Children are paying the price of injustice

The beating of a pre-pubescent youth by soldiers is just another example of human rights abuse in the occupied territories

Seth Freedman
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday July 16, 2008

"......In February, Muhammad was snatched by a four-man squad of Israeli special forces while playing with friends near the security wall, a mile away from his home. He was subjected to a vicious beating by the men, who punched him repeatedly and smashed him across the face with the butt of a gun in broad daylight. "No one said a word to me during [the attack]", recalled Muhammad, whose description of the assault bore marked similarities to Rodney King's ordeal.

The difference, however, is that Muhammad is just 14 years old, yet was deemed a sufficient enough threat by the soldiers that he needed to be beaten to the point of almost losing consciousness. His crime? Allegedly throwing stones at the separation wall; something Muhammad strenuously denies.

Whereas Israeli youths are treated as children in the eyes of the law until they turn 18, Palestinians are not accorded such humane treatment, and can be imprisoned from the tender age of just 12. Since September 2000 Israel has arrested and detained almost 6000 children, with 700 under-18s arrested in 2007 alone.

Gerard Horton of DCI, an NGO which has taken up Muhammad's case, pointed to the IDF's flagrant violations of children's rights as yet another example of Israel thumbing its nose at international law. "These abuses have been well documented for many years, yet our pleas for intervention have fallen on deaf ears", he said. "The lack of will by the international community to uphold the rule of law when it comes to the Occupied Territories is deeply disturbing."........

In the meantime, the silence of the outside world is deafening. With every passing week, and with every diplomatic door being opened for Israel, the authorities become more and more immune to the criticism on ground-level from the likes of DCI and their peers, and it is children such as Muhammad who pay the price.

Soldiers savagely beating a pre-pubescent youth would send shockwaves throughout any civilised country, but – when it comes to the occupied territories – such an attack is treated as just another day in the office."