Under international law, including Article 37(d) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child has the right to prompt access to legal assistance and to challenge the legality of their detention before a court. Israel consistently deprives Palestinian kids of this right.
More than 100 organizations advocate for the freedom of a 16-year-old dual Palestinian-American citizen detained by Israel for more than six months.
Israeli officials have barred 16-year-old American Mohammed Ibrahim from contacting his family for months as they hold him without trial.
UN experts said that the law is explicitly written to target Palestinian children – a glaring example of Israel’s policy of apartheid.
Since October 7, 2023, the treatment of Palestinian minors in Israeli prisons has reached new extremes, with children facing more suffering than ever before
Ahmad Manasra was arrested at 13 and kept in solitary confinement for years. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in prison and was at serious risk of self-harm. His release to a remote location far from his family was Israel’s final act of torture.
Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad had been taken from his family in the middle of the night, beaten by Israeli soldiers, imprisoned in Israel, where he was fed meager portions of rotten food in overcrowded conditions and isolated completely from his family for over 5 months
Muin, a ninth-grade student and the only child in his family, has been placed under administrative detention, a practice in which Israeli authorities detain Palestinians, including children, without charge or trial, based on ‘secret evidence’ that neither the detainee nor their lawyer can review.
Israel has arrested a large number of Palestinian women and children since October 7th, 2023 – many have never been charged, let alone tried for a crime.
Twenty-three child prisoners released but more than 300 minors remain in Israeli custody, many of them without charges. So, what do we know about Palestinian child prisoners and why are they tried in military courts?