstriker Khader Adnan on the 21st of February.
On Tuesday 20th of March the youth went to court at the Israeli military court at Ofer and faced a sentence of being banned from Beit Ummar, where they live with their families, for a period of 6 months. The youth are being accused of throwing stones at Israeli military installations. The detainees are Ayesh Khalid Sabri Awad (17 years), Basil Khalid Hassan Abu Hashim (15 years), Zain Hisham Khalil Abu Maria (15 years) Sami Amer Ahmed Abo Joudeh (16 years), Emad Mohammed Saed Solaiby (16 years), Mohab Jawdat Adi (14 years), Bilal Mahmud Awad Ayyad (16 years), and Ahmed Ali Mahmoud Solaiby (16 years)
The announcement of the sentence aroused opposition on the part of family members of the accused, leading to removal of the family members from the court and adjournment until the 25th of March. Issa Solaiby, father of Ahmed, says his son was also beaten by 4 soldiers in the court.
Hisham Abu Maria, father of Zain , claims that the children are being pressured to agree to false accusations. He said, “They made him (Zain) say he threw rocks at the soldiers even though there were no soldiers” present at the time noted in the charges.
The village of Beit ummar has around 17000 inhabitants and is surrounded by illegal, Zionist settlements. According to Issa Solaiby a member of the local Popular Committee, Beit Ummar used to consist of 33 000 dunams of land. The building of the separation wall by Israel and a road that is closed off to Palestinians took 13 000 dunams of the village land.
Since then an additional 3000 dunams have been stolen by settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements. The inhabitants of Beit Ummar suffer from violence from the settlers living in the surrounding settlements. Issa Solaiby also complains that the settlers prevent the farmers from access to their own land and destroy olive trees and grape vines.
In March the settlers living in illegal Beit Ain settlement destroyed 14 olivetrees, 21 grape vine plants, and 2 citrus trees from the village in an act of incitement.
According to Issa the settlers also enter the village with soldiers and guns to make the villagers aware of their aggressive presence. One year ago 17-year-old Yousef Ikhlayl was shot and killed by Israeli settlers as he was farming with his father. His killers remain unpunished.
Many of the villagers have been arrested and gone to jail. Imprisonment is a problem especially with young people. According to Muhannad Abu Awwad 10,000 villagers have gone to jail and at present 30 inhabitants, most of them under 16, are serving time in Israeli occupation prisoners.
Muhannad himself went to jail for two years from the age 21 until 23 and is now studying law.
Satu is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
13 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On Monday, 12 March at 9pm, the soldiers were making themselves comfortable yet again in the village of Burin. Around 6 jeeps entered and 10 jeeps surrounded the village.
It seemed for a while it was just another evening of playground antics with the soldiers occupying the village and enjoying an evening of military training, as this often happens and is expected throughout the nights when the village no longer belongs to the residents but instead becomes the soldiers training field.
There is a military compound very close to Huwarra which makes Burin and surrounding villages, such as Madama and Assira al Qablia, very convenient places for the soldiers to embark on such antics.
This evening however, the tactics took a turn for the worse when the soldiers began to raid the homes of residents. It started with the homes of Ahmad Samir Najjar, 16, and Mahmoud Nasser Asasus also 16. They are both now being held in Peta Tikva interrogation center.
After the completion of the interrogation they will either be released or moved to a prison.
Later raids were made into three more homes, with all three receiving threats from the soldiers that they would be the next to be arrested.
The raids consisted of the soldiers evacuating the families outside while they searched their home thoroughly, turning cupboards, bedrooms, and living areas upside down. Leaving a family outside, with their young waiting for the soldiers to finish in order to be allowed back into their homes, leaves the next day spent on putting their homes back together.
Members of the village went to visit the families of the young men arrested to offer their support and solidarity. Despite the problems the morale is high within the families.
Lydia is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
