640 Palestinian children detained by Israel since October

A seven-year-old Palestinian boy was detained on Eid day by Israeli occupation forces before being released hours later, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said yesterday.

“At least 640 cases of arrests among children have occurred since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza,” the rights group added.

Bahaa Kazem Haj Muhammad from the town of Al-Mughayyir was the latest victim of this brutality, having been detained on Sunday, the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid Al-Adha, it said.

The PPC said Bahaa was taken from the town centre where he was with a group of children. His detention once again exposed the repeated incursions by the occupation forces into Palestinian towns and cities in an effort to harass residents or to carry out arrest campaigns, it explained.

Bahaa’s 20-year-old brother, Ali Kazem Haj Muhammad, was detained days earlier, while the family home was vandalised by occupation forces.

There are currently 250 Palestinian minors being held in Israel’s jails; many have been abused, tortured and interrogated without a guardian or lawyer present. Some have been forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand.

READ: Israel army pushes forward in Rafah, central Gaza, fighting Palestinian Resistance