Israeli legal center calls to stop traumatic practice of night arrests of Palestinian minors

Occupied Jerusalem (QNN)- An Israeli legal institution has appealed to an Israeli court to stop the Israeli occupation forces from arresting Palestinian minors at their homes at night and taking them for interrogation.

The HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual — an Israeli center based in occupied Jerusalem — submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court against the IOF’s sweeping use of night arrests of Palestinian minors.

The petition calls for the process to be regulated, with minors summoned for interrogation accompanied by their families as critics say the arrest of minors with handcuffs and blindfolds causes shock both for those detained and their relatives.

According to the Israeli center, from September to December 2021, 34 Palestinian minors were arrested in the occupied West Bank, with only six summoned for interrogation accompanied by family.

“It should be the last option for a soldier to invade a family home in the middle of the night and drag a teenage boy from his bed, as the military should exhaust all possible ways to bring someone in for questioning before they engage in this very traumatic practice for the kid who is being detained, and for the whole family,” Jessica Montell, director general of HaMoked, told the Arab News.

Montell said her institution has been arguing with the Israeli military for several years on this point, and that the IOF has promised to follow it up.

But, as is evident from new data, night arrests of Palestinian teenage boys are still the default method for bringing them for interrogation, rather than summoning them alongside their parents.

According to Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups, 4500 Palestinians held in Israeli occupation prisons, including 34 women, 180 minors, and 500 administrative detainees held without charges or trials.

In January 2022, ‘Israel’ arrested 54 Palestinian children, all under the age of 18, except a child who is under the age of 12.

In 2020 only, the Israeli occupation authorities arrested 4,634 Palestinians, among them 543 children.

In 2021, the Israeli occupation authorities arrested over 8000 Palestinians, including 1300 minors, all under the age of 18 and 73 of them under the age of 14.

“The increasing number of arrests of Palestinian minors confirms that it has become a policy of the Israeli Army and is not necessarily linked to the occurrence of events. The problem is not in the timing, form or method of arrest, but rather in the torture and psychological pressure that the children are exposed to after arrest, away from their families and lawyers,” Qdura Faris, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, told the Arab News.

Faris also expressed his deep concern over the newly adopted Israeli policy of home confinement for minors, especially in occupied Jerusalem.

In this arrangement, homes are transformed into a prison for the child after their father pays a bail of around $6,000. If the imprisoned child violates any procedure, the amount will be confiscated by the Israeli occupation authorities.

The imprisonment sentence, in some cases, is replaced with exorbitant fines that may reach up to $3,000.

The IOF has also allegedly arrested children while returning from school or playing near homes or at checkpoints for things such as Facebook posts.

“We expect the Supreme Court to put an end to the matter, and we call on it to instruct the army to exhaust any other alternative before it breaks into homes at night and drags the teenagers from their beds,” Montell said.