According to a report released by the human rights group, Israeli forces regularly abuse Palestinian children, depriving them of food, subjecting them to beatings and preventing them from accessing legal counsel.
Accountability Programme Director at DCIP, Ayed Abu Eqtaish, stated: "For over a decade, ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system has been widespread and systematic."
From the persistent and institutionalised ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children, to the systematic denial of their due process rights, emerges a system of control far removed from justice.
DCIP records of cases between January and June also show that 81 per cent of Palestinian children were strip searched upon detention, two thirds were denied legal counsel prior to interrogation and only three had a parent present during proceedings.
The report details that one of the youngest children to be detained was 12-year-old Suheib from a refugee camp in the occupied Ramallah-area. He was allegedly throwing stones when he was knocked to the ground by Israeli officers and then restrained, beaten and blindfolded. He was subsequently held overnight at a police station where he was interrogated and denied food for 24 hours.Israel prosecutes up to 700 children each year in military courts. Last month DCIP held a congressional meeting on the situation of Palestinian children over 50 years of illegal occupation, concluding that Israel's actions against minors outdoes all security rationale.
In another case, a 13-year-old boy known only as Anas M. was tortured as an Israeli soldier grabbed his neck and attempted to strangle him.
Comment: Children daily subjected to torture "widespread and systematic." How can ANYONE condone, accept, overlook, allow such actions against the innocent, support this regime, deny these children their lives and well-being for a pathological ideology that encourages, demands and relishes this unending abuse? Where is the conscience to stop it and when is the rescue?