“What happened today is part of an ongoing campaign to intimidate the local population: Israeli forces harass children here in Hebron all the time”.
At approximately 7 am on April 23rd, Rami Rajabi, a six-year-old child, was 20 meters away from checkpoint 29 when he threw several pebbles in al-Khalil (Hebron). As Rami walked away towards his school, three Israeli soldiers burst out of an alleyway, grabbed his arm, and detained him in the street.
Rami burst into tears, and kept repeating for them to let him go as the Israeli Border Police Officer tightly gripped his arm and pulled him back towards checkpoint 29.
ISM activists tried to intervene, attempting to convince the soldiers to release the child. The soldiers forced him back to the checkpoint where local Palestinians implored the soldiers to release the boy.
While the ISMers were filming the incident, Israeli Border Patrol watched on as a settler from a nearby illegal settlement aggressively confronted them, calling one volunteer a “killer”, trying to grab the camera.
After approximately 20 minutes of pressure from locals and international volunteers, the child was released and was taken home by a friend of the family.
An ISM volunteer present said, “What happened today is part of an ongoing campaign to intimidate the local population: Israeli forces harass children here in Hebron all the time”.
In a report issued by UNICEF on 6th March 2013 highlighting the plight of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, they state: “the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”
Source: International Solidarity Movement