Did the soldiers really feel threatened by 13 and 14 year old boys?

By Sandra Osborne MP - 

Recently back from the West Bank, Sandra Osborne MP describes child detainees with their legs shackled and their hands cuffed at the military court at Ofer.

There was a jangle of chains outside the door of the courtroom. All the visitors froze. Army officers led child detainees into the military courtroom, their legs shackled, their hands cuffed, kitted out in brown jumpsuits. Did the soldiers feel threatened by 13 and 14 year old boys?

At the end of four days of touring the occupied West Bank, we had arrived at the military court of Ofer in the West Bank to witness just how the Israeli military courts treated Palestinian children.

We waited in what were basic concrete court rooms, looking at the uniformed judge and prosecutors. Two parallel processes happened. The judge, the prosecuting team and the defence lawyer discuss the case in Hebrew, with an interpreter translating into Arabic. There are no witnesses called. No testimony was challenged. The judge never once looked at the children, nor spoke to them. Some meet their lawyers for the first time in the court room. Each child's case would last barely a few minutes.

For the children we saw that morning, the only thing that mattered was to see their families, perhaps for the first time in months. They showed no faith in the proceedings neither caring what the judge was saying nor expecting to be released. One child shouted out to his parents the name of the prison inside Israel where he was being held. Nearly all were there on stone throwing offences. One was being tried on the basis of a signed confession of another minor that had later been withdrawn.

Every year an average of 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israeli military courts. Of these 81 per cent confess during interrogation, with 32 per cent signing confessions in Hebrew, which they do not understand. Their lawyers advise them to plead guilty as then they might be released after three months. If they plead innocent then the likelihood is that they will be detained for around a year. For a child of that age this is unthinkable. In 2006, acquittals were granted in just 0.26 per cent of child cases showing there is a presumption of guilt not innocence.

These children largely get picked by Israeli soldiers from their homes in the middle of the night and are bundled into military vehicles, blindfolded and cuffed. Their families are not told where they are taken. In the vehicles they are usually harassed by armed soldiers. Just imagine how petrified a child possibly as young as 12 would feel? Their interrogations are not videotaped; no lawyer or family member is present. There are consistent reports of abuse, intimidation and actual torture.

Unsurprisingly the mere threat of force is enough to get most children to sign anything.

A whole generation is criminalised through this process. They never lose these criminal records and as a result suffer even more restrictions than other Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Israel treats Palestinians as adults as soon as they are 16 while for an Israeli child in a nearby settlement it is 18. An Israeli child has to see a judge in 24 hours, a Palestinian in 8 days. An Israeli has to be charged within 30 days, a Palestinian in 180. Of course it is only the Palestinian child that lands up in a military court.

Most disturbingly of all, it is the Palestinian child that grows up under occupation, denied basic freedoms from the day they are born.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!