‘Israel has arrested 50,000 Palestinian children since 1967’

The Prisoners’ and Freed Prisoners’ Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation revealed on Sunday that the Israeli occupation authorities have arrested more than 50,000 Palestinian children since 1967, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has reported. Almost 17,000 of those arrested were detained in the years since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

The Committee said that the head of its Studies and Documentation Department, Abdul Nasser Ferwaneh, presented a paper to the fifth EU conference in support of prisoners, which is currently taking place in Belgium. Ferwaneh’s paper was titled “Child Detention… Facts and Statistics… Effects on the Reality and Future of Palestinian Childhood”.

The detention of Palestinian children, he explained, is practised “systematically” by the Israeli authorities. This has escalated since 2000.

The annual rate of child detention, added Ferwaneh, was an average of 700 between 2000 and 2010, but this rose to 1,250 between 2011 and 2018. The PLO official, who is a former prisoner himself, thanked the organisers of the conference and called for united efforts in support of Palestinian prisoners, especially the children.

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