UN Accuses Israel of Torturing Palestinian Children
Jessica Desvarieux: So, Shir, what is actually new about this report?
Shir Hever: In many ways this is not new at all. The Israeli forces have been abusing Palestinian children ever since the occupation began, and especially starting from 1987 with the first intifada. Israel has arrested thousands of minors, and as young as seven years old, and have kept them in solitary confinement at times. Some of them were kept in administrative detention, which means that no charges were pressed against them and they were nevertheless kept in prison. And that sort of treatment certainly is not something new, but periodically the international organizations look a little bit more into that. ■ Now, what's starting to be a bit new now is the fact that an Israeli organization, actually, called B'Tselem published a report called No Minor Matter. And this report was published in 2011. It takes the UN a little bit of time to process this data, and they found that based on this information, there is a real concern that the human rights of Palestinian children are regularly violated by the Israeli army and by the Israeli police. And now they published their report two years later, by the United Nations Human Rights Council.