PALESTINIAN CHILDREN HAVE told international NGO Save the Children they faced starvation, abuse, sexual assault and infectious diseases like scabies while held in Israeli prisons. 

Israel routinely detains children and prosecutes them in military courts, a practice long-condemned by human rights organisations and the United Nations. The most common charge is for throwing stones, which can carry a 20-year sentence.

Children, like many other Palestinians held captive by Israel, are often not allowed to communicate with their parents or a lawyer. 

“It is understood that in 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,” read a UN report on the practice in 2013. 

In February of this year, a panel of UN experts expressed alarm at “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations” against Palestinian women and girls since October last year.

According to the Palestinian Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association based in the city of Ramallah, there are currently 250 children in Israeli detention who have been taken from the occupied West Bank since October. The number taken from Gaza is unknown. 

Save the Children, a human rights organisation founded in the UK, and its partner organisation in Palestine – who it did not name for security reasons – spoke to 49 former child detainees in Gaza, who reported a wide range of abuses.  

“During their arrests, their parents had no information on their whereabouts and once released, children showed clear signs of violence and ill-treatment, including bruises, shock, traumatic stress, and weight loss,” Save the Children said it a report published this week. 

“Some children reported being sexually assaulted, harassed, strip searched, and violently beaten. Torture, cruel or inhuman treatment of children is strictly prohibited under international law.”

Save the Children told The Journal one child reported being raped.

“Other cases include strip searches, children being beaten harshly while naked, and other forms of sexual assaults,” said Randa Ghazy, Save the Children’s media manager for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe.

The descriptions of abuse reported by the children track with accounts from adults held in Israeli-run prisons and detention centres. 

‘The younger children were really scared’

Two seventeen-year-olds, Firas and Qusay from the occupied West Bank, were detained in two different Israeli-run prisons before the war on Gaza began. They were released at the end of 2023, Save the Children said. The two boys’ names have been changed to protect their identities. 

Qusay told the NGO he saw a child with head injuries from a beating so severe that he would faint every time he tried to stand. He also said new detainees brought to the prison were as young as 12 and 13 years old. 

“The younger children were really scared and kept crying, I wanted to take care of them, but when I asked the prison guard to allow me to stay with them, I was violently beaten,” he said.  

Both teenagers reported dealing with ticks while in detention. Firas recalled using a lighter to burn the ticks that would come near him, while Qusay was released with tick bites covering his body. 

 “[After the war started], they took everything, we didn’t have enough blankets and I shared my pillow with another prisoner. In the winter, they opened the windows so we would feel cold. One child prisoner had a severe rash, so we asked the guard to allow him to sit in the sun or clean his body. The guard said, ‘Call me back when he’s dead’.” 

Both children said conditions in detention deteriorated significantly after the war began in October. They also said they were not allowed to see or speak to their parents. 

“The horrors we endured made me think that pre-war life in prison was heaven,” said Firas.   

Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, Jeremy Stoner, said: “The abuse and ill-treatment of Palestinian children must end. The decades-old protection crisis for Palestinian children can no longer be ignored. For too long, the Israeli occupation has severely impacted the lives of Palestinian children.”

In response to similar reports of abuse in prisons and detention centres, Israeli officials have denied that prisoners are mistreated and said that issues raised are always investigated. 

The Israeli government has been contacted and asked for comment.