A compilation of extracts from ngo reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child relating to violence against children This document is an annex to the publication
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ISRAELMiddle East and North Africa CRC Session 31, 16 September - 4 October 2002 Defense for Children International – Israel Section in consultation with members of The Israeli Children's Rights Coalition
[…]
The essential context of this report, for which DCI-Israel takes responsibility, is the period of ongoing violence in which the State of Israel is presently engaged and the consequent preference afforded to security as against other aspects of life in the country. The issue of children’s rights is particularly sensitive to the priority afforded to security needs: unfortunately, the demands of security tend to hold back progress in the fulfillment of children’s rights since resources are inevitably directed primarily toward the military effort. Without a peaceful resolution of the conflict, it is the children who will tragically be among the main victims of the situation. (Pg 3) […]
NGO Report discusses many such violations including the lethal use by the Israeli authorities of rubber-coated bullets or live ammunition against civilian populations, conditions of interrogation, house demolition, impeded access to health care and hospitals due to closure and roadblocks, etc. (Pg 4) […]
Palestinian groups who deliberately and indiscriminately attack civilians, including children, within Israel proper. Terror attacks and suicide bombing are gross violations of international, humanitarian and human rights laws, creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity among children and adults alike. In our experience, they are also likely to cause a deterioration in areas like the interrogation by the authorities of minors.(Pg 4) […]
In spite of facing the possibility of an escalating armed conflict, with the resultant tension in the everyday lives of its citizens, Israel must focus consistently on promoting both human rights and children’s rights. DCI-Israel is conscious of the obstacles to upholding the values of the CRC in the difficult conditions now pertaining in Israel. However, recent weeks have witnessed increasing examples of deterioration in the position of children as budgets relating to their welfare as cut in order to pay for the massive security needs. (Pg 4)
[…] In addition, there are now almost daily incursions by the Israeli army into Palestinian areas. This, the closures and sieges, often prevent sick Palestinian children from reaching the hospital in the next town, and the situation has an enormous impact upon implementing rights of Palestinian children. The government also does not report on a growing number of children of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who collaborated with Israeli authorities and were then relocated with their families to Israel, often in Arab towns against the will of towns’ citizens. These children are often not accepted by their Arab classmates. The Initial State Report ignores them. Their families are often ostracized or driven out of Arab towns in which the government tried to relocate them. (Pg 15) […]
Thus, for example, we discuss the problem of Palestinian women about to give birth being held up at checkpoints by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which has led to the death of babies.(Pg 18) […]
[…] He continues: “The foremost of these stressors is the continuous concern of Israelis with security, both on a national and individual level. Since the establishment in 1948, Israel has been involved in five major wars and in endless hostilities with its neighboring Arab countries, as well as with the Palestinian inhabitants of the territories occupied in the 1967 Six Day War (West Bank and Gaza Strip). The need to take precautions and to be on guard keeps men, women, and children aware of the constant threat to their daily routines. The permanence of the threat of war for so many years, and the lifetime commitment of Israeli men to national service in the military, have had a considerable effect on Israeli society. It would not be an overstatement to say that belligerence has been the most stable aspect of the history of the State of Israel, and that Israel has come to regard itself as a society at war, if not as a society of warriors.” “No wonder that Israeli children are aggressive, super assertive and often impolite. The socialization has to produce individuals who need traits to survive in this tough society of warriors. Aggressive behavior has to be reinforced and there are plenty of aggressive role models to observe.” Landau mentions two other important sources of stress in Israel: economic hardship (recession and unemployment) and extreme social and demographic changes that have taken place over a relatively short period. One million immigrants arrived from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s. As the political situation becomes more uncertain, Palestinian despair and violence increases. Years of humiliation, fear, and inability to retain their dignity have led to desperate and violent acts. Psychoanalyst Ira Brenner sees parallels between a person with a split personality and the traumatized and re-traumatized people of Israel.(Pg 21) […] The ongoing violent conflict makes Israel a difficult country in which to live, as demonstrated by its serious internal problems; its society remains very violent, intolerant, and anxiety-ridden. Police files show an increase in child violence and delinquency in recent years. The number of battered women in Israel, according to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Violence in the Family, has tripled since the mid-1970's. While these alarming statistics may be partially explained by an increase in crime reporting, it is clear that Israeli society, and children in particular, are suffering from the aggressive environment. In 2000, the International Science Report ranked Israel number one in a multi-state study for verbal violence and humiliation by schoolmates in the schoolyard. Israel ranked fourth for verbal abuse by teachers and faculty, and second in school vandalism. (Pg 22) The human rights situation has deteriorated enormously since September 2000 – the physical and mental well being of children in almost every area are being threatened. The daily phenomena of the violent Palestinian-Israeli conflict leave many children troubled and traumatized. If there is no forthcoming peaceful resolution of this conflict, generations of children will suffer from the fear and danger of suicide bombings and drive-by shooting of civilians by one side, and shooting at young people with rubber bullets and live ammunition by the other. The international community must be fully aware of this fact, and hopefully will help Israel and its neighbors reach a just and lasting peace.(Pg 23/24) […]
The UN representative said in January, 2002 that we are on the “brink of the brink”. However, soon after the situation deteriorated further into a war-like situation with daily Palestinian suicide bombers in Israeli cities and IDF military action in Palestinian towns and cities. […]
When the widow of a murdered Israeli physician- a man of peace whose practice included the treatment of Arab patients, tells us that it seems that Palestinians are interested in killing Jews for the sake of killing Jews, Palestinians should take notice. When the parents of a Palestinian child killed while in his bed by an errant .50 caliber bullet draw similar conclusions about the respect accorded by Israelis to Palestinian lives, Israelis need to listen. When we see the shattered bodies of children we know it is time for adults to stop the violence.(Pg 24) […]
A major omission in the Government Report is the Military Laws affecting Palestinian children. The Military Order in the Occupied Territories in Matters of Judging Young Criminals (no. 132, 1967), for instance, defines a child as “a person not yet 12 years old,” a youth as “a person 12 years old but not yet 14,” and a young adult/adolescent as “someone who is 14 but not yet 16.” Children in the Occupied Territories above the age of 16 are considered adults in criminal proceedings. It is time to revise these military laws in light of the CRC. The military orders are also a basis for putting 16-18 year old Palestinian offenders in prisons with adults. […]
Sixteen-eighteen year-old Palestinian minors are considered adults and placed with adults in cells or tents, leaving them vulnerable to mental and physical abuse. (Most of the inmates in the Meggido military prison are young, in their early twenties, and the younger inmates—the teenagers—feel protected by the older ones. None of them expressed any wish for separation, and feel protected by older inmates against attempts by prison authorities to recruit informers.) […]
Israeli Military Order 132 stipulates that children aged twelve to sixteen must be detained separately from older prisoners, though exceptions can be authorized by military commanders. On December 31, 1995, DCI-Israel wrote to the Military Judge Advocate (Pg 45). […]
Some Arab-Bedouin settlements in the Negev, which have been constructed illegally on Government land, have been demolished with very little consideration for the effects on children. In November 2001, the Interior Ministry ordered the demolition of 6 Bedouin homes. The Ministry maintained that the Bedouins have been offered alternative locations for over a year, and that staying on the land they were on was a danger to children since the army has been performing exercises using live ammunition. In the West Bank, in the government displaced, in 1998 the Jahelin tribe from the land they lived on in order to expand the settlement of Maale Adomim. Through the government’s closure of their water system, the tribe was forcibly relocated to a plot of land near the main waste management plant away from where they used to live. […]
“There is an extensive network in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that hunts down collaborators. The Israeli targeted assassinations against terrorists, since the start of the intifada, have given rise to waves of suspicion and rumors among Palestinians that collaborators must be working on behalf of the Israeli intelligence. The rumors gained in strength as the targeting became more accurate. A few weeks ago, for example, a youth in Ramallah was caught spraying the car of a Hamas activist with a chemical substance. According to the rumors, this substance made it possible for Israeli helicopters to target the vehicle and blow it up.37 In April 2002, a Palestinian Military Court sentenced the 15 year old Abdel Khalim Hamdan from Khan Yunis to death for collaboration with the Israelis, but the sentence was converted to 15 years of hard labor because of his age.37a […] Palestinian children participating in violent demonstrations have been injured and killed in numbers that, we believe, the Israeli government cannot justify under any legitimate terms of crowd control. Delegates from Amnesty International (according to AI press release of February 5, 2002) said that the Israeli use of weapons that cause massive destruction of property, laser-guided bombs dropped by F-16 aircraft and Apache helicopter-launched Air to Ground Hellfire missiles, have made Palestinians in towns constantly watch the sky in fear.(Pg 70) […]
Israeli children as well have been targeted, injured and killed by Palestinians since the start of the Intifada. During the last week of May, 2001 there were two suicide bombings of teenage pubs and gathering spots in Jerusalem. On Friday, June 1st, 2001, a suicide bomber blew himself up in line outside a busy discotheque in Tel Aviv. The attack killed 23 adolescents and wounded over 60 children and adults. On December 1, 2001 two Palestinian suicide bombers and a car bomb exploded right in the center of an area with cafes for young people in Jerusalem, killing more children, to name just a few of too many such incidents to recount here. As an example, on February 16, 2002, two Israeli children (ages 15 and 16) were killed by a suicide bomber in a pizza shop in Karnei Shomron, and tens of others seriously wounded.51 Although the Israeli government is the one being reviewed by the CRC Committee, we, nevertheless, want to mention that targeting children for murder seems to be a major part of the Palestinian strategy. Civilians, and children in particular, are under every circumstance, a protected population under the Geneva Conventions. […]
A dangerous escalation and frightening indication took place on March 6, 2002, when Palestinians fired a kassam rocket at a neighborhood in the town of Sderot, wounding a ten-year-old child. On March 3, 2002 a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up standing right next to a group of women with baby carriages in Jerusalem. 52 Lee Hockstader of the International Herald Tribune and Washington Post reported about an earlier suicide bombing: “ABU DIS, West Bank – Before they set out to blow themselves to pieces and take as many Israeli kids with them as possible, Osama Bahar and Nabil Halabiyeh played it cool. Mr. Bahar reported for work as usual, prayed in his neighborhood mosque as usual, practiced karate as usual (…) their friends detected nothing amiss before they departed from this little town just outside Jerusalem, went into the heart of the city Saturday night, mingled with the throngs of partying Jewish teenagers, and died in an inferno of fire and blood. They triggered their bombs practically in tandem, about 45 meters (145 feet) and a few seconds apart, transforming a pedestrian mall buzzing with cafés and sandwich joints into a slaughterhouse. The explosives, packed with nails, screws, nuts and bolts, ripped flesh as easily as paper. Ten Israelis died; the oldest was 21, the youngest 14. Dozens were horribly wounded.” 53 […]
We are concerned as well about the increasing incidence of Jewish settler youth participating in unrest against Palestinians. The government must do all within its power to ensure that Jewish children in Hebron, for instance, will not engage in kicking civilians or destroying property of theirs. (Pg 71) […]
Another problem concerning basic safety and education recently arose with the beginning of the Intifada. Jewish children traveling in school buses in the Occupied Territories have become targets for shootings and bombings. (Pg 72) Directory: docs docs -> Application for acem docs -> Observational Assessment of Teaching Practices Teaching Assessment Initiative Proposal Submitted to The Teachers for a New Era project docs -> Traditional British values docs -> From Warfighters to Crimefighters: The Origins of Domestic Police Militarization docs -> Borzoi Club of America Register of Merit Program I. What is a Register Of Merit docs -> Protecting the rights of the child in the context of migration docs -> United Nations E/C. 12/Esp/5 docs -> 9th May 1950 the schuman declaration docs -> Getting To Outcomes® in Services for Homeless Veterans 10 Steps for Achieving Accountability Download 4.33 Mb. Share with your friends:
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