(from www.aljazeerah.com)
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Hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned by the Israeli army each year, according to the Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS), a non-governmental organization which monitors the detention conditions of these children and represents them in Israeli military courts.
Many of those children fall victim to "forced labor in which they must work at least eight hours a day for a few shekels," stated an article on uruknet.info.
"The prison administration has forced all prisoners in the Telmond Prison to work eight hours for very low wages," said one of the Palestinian children after his release.
"The Israeli soldiers come to the chambers at seven and force us to go with our legs tied with chains," added the child, whose job was to pack plastic spoons in boxes.
Even wounded political detainees are forced to work. "I had a broken bone but the soldiers forced me out of my cell to work anyway, without any consideration for the pain," a former prisoner said.
There are more than 375 Palestinian prisoners in the Telmond Prison, most of whom are children.
The child laborers are given only two meals per day; one at 11:00 pm and another at 6:00 am.
Israeli prison officials also try to obtain information from the children about members of the Palestinian resistance, the article states.
A total of 376 Palestinian children are currently detained in Israeli prisons and detention camps. The majority of them are under 16-years-old and are being subjected to some of the worst forms of abuses, such as physical punishment, humiliation or sexual harassment, according to the Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS).
DCI/PS and other human rights organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territories have frequently reported widespread and systematic violations of international law designed to safeguard the rights of children deprived of their freedom.
According to DCI/PS, these violations began before the outbreak of the second infitada, or uprising, in September 2000. As early as July 1999, there was documented evidence of increased violations of children's rights to due process and to adequate standards of detention.
In recent years, the organization reported a serious increase in the number of Palestinian children arrested between the ages of 13 and 14. There is also a remarkable increase in the length of sentences received by Palestinian children.
Moreover, the detention conditions have steadily deteriorated with an increased number of attacks on child detainees by Israeli prison guards.
The children are also denied the right to education and visits from family and lawyers, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Palestinian children who aren't in Israeli custody are also denied the right to education because of Israeli-imposed restrictions in the occupied territories, such as military curfews, closures of schools, and home confinement.
The Israeli army "resorted to excessive use of force, house demolitions, increasingly severe mobility restrictions and closure policies, negatively affecting the Palestinian economy and living conditions'', according to UNICIF.
As a result, ''a generation of Palestinian children is being denied its right to an education'' in violation of international law.
Israel is obliged to ensure that education is accessible to every Palestinian child, in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention governing the rules of war and the landmark UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Israel has signed both international conventions.
