Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detention Debate
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Joan Ryan
Main Page: Joan Ryan (The Independent Group for Change - Enfield North)Department Debates - View all Joan Ryan's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detention
Joan Ryan Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.
The detention and trial of a child is a tragedy whenever it occurs. However, I am concerned that this debate is symptomatic of the disproportionate and unfair focus on Israel that is all too prevalent in the media, international institutions and this House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said—I congratulate her on obtaining the debate—this is the second debate in two years. However, we have not debated the fate, for instance, of child prisoners in Iran, where Amnesty International estimates there are at least 80 individuals on death row for crimes allegedly committed when they were under 18, or indeed the fate of others in Egypt, the Maldives, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Yemen, which have all sentenced juvenile offenders to death since 2010. Israel is, of course, a liberal democracy, and should be held to a higher standard than the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. We have also never discussed the fate of the 60,000 children locked up in juvenile detention facilities in the United States—many for truanting, under-age drinking or consensual sexual conduct—or the fact that, adjusted for size of population, 5.5 times more minors were arrested in 2015-16 in England and Wales than in the west bank by Israel.
None of that is to suggest that the plight of Palestinian children in the tragic conflict there is not important, but we must make clear our deep and continuing concern at the Palestinian Authority’s policy of inciting violence —a policy intentionally aimed at children and young people.
Joan Ryan
I will not.
We see that policy in the naming of schools and sports tournaments after terrorists; in the newly revised curriculum, which asks students, as a maths exercise, to calculate the number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings; and in the countless examples of anti-Semitism that litter children’s TV programmes on official Palestinian Authority TV.
Joan Ryan
I will not, at this point.
We must register our deep and continuing concern at the Palestinian leadership’s attempt to recruit children into committing acts of violence. In December Fatah posted a photograph to its Twitter account of a young boy hurling rocks with a slingshot, together with a guide to how best to throw a rock. Let us remember that Yehuda Haim Shoham, one year-old Jonathan Palmer and three-year-old Adele Biton were all killed as a result of stones being thrown at cars they were travelling in.
Finally, it is important that we show our deep and continuing concern at the recruitment of children into Palestinian armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. As Child Soldiers International has stated:
“Children received military training and are used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers.”
If we do not acknowledge and address those very serious issues, we run the risk of this debate being seen less as a matter of the welfare of Palestinian children and more as simply another opportunity to attack Israel.