Israel sees Palestinian children as a legitimate target

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, July 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Minister Hisham Abdelrazeq pressed Tuesday, July 29, for the immediate release of 361 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons.

The minors' treatment in Israeli jails was "inhuman and cruel", the minister said in a statement, asserting Palestinian "children should be a priority among those prisoners to be released," Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The Palestinian minister charged that Israeli treatment of the minors contradicts "international treaties signed by Israel."

He exhorted "the United States, the United Nations and international organizations to pressure Israel for the immediate and unconditional release of all Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons, who had been jailed for time without trial."

According to the international rights organization Defense for Children International, which handled two-thirds of juvenile cases brought before Israeli courts in 2002-2003, the great majority of children held in Israel are between 15 and 18 years of age. More than nine percent are 13 to 14-year-olds.

"Palestinian child detainees continue to be subjected to barbaric conditions, and often subjected to torture, particularly in Israeli military detention center, " it asserted.

Citing an example, the group said that in the Israeli Hawara detention center near Nablus, "a lawyer witnessed at first hand the ritual beatings and abuse handed out to new inmates in the prison yard before they are admitted into crowded cells, holding up to 12 other inmates."

The Defense for Children International added that at Atzion detention center "child detainees from the Hebron arrest campaign have reported beatings and positional torture, or shabeh.

"During a lawyer visit 6-days after their arrest, some of these children had still not been questioned, suggesting that they are being used as political pawns by the Israeli authorities, rather than real suspects. "

In a briefing dated July 8 on the conditions of Palestinian detainees inside Israeli jails, the group concluded that "Hygiene, education, medical treatment and other basic rights are denied on a systematic basis in all of the facilities under review, even to inmates under-18. "

Israeli officials said Monday, July 28, that 540 prisoners including 100 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, would be freed in the next few weeks.

A spokesman for the Palestinian a ministry of prisoners affairs said "there are children among the 540 to be freed but we do not know how many. Israel has not informed us yet."

Radie Jarai, Palestinian Deputy Minister of Detainee Affairs, said Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon's decision to release 540 prisoners does not go far enough.

"We have about 6,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails…In the last two weeks, there were more than 300 detention cases in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. So it is just trying to mislead the public opinion that Israel is making progress in the peace process," the BBC News Online quoted Jarai as saying.

Truce Violated 

Meanwhile, the Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said Tuesday that Israel had done nothing to meet the conditions of the three-moth truce declared by the main Palestinian movement last month.

"Israel has not acted on the conditions of the Palestinian initiative for a hudna (truce), especially on the prisoners issue and Israel has continued its aggression," a senior Hamas official told AFP.

"This shows the problem stems from the Israeli occupation and not from the Palestinian resistance groups," Ismail Haniya averred.

On June 29, four major resistance groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, announced a suspension of anti-Israeli attacks for three-months, conditioned notably on the release of all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners.

"We have not seen any positive Israeli steps and we will send an urgent message to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt informing them of the Israeli aggressions," Haniya said.

The official warned that "Israel's policies will shatter the hudna and plunge the region into further turmoil."

For his part, Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad al-Hindi counted "70 Israeli aggressions, including killings, demolitions, arrests and incursions" since the truce was declared a month ago.

"The siege has not been lifted on (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat, Israel has built more than eight outposts in the West Bank, and allowed Jews to invade the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and passed a resolution in the Knesset stating that the Palestinian territories were not occupied," he enumerated.

Hindi also deplored the fact that Israel and the U.S. "dismissed the hudna as a unilateral decision" when it was one of their main demands.

He regretted that "Israel was dealing with the prisoner issue unilaterally, refusing the principle of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation on the releases".