Continued crimes against children

The salient feature of the Israeli occupation is its atrocious and criminal nature. From the very beginning of the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories, the Zionists resorted to perpetrating savage massacres against defenceless Palestinians with the aim of terrifying the Palestinians and expelling them out of their indigenous homeland.

 These include the massacre of Deir Yassin perpetrated by the Hagana gang led by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1948 and Kafr Qassem atrocity in 1956. The Zionist criminal acts continued unabated over the past 70 years. 

 Targeting Palestinian children has been one of the prominent features of the Zionist policy since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, because the Zionist leaders want to liquidate the Palestine question and assassinate the future of the Palestinians. The new horrible brutalities against the Palestinian children are new episodes in the Zionist criminal record.

There are many Palestinian children and babies who were killed by the Zionists in cold blood. These include martyr Mohammed al-Dara who was killed on the lap of his father during al-Aqsa Intifada and the two months old baby Iman Hajo.

A recent report by a Palestinian human rights center reveals that Israeli forces have killed at least 54 Palestinian children and arrested over 900 others since the beginning of 2018.

The human rights center reported that 80 percent of the children were killed during demonstrations in the so-called buffer zone in the Gaza strip. The report also condemned  the Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinian children’s rights. According to the group’s investigation, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Study and Documentation, Israel’s rights violation is not limited to trial of children in military courts, but it starts from the moment of arrest.

The report said Israelis carry out interrogation sessions in which children are often handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and insulted. The latest child victim, from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, was only four years old. Since the beginning of 2018, more than 310 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, almost all unarmed civilians.

The report almost confirms an earlier toll announced by renowned children rights NGO Defense for Children International – Palestine, which said last month the Israeli military troopers had shot and killed more than 50 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip so far this year.

In late October, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said the occupying Israeli army has been deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO’s executive committee, said on Oct. 29. This is a clear war crime in violation of international law and international humanitarian law. 

She added  that Israel’s continuous campaign of excessive and indiscriminate violence against the people of Gaza has persisted with impunity and has been emboldened by the US administration’s strategic alliance with Israel.

Nearly 240 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces ever since anti-occupation protest rallies began in the Gaza Strip on March 30. Over 22,000 Palestinians have also sustained injuries.

The Gaza clashes reached their peak on May 14, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe), which coincided this year with the US embassy relocation from Tel Aviv to occupied East Jerusalem. Figures show that more than 2,100 Palestinian children have been killed and over 13,000 wounded by Israeli live bullets since the outbreak of al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

An Israeli court has also sentenced a Palestinian teenage boy to 35 years in prison on the allegation of carrying out a stabbing attack in the occupied West Bank. The Ofer military court passed the verdict on 18-year-old Ayham Bassem Sabbah, a resident of the Qalandia refugee camp north of Jerusalem, and also ordered him to pay a fine of $264,700.

Sabbah and 14-year-old Omar Salim Rimawi were both shot and critically injured on February 18, 2016 after carrying out a stabbing attack that left one Israeli settler killed and another injured at the Rami Levi supermarket in the Shaare Benyamin industrial complex northwest of  occupied Jerusalem.

Separately, an Israeli court has sentenced the mother of a young Palestinian man, who was killed by Israeli military forces last year, to eleven months in prison on charges of incitement on social media networks.

Attorney Mohammad Mahmoud of the Prisoners and Freed Prisoners’ Committee said the court sentenced Susan Abu Ghannam to eleven months in prison after finding her guilty of posting inflammatory statements on Facebook.

The Palestinian woman was arrested last August, after dozens of Israeli soldiers raided her home in At-Tur neighbourhood, located approximately 1 kilometre east of the Old City of Jerusalem, and violently ransacked it.

The racist and aggressive measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian children and women would not make the Palestinian people succumb and stop their struggle to realize their legitimate rights in liberating their occupied land and establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

K.Q.