The imprisonment of the 14-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli authorities has stoked anger over the arrests of Palestinian children. Malak al-Khatib was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $1,500 for stone-throwing and possession of a knife.
“I don’t know why a state like Israel, with the most powerful weapons at its disposal, is pursuing my 14-year-old daughter,” said her father, Ali al-Khatib. “They accused her of trying to stab a soldier. Really? A child against an armed and heavily equipped solider, a grown man?”
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, a rights organization, estimates that there are more than 200 Palestinian minors held in Israeli prisons. The official Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem puts the number at 150.
“An Israeli child will not be held in detention for three weeks, not even a boy, yet alone a girl, because of these protections provided to children by the Israeli youth law,” Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem told the AP.
According to 2013 UNICEF report, about 700 Palestinian children under the age of 17 are arrested, interrogated, and detained by Israeli authorities each year.
Palestinians as young as 12 are subject to “criminal responsibility” for their actions, under the Israeli military laws which govern Palestinian territories. In Israel, that responsibility is applied only to those above the age of 18.
“[I]n no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts that, by definition, fall short of providing the necessary guarantees to ensure respect for their rights,” the report’s authors wrote, citing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — an agreement Israel ratified in 1991.
In response to the report, Israel defended its lapses in international law within the Palestinian territories because, as it claimed, those fall under military law.
“Israel believes that the Convention, which is territorially bound, does not apply, nor was it intended to apply, to areas beyond a state’s national boundary,” Israel wrote in a report to the United Nations in Dec. 2013.
This inconsistency has been invoked by many pro-Palestine advocates. The case has garnered attention not only because of Malak al-Khatib’s age, but also because unlike most Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel, she’s a girl.
Under the hashtag #freeMalak, many have shared cartoons that portray al-Khatib as a slight girl more interested in teddy bears and daisy chains than violence.
Nearly half of all arrests of Palestinian children have been for the charge of stone-throwing which Israel sees as a first step towards militancy, but that Palestinians regard as a legitimate way to resist Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
“The Israelis show no tolerance with the Palestinian children,’ Karake said. ‘The Israelis are crushing a whole generation.” Issa Karake, head of the Palestinian government’s Prisoner Affairs Department, told the Daily Mail of al-Khatib’s case.
He called the girl’s imprisonment “just another in a policy meant to break the spirits of young people resisting the Israeli occupation.”
Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: BEENISH AHMED
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