From Foreign Policy’s Turtle Bay blog:
As the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap got under way this week, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) appealed late last night to the Israel military to ensure the release of 164 Palestinian prisoners detained as minors, mostly on charges of throwing stones at Israeli authorities.
The minors were not included in a list of the first round 477 Palestinian prisoners who were released in exchange for one Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit, freed by Hamas after five years of captivity through a prison swap brokered by the Egyptian government. It remains unclear whether the minors will be included in a second round of an additional 550 Palestinian prisoners due to be released in the coming months, according to UNICEF officials.
“As stated in the convention on the rights of the child, the detention of children should be used only as a measure of last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF’s Special Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “UNICEF calls on the Israeli government to release Palestinian child detainees so that they can be reunited with their families.”
Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, reacted sharply to the U.N. agencies appeal, telling Turtle Bay in a statement that “this press release demonstrates UNICEF’s clear bias and double-standards when it comes to Israel. Its timing is mind-boggling.”
Prosor said that while Israel is willing to discuss the concerns of any humanitarian agency UNICEF “should use its time and resource to focus on real violators of children’s rights in the Middle East.”
Israel’s detention of minors has been a sore point for the U.N. children’s agencies and other children’s rights groups, who maintain that children should not be tried by military courts and that governments should only jail minors under the most extreme circumstances. “Military tribunals are not required to treat children’s best interests as their primary concern, and, therefore, are not an appropriate forum for hearing cases against children,” according to a September report by the U.N. secretary general special representative for children and armed conflict, Radikha Coomaraswamy.
“Seven thousand Palestinian children have been detained, interrogated and prosecuted and imprisoned in the Israeli military system over the past ten years,” Catherine Weibel, a spokeswoman for UNICEF said in a phone interview today.
Weibel said that 35 of the detained minors are between the ages of 12 and 15 but that most are 16 or 17 years of age. Under Israeli law, minors over the age of 14 can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for throwing a stone at an individual, and up to 20 years for hurling it at a moving vehicle. In practice, Israeli military courts rarely sentence minors to more than 2 months, and typically hold them for a period of a couple of weeks to about 3 months. Children under the age of 12 are released from custody without being charged.
i disagree with ron prosor… the fact is a prisoner release is taking place right now.. what better time then now to highlight the fact israel is detaining 35 kids between 12 and 15 years of age, along with the other 442 at 16 or 17 years of age?
israel could step back and look at how it’s reputation as open air prison host, not to mention the fact of these 477 underage kids doesn’t dovetail all that well their own idea of ‘only democracy in the middle east’…
RE: “UNICEF pressures Israel on child detainees”
PAYBACK IN THE WORKS: House Foreign Affairs Committee Votes To Defund UNICEF, By Ali Gharib, Think Progress, 10/14/11
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/10/14/343741/house-foreign-affairs-committee-votes-to-defund-unicef/
P.S. My homage to Fulgencio Batista is dedicated to his most renowned protégé, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R- FL). She and her mentor are truly the very best friends that the downtrodden have ever had!
P.P.S. Anyone who says that there is something wrong with Ros-Lehtinen’s being a stooge for AIPAC is either an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew! And, you don’t get to take your pick. As Goebbels supposedly told told the German director Fritz Lang (who had one Jewish parent, his mother): “We decide who is Jewish.” That “we” being the “royal we”, which in Germany at that time meant Der Fuhrer and his thugs. So “we” decide who is a self-hating Jew, and who is an anti-Semite.
I’m sorry to disagree.
Non-Jewish “minors over the age of 14 can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for throwing a stone at an individual, and up to 20 years for hurling it at a moving vehicle.” Civilized people don’t barter the fate of children. Release them period. Combatants should be the focus of the trade. In my humble opinion, Hamas should have ended the deal at the last moment when the Israelis refused to release Marwan Barghouti. Perhaps a finger a day could have sealed the resolution of that issue. One a day. Bibi wouldn’t have wanted to hug flipper? Apparently, Hamas has it’s agenda.
Don’t other Western countries have Juvenile courts? Or are criminals under the age of 18 let off with a warning?
As mentioned in the UNICEF article, most youths get a two month or so sentence, which means that Hamas would certainly not have asked for their release as they will soon be out anyway, and in the second release in a couple of months, I’m sure Israel would love to fill the quota with children, but the sides agreed that the quota would not include prisoners who are soon to be released.
What in your humble opinions should an occupying power do with stone-throwing children until the day when the occupation will end?