Reply #26: kids killing kids [View All]

After signing the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the
involvement of children in armed conflict (OP-CRC -CAC) in November 2002, the
government later ended the "early admission" of conscripts and the deployment of
under-18s in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), although it continued to accept 17-year-old
volunteers.
Palestinian and Israeli NGOs working with juvenile detainees informally reported to the
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers that under-18s were recruited as informers by
Israeli intelligence agencies, but no published documentation existed. The Israeli
government continued to detain suspected members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
including juveniles under the age of 18, holding them in cells with adults in violation of
Israel’s international obligations. The youths were held under an Israeli government
policy defining Palestinians below the age of 16 in the West Bank or Gaza as minors,
while Israeli youths in the same Occupied Territories are considered minors until they
reach the age of 18.1
Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem who were suspected of an “Intifada Criminal
Offence” such as stone-throwing were often arrested at home in the middle of the night
and subjected to interrogation inappropriate to their age and physical or mental state.2
Such interrogations have reportedly included children being blindfolded, bound and
beaten.3
http://www.child-soldiers.org/regions/country.html?id=104