HV9192.2.A5C66

- Includes an index - Includes bibliographical references - Includes few illustrations in black and white

“The soldiers took me to a room and sat me down on a chair. One of them took off the handcuffs and tied my hands and feet to the chair's legs. My eyes remained covered. About half an hour later they removed the blindfold. I saw five or six people in civilian clothes. They asked me questions about my involvement in clashes with soldiers. They asked me if I threw stones at army vehicles on the main road. At first I denied that I did. But two or three of them started to beat me in the face and head. The interrogation lasted for around five hours. I was very tired from sitting all the time on the chair and from the beatings. At the end, they took me to the bathroom near the interrogation room. One of the interrogators grabbed me by the hair and put my head in the toilet. I was frightened. When they took me back to the interrogation room I decided to confess. I told them I threw five stones at a settler's vehicle. They wrote up a detailed testimony and forced me to sign it.” SM., 15 years old from the Hebron area. Prison is a common experience and central feature of Palestinian life. Since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 600,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned and subjected to a vast array of human rights abuses. The fact that thousands of Palestinian children are included amongst these prisoners is virtually unknown outside the Occupied Palestinian Territories . Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000, several thousand Palestinian children have been detained. Many hundreds have been picked up during mass arrests, held in appalling conditions and later released without charges, others are charged and handed down excessive sentences. At the start of 2004, there were between 360-370 children held in Israeli prisons and detention centres, constituting around five percent of all Palestinian detainees. In October 2002, Adam Hanieh and Cathy Cook former DCI/PS Research Coordinator and International Advocacy Coordinator respectively, and Adah Kay, former DCI/PS volunteer, met to discuss ways to more widely promote Palestinian children's rights. Given the lack of international awareness of the existence of Palestinian child prisoners, the idea of this book was born to support the pioneering campaigning work of DCI/PS. The intention was to write a book that not only described and documented these brutalising prison experiences, but also contextualised, questioned and analysed the detention of minors. Stolen Youth argues that prison in general and the targeting of Palestinian children in particular, are powerful weapons used by Israel in an occupation that is a multifaceted and evolving system of control affecting every single aspect of Palestinian life. In the process the book documents the wider double standards and institutional discrimination inherent in the legal system governing the OPT, and considers why the international human rights standards developed to protect children are not enforced by the international community. Stolen Youth is the first book to deal specifically and comprehensively with the experience of Palestinian child prisoners. It draws on information from many local and international human rights organisations operating in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and features testimonies of Palestinian children, surveys of former child prisoners and interviews with Palestinian and Israeli lawyers who attempt to represent them. The result is a disturbing and often shocking account of abuses that have been widely documented but never addressed by the international community. The book is organised in three main sections. The first section introduces the major issues and suggests a framework for understanding Israeli policy towards Palestinian detainees and especially children. It includes a guide to international standards relating to the imprisonment and treatment of child detainees and examines the military order system and the Israeli practice of recruiting collaborators and informants. The second section documents in detail the actual experience of child detainees from their arrest until their release and draws extensively on cases and testimonies from DCI/PS and other human rights NGOs. The book focuses on those children who have been arrested and charged mainly for throwing stones at soldiers and tanks - a charge viewed by Israel as a 'security' offence. The final section takes a broader view, analysing the reasons underlying Israel 's imprisonment of Palestinian children and examining the psychological and social impact the procedure has on Palestinian society. It argues that the brutal treatment of Palestinian children is a deliberate strategy of state sanctioned violence upheld by institutionalised discrimination. The final chapters consider how Israel has been able to continue this practice, charting the state's manipulation of the international human rights mechanisms. The legitimacy of Israel 's 'security' rationale is challenged and instead it is argued that Israel 's treatment of Palestinian detainees is one pillar of a policy designed to quash all resistance to its occupation. The book concludes with a call to shift human rights work beyond the confines of the legal discourse to address the power imbalances and strategic political interests that permit human rights abuses to persist. - http://www.dci-pal.org/english/publ/Display.cfm?DocId=190&CategoryId=8