Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian Territories

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Chope, for calling me to speak and I will endeavour to be brief. I commend the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this debate. Obviously, it would have been great if we could have had more time for it.

I find it a sad coincidence that this is the week that unfortunately the UN human rights envoy to the Palestinian territories has resigned from his post because of lack of access to information. I urge the Minister to try to follow that up.

Many years ago during the first intifada, I reported on many matters in the region, including children who were detained by Israelis, some of whom had suffered injuries and others who had been killed. This debate is not about gunshot wounds, which unfortunately I had to report on a great deal, and it is not about mortality, which unfortunately I also had to report on many times. However, I am saddened by this debate, because every single recommendation in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office-funded report—all 40 of them—could have been written by me all those years ago during the first intifada. I did that reporting job in the hope that things would improve.

I applaud what my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said, from his viewpoint as a witness, about how children should be treated. In the occupied territories, I met children who had been subject to many of the things that we have heard about today.

I fully support the UN convention on the rights of the child, and I urge the Minister to urge the Israeli Government to support it. I also fully support the Geneva convention, and again I urge the Minister to urge the Israeli Government to support it as well.

I was a witness for two years in the occupied territories, but I have also been a witness as an MP in my constituency of Twickenham, where I witnessed a child being arrested by my local police. I had a minor flashback to my time in the occupied territories when I realised how different the experience in Twickenham was. I actually applauded my borough commander after that shift, and told him how impressed I was by my local police, because they were both clear and kind to the child in explaining what was happening to them and who they could talk to. That child was not distressed, which was an absolute contrast to all the times that I witnessed children who had been detained and undergone other experiences in the occupied territories.

Therefore, I urge the Minister to please urge the Israeli Government to adhere to all the recommendations in the report, most importantly recommendation 40:

“There needs to be a comprehensive and independent monitoring system.”

I also urge him to urge the Israeli Government to work with senior people in the military in Israel, because I never, ever met a senior military person in Israel who wanted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of children. There are people in Israel who do not support bad treatment of children.

There should be no discrimination for children whether in Gaza, Bethlehem, west Jerusalem, or east Jerusalem: they should all be treated like the child in Twickenham.