Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detention
Debate between Graham Stringer and Kate Hollern(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in such an important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing it.
It is important that this debate is grounded in, and based on, human rights for children. The glaring gaps in basic human rights protection for Palestinian children held in Israel’s military detention system damages respect for the international rule of law and creates an environment that enables routine ill treatment and lack of justice. As we have already heard, the majority of children are taken from their homes in the occupied west bank during the middle of the night. Heavily armed soldiers take the children away and several hours later they turn up in detention or interrogation centres alone, sleep-deprived, bruised and scared.
Interrogations tend to be coercive and include verbal abuse, threats and physical violence that ultimately result in a confession. Even if we argue that 16 to 17-year-olds are not children, which is incorrect, we must accept that any form of human rights abuse is abhorrent and should not be condoned in any way. Most Palestinian minors arrested by Israel claim to have experienced physical violence during detention. Recently the Defence for Children International Palestine detailed the scale of incidents and the type of abuse experienced by the Palestinian children whom they managed to speak to during around 60 visits to Israeli prisons in 2017.
Some 75% of children were subject to physical abuse, 25% were denied adequate food and 100% were denied the right to have their families at their interrogation. That is not something new. According to the latest data provided by the Israeli prison service, at the end of November, 313 children—I am talking about children—were held in military detention. Data for December 2017 have not been provided, but I suspect there will be a bit of a spike following Mr Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
As a grandma and a mum, it shocks and disturbs me that people, never mind children, are treated in such an appalling way. Colleagues need to ask themselves whether they think it is acceptable to label a child as a terrorist, and I urge the Minister to use all his powers—
