Odeh vomited after Israeli police punched him four
times in the stomach on his way to his prison cell.
Odeh’s calm demeanor, only days after his ordeal, was
evidence of how this was his tenth arrest in three
years.
.More shocking, however, is the fact that this
resident of Silwan in East Jerusalem is only
12-years-old . “I miss my house,” Odeh told The
Electronic Intifada, as he stared longingly from the
balcony of his uncle’s home — where he is under house
arrest until next Wednesday, 24 October — onto his
family’s house below.
“I don’t feel comfortable. I miss my friends, my
grandmother, my mother,” he said. “I don’t know if
they will arrest me again.”
House arrest
Muslim Odeh was first arrested at the age of nine.
During each arrest, Israeli police have accused him of
throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Today, he is
being held under house arrest at his uncle’s home in
the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber. If
he violates the conditions of his release, he will be
re-arrested and forced to pay a fine of 5,000 shekels
($1,300).
A group of Israeli riot police entered his home with
two dogs, the 12-year-old explained, during the most
recent arrest. “I heard dogs near me. I was scared,”
he said, adding that, moments later, the police
brought him blindfolded to an Israeli police station
in East Jerusalem.
There, Israeli interrogators accused him of throwing
Molotov cocktails and stones, and asked him about the
activities of other children in Silwan. While he
wasn’t physically harmed during the interrogation, the
main Israeli investigator yelled and forcibly slammed
his hand on the table to scare him, Odeh said.
“I said I didn’t do anything,” said Odeh, who was
interrogated from 5am until 3pm before being
transferred to the notorious Russian Compound (Moskobiye,
in Arabic) prison compound in West Jerusalem. There,
he was held with six other prisoners who, he said,
were Palestinian teenagers from the Shuafat refugee camp.
“I was the youngest in the room, [and] in the whole Moskobiye,”
Odeh
added.
Child arrests widespread
According to a report released by Save the Children and the East Jerusalem YMCA Rehabilitation
Program in March, the Israeli authorities have
arrested and detained over 8,000 Palestinian children in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem since 2000 (“The impact of child detention:
Occupied Palestinian Territory,” March 2012).
The report found that most of the children were
handcuffed and blindfolded during their arrest — which
was most often carried out on suspicion that the
children threw stones — and that they were almost
always interrogated and held without access to a
lawyer or their parents.
Nearly all children (98 percent) were subjected to
physical or psychological violence during their arrest
and detention, the report found, and 90 percent of
children suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Children were subjected to isolation and ill-treatment;
many developed a fear of dogs used for searching. They
suffered from nightmares, sleeping and eating
disorders, bedwetting, and feared re- arrest or
acquired unhealthy habits such as smoking,” the report
stated.
Addameer, the Ramallah-based Palestinian
prisoners’ support and human rights association, has
reported that as of 1 September this year, some 194
Palestinian children were held in Israeli detention
centers, including 30 below the age of 16 (“Key Issues: Children,” Addameer
website).
“Forms of ill-treatment used by the Israeli soldiers
during a child’s arrest and interrogation usually
include slapping, beating, kicking and violent
pushing. Palestinian children are also routinely
verbally abused. Despite recommendations by the UN
Committee Against Torture in May 2009 that the
interrogations should be video recorded, no provisions
to this effect have yet been enacted,” Addameer found.
“Cosmetic” changes
In July 2009, Israel created a juvenile military
court system for Palestinian minors from the West Bank
and East Jerusalem. After decades of trying
Palestinians over 16-years-old as adults — in
violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which defines children as anyone 18 and
under — Israel also recently began treating all
Palestinians under 18 as children.
But according to Khaled Quzmar, legal advisor at Defence for Children
International-Palestine Section (DCI), these
changes are nothing more than “cosmetic” and haven’t
really changed the overall system of oppression.
“Israel marketed [these changes to] the world as
applying international human rights law and [that]
they are going to stop prosecuting children in the
Israeli military courts. In fact, on the ground, the
same court and the same judges [are in place],” Quzmar
told The Electronic Intifada. “In fact, nothing
changed. The same campaigns of arrests continued.”
DCI has found that despite putting juvenile courts in
place, Israel still treats Palestinian children as
adults when it comes to sentencing, bail applications
and how long detainees can be denied access to a
lawyer, which is set at 90 days for both adults and
children (“Children prosecuted in Israeli
military courts,” 2 October).
Quzmar added that the arrests of Palestinian children
aim to deter resistance to Israeli occupation
policies, and in some cases, force families to leave
their homes and villages altogether.
“They put pressure on the families by arresting their
children or targeting their children, so maybe this
policy will force the families to leave the area. This
policy is very clear in Jerusalem. The courts used to
sentence the children deport the children from their
houses so it is a kind of transfer,” he said.
For 12-year-old Muslim Odeh, the psychological impact
of his many arrests has been difficult. “I have
nightmares,” Odeh said. “Sometimes I dream that the
police are coming to take me, but then I wake up to
see that I’m not in prison but in my house.”
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and
documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of
her work can be found at
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