The Palestinian Authority for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs said on Saturday that the Israeli occupation is killing the childhood of minor prisoners in its prisons, based on testimonies transmitted by its lawyers about the suffering of children detained in the Israeli Megiddo Prison.
The government body added – in a statement – that the minor prisoners and children detained in Megiddo prison “are resisting, with their young ages and thin bodies, the assassination of their childhood by the administration of (this) prison.”
She added that the Megiddo prison administration is unique in their treatment of them, and practices hateful punitive and retaliatory policies against them, based on beatings, torture, and daily abuse.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Authority – based on testimonies it collected – reports that 120 minors are in “a difficult and complex reality in a special section for minors (under 18 years of age), most of whom are school students, including 18 from Gaza.”
It quoted the prisoners as saying, “We live in rooms with great overcrowding. Our number in one room ranges between 9 and 14 children, and we suffer from the spread of scabies, which has appeared extensively as a result of depriving us of showers, confiscating our clothes except the ones we wear, and not allowing us to possess soap, detergents, and sterilizers.”
They added, “The infection is increasing daily, and we are deprived of medicines, treatment, and going to the clinic, knowing that there are cases among us in which the disease has reached advanced stages, and there is a real danger threatening our lives,” according to the same statement.
Health and psychological effects
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Authority quoted these minor detainees as saying, “Symptoms of the disease appear on our bodies in a way that is disturbing both health-wise and psychologically. The vast majority of us cannot sleep, due to aches, pains, and spontaneous and strong itching.”
They pointed to the spread of wounds and ulcers, and the worsening and seriousness of the disease with the rise in temperature, explaining that the child who requests treatment is beaten and insulted, and the guards enter the department and rooms to conduct counts or assault the children wearing condoms and hand gloves.
According to the same authority, child prisoners from Gaza are detained in two separate rooms, and are prevented from communicating with other children, and most of them suffer from injuries in different parts of their bodies, resulting from beatings and torture at the moment of their arrest.
She pointed out that the number of child prisoners from Gaza two months ago was 34 children, before those who had reached the age of 18 were transferred to other prisons, and only 18 of them remained in Megiddo (detention center).
The Commission expressed its concern for the lives of young prisoners in prison, calling on institutions and committees for child protection, locally and internationally, to strive seriously to stop these crimes against them, and to put an end to the occupation’s prison administration’s monopolization of them.
According to a “fact sheet” published by the organization on April 26, Israel has arrested about 630 children in the West Bank since October 7, out of about 8,875 detainees since the same date.
In conjunction with the war on Gaza, the Israeli occupation army expanded its operations in the West Bank, which led to the death of 519 Palestinians and the injury of about 5,000 others, according to official Palestinian data.
The Israeli war on Gaza left more than 118,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.
Israel continues this war, ignoring a Security Council resolution demanding that it stop the fighting immediately, and orders from the International Court of Justice demanding that it stop its attack on Rafah, and take immediate measures to prevent acts of “genocide and improve the humanitarian situation” in Gaza.
