print:Israel Perpetuates Conflict Through Palestinian Children Prisoners

Soldiers apprehend nine-year old Saqer al-'Aramen, Jerusalem, April 2008

By Natasha Saunders
Alternative Information Center
3.8.08
http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/israel-perpetuates-conflict-through-palestinian-children-prisoners-20080803.html

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.

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=28337