WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s authorities have arrested more than 53,000 Palestinian children since 1967, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs has said in a report.
Abdul-Nasser Farawna, the commission’s head of Studies and Documentation Department, said on Monday that the occupying regime deals with Palestinian children like adults, stating that they are subject to the same torture, investigation and detention conditions.
This number, Ferwana said, includes girls and boys, stressing that the regime does not respect international laws and conventions when it comes to dealing with minors.
About 1,300 Palestinian children were detained in 2021, Ferawna said; a 140 percent increase in the rate of child detentions compared to the previous year.
Since the start of 2022, Ferawna said, the regime has detained more than 200 children, and there are currently 160 children inside the occupation’s jails.
In a report issued to mark Palestinian Child Day today, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said that the occupying regime detained more than 9,000 Palestinian girls and boys between 2015 and March 2022.
The PPS said 19,000 minors, including children younger than 10 years of age, had been arrested since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000.
The advocacy group said 160 Palestinian minors are currently held in the regime’s jails.
According to the PPS, testimonies provided by the minors showed most of them underwent some sort of physical or psychological torture at the hands of Zionist interrogators, who used a range of illegal mechanisms and methods that flout the existing conventions on children’s rights.
In September 2021, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for Studies said the occupying regime authorities had clearly ramped up targeting Palestinian children in recent years with the aim of discouraging the Palestinian minors from resisting the occupation, ruining their educational opportunities, and shaping up a weak generation.
Official figures by the Palestinian Ministry of Information in Ramallah earlier has shown more than 1,500 Palestinian children were killed by Zionist troops during the time span beginning at the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 up to April 2013. That is the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed every three days for about 13 years.