Israel arrested 1,000 Palestinian children since start of 2016

Israeli occupation forces have arrested 1,000 Palestinian children since the start of 2016, all of whom were either verbally or physically tortured, Felesteen newspaper reported a senior official saying yesterday.

Head of the PLO’s Prisoners and Freed Prisoners Committee Issa Qaraqe said the “escalation of arresting children is part of a clear systematic policy aiming to harm, distort and destroy children’s future.”

In a written statement, he said: “The arrest of children is protected and guaranteed by the political, legislative and judicial Israeli occupation authorities which proposed and ratified many laws and regulations targeting [Palestinian] children.”

He stressed that most of the Palestinian children were arrested from their homes after midnight, reiterating that they were arrested in “very difficult and hard measures which were used to scare them”.

The PLO official also said that “100 per cent of the arrested children” were either verbally or physically abuse from the moment of their arrest.