Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission and the Prisoners’ Club: The occupation’s brutality against children has reached unprecedented levels

WAfA News Agency reported that the Commission and the Club said in a joint statement on the occasion of the International Children’s Day, which falls on November 20 of each year: The level of brutality practiced by the occupation against children is one of the most prominent goals of the war of extermination that has been ongoing for 411 days, so that this stage is an extension of the policy of targeting children that the occupation has been practicing for decades, but the variable today is the level and intensity of crimes.

They pointed out that the issue of detained children has witnessed tremendous changes since the beginning of the war of extermination, as detention campaigns against them have escalated, whether in the occupied West Bank, where no less than 770 cases of child arrests have been recorded. In addition to the arrest of children from Gaza, whose numbers were not known to institutions in the light of the ongoing crime of enforced disappearance against them, explaining that more than 10 cases of arrest against children have been recorded since 2015.

The Commission and the Club pointed out that the occupation continues to detain no less than 270 children, who are mainly held in the “Ofer” and “Megiddo” prisons, in addition to a number of camps affiliated with the occupation forces that were established after the war, with the escalation of detention operations that affected thousands.

They clarified that the statistics and documented testimonies of child detainees reveal that the majority of them were subjected to physical and psychological torture, starvation, and deprivation of visits through a set of systematic tools and methods that violate international laws, norms, and agreements on children’s rights, in addition to field executions that accompanied the arrest campaigns, including direct and deliberate shooting of children, in addition to documenting a number of cases where the occupation used them as hostages to pressure their families.

They indicated that the crime of starvation practiced against detainees, including children, occupied the first line in their testimonies after the war, to the point that many of them were forced to fast for days as a result of it. They noted that during the past months, children were recorded to have been infected with a number of diseases, most notably scabies, which has turned into a health disaster that affects most detainees and is constantly worsening due to their deprivation of treatment.

They pointed out that many children suffer from difficult psychological conditions after the occupation’s release and need rehabilitation, care and support.

 Their families also face major challenges due to the occupation’s continued brutality against them, as many of them continue to be pursued and re-arrested by the occupation.

The Commission and the Club called on the international human rights system to assume its responsibilities towards Palestinian children and hold the occupation accountable for its crimes against them, which lead to the destruction of entire generations, robbing them of their future and systematically distorting them physically and psychologically.