Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: I "terroristi" che Israele non vuole liberare

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4856.shtml
Kidnap, killings, and night raids on Israeli military army bases may
not be the most effective way of reaching out to international opinion,
but by conditioning the release of Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit on the
release of some 380 Palestinian child prisoners, the Palestinian
Popular Resistance Committees have touched on an issue which has
resonance well beyond the immediate tit-for-tat killings and
recriminations that have a tendency to dominate international media
coverage of the 'Middle East conflict.
The plight of Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli army has
long been one of the neglected aspects of Israeli occupation, involving
some 600 minors a year since the outbreak of the second Intifada in
September 2000. Nearly all are held without access to legal support
during questioning, often compelled to sign confessions in Hebrew, a
language they don't understand, while subjected to intimidation and
mistreatment as a matter of routine course. It starts with the arrest
itself, which can take place during night-time incursions or mass
arrest campaigns, or alternatively at the military checkpoints which
have played such a part in curtailing the economic and social life of
the West Bank. After a night or two behind bars, some minors are
released without charge, while the unfortunate ones, around 300 a year,
start their passage through the Israeli military justice system which
stands as the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This
system allows no special provisions for minors, despite the fact that
Israel is a signatory of numerous international treaties which demand
due consideration for age in the legal process, not least of which is
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Those considerations are,
by contrast, applied to Israeli minors, including those living cheek by
jowl with the Palestinians in illegal West Bank settlements.
Life doesn't improve on the inside, with Palestinian children routinely
reporting torture or mistreatment. In a typical recent case, Defence
for Children International (DCI) defended two 13-year olds arrested for
stone throwing near the 'separation barrier' in the South of the West
Bank. The pair, Zakariyah and Nemer, were roughly handled on arrest,
blindfolded and kicked, before being taken to a detention centre in the
illegal settlement of Gush Etzion near Hebron. There, the boys spent 16
days in a small cell with up to 17 other people, sleeping on the floor
and allowed access to the bathroom for half an hour once a day. The
remaining 23 hours and 30 minutes were spent locked in the squalid
cell, with no contact allowed with either friends or family.
At the hearing, which was presided over by a single military judge, the
prosecutor asked for 'only' a seven month custodial sentence for
stone-throwing, while the defence pushed for a non-custodial sentence.
In the end, the pair were relatively fortunate to receive 90-days
imprisonment, a 60-day suspended sentence and a fine of NIS 1,000
($230), which was upheld under appeal after the prosecutor asked for
more. The children spent the rest of the sentence in a facility with
Israeli child prisoners at Telmond prison outside Haifa. When the time
came for release, they were set free at an Israeli checkpoint outside
Tulkarem in the Northern West Bank and left to make their own way down
the length of the West Bank to their own village of Bet Awwar.
The experience of these two 13-year olds is by no means exceptional,
echoing the testimonies of other minors caught up in Israel's system of
military justice, where internationally-agreed concepts such as the
'best interests of the child,' 'proportionality' and a weighting
towards non-custodial sentences for minors are held in light regard.
The PRC's tactics may not be a legitimate way to highlight these
abuses, but that doesn't mean that the demands themselves lack merit,
not least in highlighting the systemic abuses and mistreatment that
feed into ongoing Palestinian resistance and violence. If Israel, as a
paid-up member of the international community, can hold international
humanitarian law in such light regard even for 13-year olds, what hope
that those Palestinian minors will grow up with any respect for those
same principles? And with minors representing some 53% of the
population, continued abuse of their rights sees Israel actively
cultivating a legacy of future hatred, with apparently little
willingness by the outside world to hold it to account.

 
No. I criminali che Israele libera dopo che hanno scontato la loro pena,
come testimonia benissimo l'articolo con l'esempio dei due 13enni.
-Stefano