Ramallah: Israeli policies involving nighttime raids against Palestinian children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have drawn criticism. According to the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, hundreds of children are detained by Israeli security forces each year during planned raids that are upsetting for everyone involved.
The group claimed that the practise was frequently used as a first option, even when a child was only detained for a brief period of time and released without being charged, in "On Flimsy Grounds: Israel's Pervasive Night Arrests of Palestinian Children," which was published on January 16. The group found that in the 125 cases it looked at last year, not a single Palestinian family had received a summons before Israeli forces stormed their homes.
According to the report, Israel's continued use of the tactic suggests that it is being done so on purpose to intimidate the Palestinian populace.
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The most recent allegations against Israeli forces came as the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that Israeli soldiers shot and killed 14-year-old Omar Lotfi Khumour on Monday in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.
Outside the hospital where the teen was taken, large groups of Palestinians gathered and chanted protests against Israel.
With this death, Israel has now killed 14 Palestinians since the year's beginning, including four children.
HaMoked's report was based on details provided by 294 families who contacted it after their child was detained in order to find them. Out of these, 125 had to do with a midnight arrest operation.
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The report stated that Israel had violated its obligations under international law severely in the way it treated Palestinian children who were wanted for questioning.
The group had compelled the Israeli military to implement a "procedure for summoning suspected minors before planned arrest" in a High Court petition in 2021.
HaMoked has submitted an appeal to renew its challenge. In March, the hearing is scheduled. According to the research, even children suspected of committing minor offences are subjected to night arrests.
The majority of the cases, according to the group, had no charges filed and the subjects were returned to their families' homes within weeks of their arrest. Many of them spent a few days or even just a few hours in detention.
According to Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked, "night arrests should be the last option, and Israel should use all other options before they reach the point of a large group of soldiers bounding on a family home in the middle of the night." Both the boy being arrested and his experience are extremely traumatic.
Despite Israel's new policy of issuing summonses rather than nighttime arrests, research from the previous year by HaMoked indicates that nothing has changed. "Last year, we recorded 125 nighttime arrests, and not a single case was summoned,"
Director of the Accountability Program at Defense for Children International Ayed Abu Qtaish told Arab News that it was obvious that Israeli forces were disobeying earlier court orders prohibiting the use of surprise arrests.
Additionally, according to Abu Qtaish, the majority of the arrests take place at nighttime when the kids are sleeping and are accompanied by a violent home invasion by heavily armed forces that wakes them up and transports them to interrogation facilities, which results in psychological trauma.
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If the police do not discover the child to be taken into custody at the home, they only give the family a summons request for an investigation, he claimed.
Amani Saraneh of the Palestinian Prisoners Club told Arab News that during such raids last year, Israeli security forces detained 882 kids. 150 people were still incarcerated, he added.