This month, the Israeli military raided a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Beit Ummar in the middle of the night. They pulled a 13-year-old boy out of his bed and took him. His single mother Fatma, who lives with her six children in a two-room apartment, were terrorised. Fatma begged the solders to tell her why her son was being arrested and where they were taking him. They ignored her.
I have known Fatma and her children for close to 20 years. Although she lives in the West Bank, Fatma would frequently walk through my affluent West Jerusalem neighbourhood trying to sell her colourful, home-made, embroidered purses to put food on the table for her children. On school holidays, Fatma had no choice but to bring her children with her. I frequently bought the children a Coke and a cupcake and paid them to sit with me in a coffee shop so I could practice my Arabic.
Muhammad, then about seven years old, taught me the Surah Al Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Quran. As our relationship developed over the years, Muhammad told me that he and his siblings have never seen the sea, so I got permission from Fatma to take them to the beach. I have been to their home in Beit Ummar and they to mine numerous times.
So, when Fatma called me after the raid, crying that she doesn’t know where Muhammad was, I, too, was very concerned. I contacted a few lawyer friends who work with Palestinians, as well as the incredibly helpful and very important HaMoked, an Israeli-based human rights NGO that helps Palestinians. Within a few days, they found out the boy was being held in Ofer Prison, charged with throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.
Ofer is located in the West Bank, and looms large for Israelis who commute daily from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv as it abuts the motorway between them. It has a bad reputation, with reports of systematic humiliation and abuse of prisoners, beatings by guards and near-constant handcuffing. A delegation of British lawyers who visited the facilities said they saw iron shackles on Palestinian children being held there. Unexplained prisoner deaths at Ofer are not unheard of either.
Muhammad told his jailers in Ofer that he did not throw any stones. Before his official interrogation, he spoke on the phone with a lawyer, who gave him the same advice any defence attorney would: say nothing. But the boy says he was beaten by the guards right before the interrogation and was told if he does not confess, he will never see his mother again.
In Israel, this is not an idle threat. Israel possesses and uses a draconian legal tool called “administrative detention”, which can keep a person in prison for years with no trial. Given the beating, the thought of never seeing his mother again, the yelling, the cursing and the prolonged interrogation, Muhammad decided to confess to whatever they accused him of, just to stop the interrogation.
His lawyer told me that while all interrogations carried out by Israeli forces are filmed, often the threats and beatings happen before the interrogation officially begins or when the prisoner steps out to use the bathroom. This alleged modus operandi is why the Israeli military has an impressive 99 per cent conviction rate when arresting Palestinians. Needless to say, a 99 per cent conviction rate in a putatively fair court system doesn’t sound fair at all.
Fatma needed 2,200 shekels (about $650) to post bond for Muhammad. The young boy had already been in prison for five days with thousands of adult male prisoners. But Fatma is destitute (when I met her she owned neither a refrigerator nor an oven). I posted the story on my FB page and gracious people – including many Jewish Orthodox Zionists - donated $750. If convicted, the money will be used to pay any fine and if not it will go as a charitable donation to Fatma.
Muhammad told me he did not throw stones at anyone. I believe him. But I am biased. I also know that 13-year-old boys sometimes do regrettable things and then lie about it – I know I did when I was his age. But whether he is guilty is not the question. The question is the process of how a little Palestinian boy was arrested and how he was treated. How you arrest someone is just as important as why you are arresting someone.
Not telling the mother why the boy was being taken, where he was being taken to or who to call, and not allowing the boy to have a parent or lawyer present at the interrogation are all indicative of a system gone wrong. But what particularly bothered me was the timing of the arrest. Did the military have to raid the house at 2AM, causing the other children in the bed to soil their clothing from fear?
Two years ago, I was beaten up at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem by a right-wing Jewish Israeli teenager because I asked him to stop screaming “death to the Arabs”. My 17-year-old attacker, who was taller than me, punched me in the head and face, kicked me in the stomach and spat on me. The attack was caught on film and aired on the nightly news. When the police finally identified him as a resident of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, did they raid his home in the middle of the night and arrest him? No. They sent him a letter politely asking him to come in for questioning.
Over the past few years, Israeli military violence and settler violence against Palestinians has peaked. Palestinians are attacked seriously about 10 times a day by settlers and soldiers. They are shot and killed, burnt alive, their cars are burned, their houses and tents are burnt, their olive trees are destroyed, their agricultural equipment stolen or destroyed, their solar panels destroyed and their water wells filled with concrete, among other things. And the identity of the guilty soldiers and settlers who have killed innocent Palestinians are often known, yet they are not held accountable.
For years, I told my Palestinian friends that violence is not the answer to stopping violence. I would tell them that peaceful protests, writing articles, appealing to the international community and filming and documenting the military and settler violence will bring about change. I still believe in non-violence, but I am less convinced that anything they do can bring the change we need.
