UN: Palestinian children used as shields by Israeli forces

A United Nations human rights body has accused Israeli forces of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields.

Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, are routinely denied registration of their birth and access to health care, decent schools and clean water, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said.

“Palestinian children arrested by (Israeli) military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture, are interrogated in Hebrew, a language they did not understand, and sign confessions in Hebrew in order to be released,” the report said.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yiagal Palmor responded to the UN committee’s investigation by saying: “If someone simply wants to magnify their political bias and political bashing of Israel not based on a new report, on work on the ground, but simply recycling old stuff, there is no importance in that.”

Most Palestinian children arrested are accused of stone throwing, an offence which can carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, the committee said. Israeli soldiers had testified to the often arbitrary nature of the arrests, it said.

The watchdog’s 18 independent experts examined Israel’s record of compliance with a 1990 treaty as part of its regular review of a pact signed by all nations except Somalia and the US. An Israeli delegation attended the session.

The UN committee regretted Israel’s “persistent refusal” to respond to requests for information on children in the Palestinian territories and occupied Syrian Golan Heights since the last review in 2002.

“Hundreds of Palestinian children have been killed and thousands injured over the reporting period as a result of the state party military operations.”

During the 10-year period, an estimated 7,000 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17, but some as young as nine, were arrested, interrogated and detained, the report said.

Many are brought in leg chains and shackles before military courts, and held in solitary confinement, sometimes for months, the report said.

It voiced deep concern at the “continuous use of Palestinian children as human shields and informants“, saying 14 such cases had been reported between January 2010 and March 2013 alone.

Israeli soldiers had used Palestinian children to enter potentially dangerous buildings before them and to stand in front of military vehicles to deter stone- throwing, it said.

“Almost all those using children as human shields and informants have remained unpunished and the soldiers convicted for having forced at gunpoint a nine-year-old child to search bags suspected of containing explosives only received a suspended sentence of three months and were demoted,” it said.