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Israel harasses Palestinian children
A human rights group has criticized Israeli forces of arresting and mistreating Palestinian children as young as eight years old on stone-throwing charges.
In a Monday report, Israeli rights group B'Tselem slammed the Israeli police for “systematically violating the law” in its treatment of Palestinian children being investigated on suspicion of throwing stones, the Jerusalem Post reported. Israeli authorities arrested more than 80 Palestinian minors, as young as eight years old, between November 2009 and October 2010, the report highlighted. The children were detained on suspicion of throwing stones at Israelis in the Silwan neighborhood of East al-Quds (Jerusalem). The rights group added that the minors were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and interrogated -- at times without having their parents present. It has also accused the authorities of using extreme violence and handcuffs on children. The Israeli police have dismissed the report, insisting that the arrests were legal. B'Tselem's report was based on interviews the rights group conducted with 30 Palestinian minors who had been arrested by the police in the past year.