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| Palestinian mourners cry at Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital after an Israeli strike killed at least seven children in a public playground in the beachfront Shati refugee camp on July 28, 2014. AFP / Mahmoud Hams |
Published Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Israeli Occupation Forces killed nine Palestinians and arrested 650 others in November, Ahrar Center for Detainees' Studies and Human Rights, a Palestinian rights organization said in a report on Monday.
A child, Mohammed Amin al-Syam, who died in Turkey after sustaining severe wounds in the latest Gaza war, is among the nine Palestinian victims. Eleven of Syam’s family members were killed in the summer war.
For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea. More than 2,160 Gazans, mostly civilians, were killed and 11,000 injured during seven weeks of unrelenting Israeli attacks in July and August.
Moreover, Israeli forces detained 650 Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, and Occupied Palestine in November. According to the report, the highest number of arrests documented were in East Jerusalem and Hebron.
The detainees included 17 women and 42 minors, 30 of which were arrested in annexed East Jerusalem.
According to a 2013 report by the UN's Children's Fund, Israel is the only country in the world where children are systematically tried in military courts and subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."
Over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated, and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, some as young as nine, at a rate of "an average of two children each day," UNICEF said.
A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 said Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.
DCI said that minors held in solitary confinement spent an average of 10 days in isolation. The longest period of confinement documented in a single case was 29 days in 2012, and 28 days in 2013.
Israeli forces routinely conduct detention campaigns against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on claims that they are "wanted" by Israeli authorities.
According to Fouad Khafsh, director of Ahrar, Israeli forces storm West Bank cities “every night to arrest innocent Palestinians.”
He added that the numbers reported are cases of Israeli human rights violations that the center was able to verify and document, but there are many more cases that remain unreported.
Over 7,000 Palestinians are currently languishing in 17 Israeli prisons and detention camps, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs.
Among Palestinian prisoners behind Israeli bars, there are 18 women, 250 children, 1,500 sick detainees, who are mostly in a critical condition, and 540 Palestinians held under administrative detention without any trial.
(Al-Akhbar)
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