Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces: ‘They put on music and colourful lights and started dancing over us ... They had their feet on our backs'

Irish Times

2 days ago

'I wish that everybody unites and stands to talk about
Palestinian
detainees, to raise their voices,' says Fatima, a Palestinian woman from a refugee camp near Bethlehem, whose sons were first arrested as teenagers.
'I worry ... if they get to the point where they get married and start a family, they won't be able to have children because the fear they suffered was so intense ... I think about it all the time.'
The detention of Palestinian minors by
Israeli
security forces is nothing new. 'Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone throwing, for which the maximum sentence is 20 years,' said Save the Children in
2020
.
But human rights organisations say conditions for prisoners and detainees have become considerably worse over the past few years, particularly
since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th, 2023
.
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Data released by Palestinian prisoners' rights organisations in April said at least 1,200 children were detained in the occupied
West Bank
in the 18 months after those Hamas attacks. About 200 Palestinian children in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces in the same period, according to figures from the UN humanitarian co-ordination office (OCHA).
On July 23rd, two teenagers – a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old – were shot dead by Israeli soldiers near Bethlehem, with the military claiming the boys were throwing Molotov cocktails towards a highway.
As of July 14th, there were more than 450 Palestinian minors in Israeli custody – one of them a girl, according to Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem. This included 87 in administrative detention. A B'Tselem spokesman said they have no information about the youngest detainee.
The children are
among
more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, according to June figures from Ramallah-based Palestinian rights group Addameer, though the 'number of detainees from the Gaza Strip remains unknown due to the policy of enforced disappearance'.
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Addameer – which has received
support
from Ireland – is among other Palestinian rights and civil society NGOs declared 'terrorist organisations' by Israel.
The experience was so traumatic that for a while I felt disconnected from reality
—
Palestinian former detainee Mehdi (17)
In June, Addameer said at least 70 Palestinians had died in Israeli prisons since October 2023. They included 17-year-old Walid Ahmad, who was held without charge for six months, after he was allegedly accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. He died in March, with varying reports saying he was malnourished and was believed to have contracted amoebic dysentery and scabies.
Ibrahim and Mehdi: separate stories, similar ordeals
In Bethlehem governorate, The Irish Times met two Palestinian teenagers who has been held in Israeli detention facilities within the past year.
They were interviewed separately but details of their accounts were similar. The interviews were facilitated by an NGO that works with former child detainees, with staff requesting that the organisation not be named to protect its work. Due to policies related to how the NGO interacts with beneficiaries, The Irish Times did not press the minors to say what exactly they were accused of or whether they were guilty, though a staff member from the NGO said at least 70 per cent of arrests of minors are related to throwing stones.
Sahar Francis, a lawyer who has worked with Addameer, said children also get arrested for 'inciting violence [through] social media activities,' and that there has been an increase in the number of children held under administrative detention: 'serious since it means children are arrested based on secret information without clear evidence.'
Francis said the military courts that Palestinian children are tried under cannot guarantee a fair trial, and children do not receive protections in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, despite Israel being a signatory, and an
International Court of Justic
e ruling in 2004 saying this is applicable to children living in the West Bank.
A 2024 UN
review
said Israel's denial that the convention is applicable in occupied Palestinian territories 'cannot be used to justify its grave and persistent violations of international human rights and humanitarian law'.
A two-tier legal system in the occupied West Bank, which sees Israelis tried under civilian law and Palestinians under military law, is one factor that has led to many human rights bodies determining that Palestinians live under 'apartheid' – a claim Israel denies.
Like Fatima, both boys are being identified with pseudonyms to avoid repercussions.
An emailed list of questions to the Israeli Prison Service was not answered in time for publication.
Ibrahim says he was beaten in prison. Photograph: Sally Hayden
Ibrahim
Ibrahim (16) was studying for his ninth-grade exams when his home was raided and he was arrested. He was charged, locked up for 8½ months and ordered to pay a fine of 3,000 shekels (€750), he said.
In detention, he said there were 10 children in each room. He gestured around the office he sat in to say the cell was only about two-fifths of its size.
He said there were two sets of bunk beds, three beds high. others slept on mattresses, with a bathroom in one corner. He said the oldest detainee in his cell was 17 and the youngest was 12. The longest sentence being served was 30 years – when that boy turned 18 he was moved to an adult prison.
The boys had to kneel in a corner to be 'counted' three times a day – kneeling on a mattress, instead of the hard floor, meant their mattresses could be taken away completely.
If they got any details they were asked about wrong, they would be beaten, he said. Twice a week, the room would be searched: 'They go in, break everything, take everything from its place and then leave.' Once, the guards discovered that someone had hidden a watch: there was no usual way for them to know the time. One punishment included three weeks without mattresses and covers for sleeping.
'We used to be punished all the time,' said Ibrahim. This included being punished for things that were nothing to do with them, he said. On October 1st, 2024 when Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel, 'the prison guards started punishing the detainees, they started spraying the gas spray all over the rooms, they came in, started hitting us, they sent us outside the room'.
On the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks, Ibrahim said, 'they started spraying pepper spray all over the rooms until we almost felt like we were suffocating. They went into the rooms, they threw a sound bomb and put handcuffs on us. They put us in the middle of the space outside the prison and let [muzzled] dogs loose on us with their claws.'
The detained children could leave the room for one hour a day, and shower for just five minutes – 'if you take longer everybody is punished'. He said the water in the shower gave them skin diseases, like fungal infections. The light in the cell was either very bright or very dark – the impact on Ibrahim's eyes means he needs glasses now, he said.
There were three meals – at 10am, 2pm and 5pm, he said – but the food they received was 'only to keep us alive'.
'Uncooked rice twice a week. Chicken with its own blood. Sausages barely cooked ... Most of the time it's undercooked, sometimes expired, sometimes not cooked in the right way. Each person gets a cup of the entire meal, barely.'
When asked whether detainees received any education, he raised his hands and asked 'From where?'. He said they could read the Koran and also invented a card game using the covers of spreadable cheese meals. 'But then the administration found out and stopped bringing us the cheese.'
During that period, he says the only time he saw his mother was on a screen in court. Sometimes, she would make heart shapes with her fingers, with Israeli guards ordering her to stop, but Ibrahim saw them. 'When I tried to wave on the screen so she could see me, they shut the screen so she couldn't see it ... I spent eight months without hearing my mother's voice.'
He still thought of his mother, saying he used information he learned from her to ask guards for specific medicines when child detainees were sick. It reinforced his desire to become a doctor, he said.
Mehdi said he was held in a cell with 10 other people, and the amount of food provided was enough for four. Photograph. Sally Hayden
Mehdi
Mehdi (17) was detained in 2024, when he was 16. He said he was arrested with two others, and spent five days in total between an investigation centre and prison. He said he was put on trial through video conference and his family were forced to pay a fine of 5,000 shekels (€1,250 euros).
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'I know that other prisoners, every time they're taken for trial or back from trial they're always beaten. I was beaten when they took me from home to the prison and the investigation,' he said.
In the investigation centre, he said the child detainees were handcuffed by female guards and made to lie on their fronts on the floor. 'They put on music and colourful lights and started dancing over us ... They had their feet on [our backs]. I kept hearing the [Hebrew] word they use to describe us which is 'terrorists'.' He said one of the women was on a video call with another woman at the time.
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In prison, there were 11 people in his cell, with enough food for four: mostly 'undercooked or expired'. They drank tap water from the bathroom, but it was 'unsanitary'.
During his months in detention, Mehdi also said he saw guards force a detainee to kiss an Israeli flag. 'They curse their mothers and their sisters and their honour because they understand how insulting it would be.'
He said there were other things that took place that he did not feel comfortable sharing.
'It's five days, some people say 'oh whatever' but it was very difficult ... They try to insult you, to mess with your mentality, with your manhood. They understand what kind of people we are and they try to mess with that.'
Francis, the lawyer, said 'sexual harassment has become very widespread in prisons ... It comes in so many ways: strip-search[es] for almost everyone while soldiers are making fun of the person, or hitting them with the magno-meter or plastic stick while doing the search; threatening the detainees to be raped; and we documented rape cases using the baton to push it into the anus of the detainees – mostly
Gaza
detainees, including children from Gaza.'
Last year, a UN commission of inquiry
alleged
that 'thousands of [Palestinian] child and adult detainees … have ... been subjected to widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence.'
It said male detainees were 'subjected to rape, as well as attacks on their sexual and reproductive organs and forced to perform humiliating and strenuous acts while naked or stripped as a form of punishment or intimidation to extract information'.
Before he was released, Mehdi said he was warned by a prison guard: 'If you do or say anything you will be detained again.'
In the aftermath, he felt constantly afraid. 'I saw many traumatic things in a small period of time,' he said, his eyes welling up with tears. 'There's a certain smell to the place, a certain feeling that can only be described if you've had that experience and I hope that no one has that experience.'
He said growing up under military occupation is indescribably challenging. 'This is the life I was born into. We came into life and we have never experienced freedom, we came into life under occupation ... We have to cope with it ... Kids are taken to jail without any charges ... The experience was so traumatic that for a while I felt disconnected from reality.'
Mehdi wants to continue his education and go to university.
He loves reading about history, but other pastimes – such as playing billiards or hanging out in a playground with friends – have become almost impossible because of Israeli raids, patrols and checkpoints around where he lives that stop them from moving around, he said. 'I feel like, from the look of things, things aren't getting better.'
Mehdi said he would support any boycott or law from another country that impacts Israel and Israeli settlements. 'I'll be very happy, I will distribute sweets for the people.'