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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israel put Palestinian children in
outdoor cages during winter storm</h1>
<div class="submitted"> <span property="dc:date dc:created"
 content="2014-01-01T10:25:41+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
 rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username" xml:lang=""
 about="/users/ali-abunimah" typeof="sioc:UserAccount"
 property="foaf:name" datatype="">Ali Abunimah</span> on Wed,
01/01/2014 - 10:25<br>
<b><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-put-palestinian-children-outdoor-cages-during-winter-storm">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-put-palestinian-children-outdoor-cages-during-winter-storm</a></small></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p>Israel put Palestinian prisoners, including children, in outdoor
cages during the severe winter storm that struck the region in the
middle of last month.</p>
<p>The shocking practice was highlighted in a <a
 href="http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en/node/1951">year-end statement</a>
by the advocacy group, the <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/public-committee-against-torture-israel">Public
Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI)</a> and discussed by
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week.</p>
<p>Also detailed in <a
 href="http://index.justice.gov.il/Units/SanegoriaZiborit/News/Documents/letter_kluvim_161213.pdf">a
letter from the office of Israel’s National Public Defender</a>, the
practice had been going on for months, but has now supposedly been
halted.</p>
<p>The 16 December letter to the head of the <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israel-prison-service">Israel
Prison Service (IPS)</a> says that lawyers from the public defender’s
office had learned of the practice during an official visit to the <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ramle-prison">Ramle prison</a>
compound where Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are
often transferred from the occupied West Bank <a
 href="http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/2013/un/The%20Torture%20and%20Ill%20Treatment.pdf">in
violation of international law</a>.</p>
<h2>Iron cages</h2>
<p>During the visit by two of its lawyers “which coincided with the
fierce storm that struck the country, the attorneys met prisoners who
described a shocking picture: in the middle of the night, dozens of
prisoners were transferred to iron cages built outside the IPS facility
in Ramle,” according to a <a
 href="http://index.justice.gov.il/Units/SanegoriaZiborit/News/Pages/Kluvim.aspx">17
December statement from the public defender</a>.</p>
<p>“In these cages, which were exposed to the weather, they spent
several hours in the freezing cold and rain, until the transport
arrived to take them to court around 6am,” the statement adds.</p>
<p>The statement said that the practice had been going on for months, a
fact “verified during other official visits and not denied by IPS.”</p>
<p>The public defender launched an emergency appeal to various official
bodies, including the ministry of justice, “in order to prevent another
night of such grave harm to humanity.”</p>
<p>The statement notes that some of the prisoners in the cages were
“minors” – children.</p>
<p><em>The Jerusalem Post</em> <a
 href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/NGO-accuses-Israel-of-torturing-Palestinian-children-during-winter-storm-336685">reported</a>
on 31 December that <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/tzipi-livni">Tzipi Livni</a>,
Israel’s justice minister “immediately telephoned Public Security
Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, telling him to end the practice.”</p>
<p>The matter was also discussed Tuesday in the Israeli parliament’s
public petitions committee where, according to the <em>Post</em>, “the
Knesset committee said that the manner of arrest and detention
conditions of Palestinian children was violating Israeli law for
dealing with children.”</p>
<h2>“Alarm”</h2>
<p>PCATI’s <a href="http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en/node/1951">statement</a>
notes “with increasing alarm and condemnation Israel’s failure to
protect Palestinian children from direct and indirect torture and ill
treatment.”</p>
<p>It says it has received “dozens of complaints of torture and ill
treatment from children in the last 10 years” and is currently working
on cases “concerning children’s complaints of torture and ill treatment
at the hands of Israeli soldiers and interrogators.”</p>
<p>PCATI cites reports from numerous other groups including
Psychoactive, Military Court Watch, <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/breaking-silence">Breaking
the Silence</a>, <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/defence-children-international-palestine-section">Defence
for Children International–Palestine Section (DCI-PS)</a>, <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/btselem">B’Tselem</a> and the
public defender’s office, among others, documenting widespread and
systematic “torture and ill treatment of children which included caging
prisoners in iron cages (including children), abusive interrogations,
detentions and arrests.”</p>
<p>Last year B’Tselem reported that Palestinian children are <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-children-routinely-tortured-some-threatened-rape-israel-rights-group">systematically
subjected to torture and violence, including threats of rape</a>, by
Israeli interrogators, in order to force them to confess to
stone-throwing.</p>
<p>In 2012 alone, DCI-PS collected dozens of cases corroborating the “<a
 href="http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/report-details-ill-treatment-palestinian-children-israeli-forces">widespread
and systematic ill-treatment</a>” of Palestinian children in Israeli
detention.</p>
<p>As of October, 159 Palestinian children were imprisoned and
prosecuted in the <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-military-court-system">Israeli
military court system</a>, according to <a
 href="http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/detention-bulletin-issue-46-october-2013">the
most recent bulletin from DCI-PS</a>.</p>
<p>These included 15 children between the ages of 12 and 15.</p>
<h2>Public relations</h2>
<p>In light of the years of systematic and unrelenting abuses, the move
by Livni to end the practice of caging prisoners outdoors should be
seen as no more than a cosmetic effort to improve the image of what is
in effect a colonial court system in which an oppressor and occupier
judges, controls and persecutes natives.</p>
<p>Public discussion and acknowledgment of torture and abuse of
Palestinians has coexisted for decades in Israel with the unabated
continuation of these practices.</p>
<p>Thus it has only served to boost Israel’s image as a self-critical
“democracy” while changing nothing in reality.</p>
<h2>“Going wild”</h2>
<p>Livni herself is no friend of human rights or dignity. She has to <a
 href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/uk-rewrites-war-crimes-law-israels-request/10446">exercise
caution</a> traveling abroad for fear of arrest on suspicion of
involvement in war crimes, particularly Israel’s three-week-long
assault on Gaza five years ago which killed 1,400 Palestinians,
hundreds of them children.</p>
<p>During the massacre, as the UN-commissioned Goldstone report notes (<a
 href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf">PDF</a>),
Livni, then foreign minister, justified the attacks as necessary
retaliation.</p>
<p>Israel, she said, “is a country that when you fire on its citizens
it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.”</p>
<p>There’s little reason to believe, as the new year starts, that
Israel has any intention to stop “going wild” against Palestinian
children.</p>
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