Newsletter - April 2017
Detention figures – The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) has not provided updated prison statistics in accordance with a Freedom of Information (FOI) application since August 2016. According to the IPS a new FOI officer was appointed in December 2016 and advised that the provision of monthly prisons statistics would resume within weeks. In February the IPS re-commenced supplying prison data but failed to disaggregate the information based on whether the detainee was Israeli or Palestinian. The IPS is now 10 months behind in the provision of prison statistics relating to Palestinians, including children, held in its facilities. More statistics
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Military authority releases arrest data for 2015 - According to the military and police data, 871 children (aged 12-17 years) were arrested in the West Bank in 2015. This compares with 861 child arrests in 2014 and represents an increase of 1.6 percent. However, according to IPS data there was a 15.4 percent increase in the number of children held in IPS detention facilities in 2015, consistent with the upsurge in unrest reported since October of that year. It is not possibleto explain this discrepancy from the available data. Based on the data released by the military and police, the Israeli army arrested 73 Palestinian children in the West Bank each month; 17 children each week; or 2.4 children each day in 2015.
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Haaretz: Most minors arrested by Israel claim physical violence during detention - The indictment against S.H. is vague and lacks specific details, as is customary in indictments filed by the military prosecution – especially in relation to stone throwing. Here’s what it says: “The accused named above, on January 26, 2017, or near that date, threw an object, including a stone, at a moving vehicle with the aim of harming it or the person driving it, namely, on the aforementioned date, on Route 465, or in the nearby vicinity, the accused threw stones at a number of moving vehicles with the intention of harming them or a person traveling in them.” Signed: Army Patrol Officer Sivan Speizer, Military Prosecutor.
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non-subsription
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A child's testimony - On 10 January 2017, Israeli soldiers detained a 13-year-old boy from Biddu at 2:30 p.m. as he went to play football. He was charged with throwing stones and was sentenced to over a month in prison in Ofer military court following a plea bargain although he still maintains his innocence. "I went to the playground after school at around 2:30 p.m. to play football with my friends. I was walking by myself when all of a sudden I saw Israeli soldiers firing tear gas. I walked away to try to avoid the tear gas but a military jeep stopped me and about 10 soldiers came up behind me. I was afraid. Then I noticed some boys running away when they saw the soldiers and I had no idea what was going on."
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A soldier's video testimony: "If stones are thrown again we close the school" - In this video a former soldier provides a testimony to Breaking the Silence about protecting settlers travelling on roads in the West Bank from stone throwers. "Our mission was to secure the movement of the settlers, the Jews, along Route 60, which is the main road in Samaria. One of our methods for performing the mission was reinforcing routes. In the morning and evening, when there is settler traffic to and from work back in the evening, we came out with everything we had, all of our equipment. On-foot patrols, jeeps, armored vehicles. We came out to show a presence along the routes, giving the settlers a sense of security and the Palestinians, a sense of our presence."
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