Professional Documents
Culture Documents
To cite this article: Bella Kovner & Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2018) Children, human rights
organisations, and the law under occupation: the case of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem,
The International Journal of Human Rights, 22:5, 616-639, DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2017.1397635
Article views: 76
Introduction
Human rights organisations’ cyclical role in perpetuating and addressing human
rights breaches
Academic researchers, United Nations (UN) agencies, child protection specialists and
social development professionals have been involved increasingly in protecting human
rights and ensuring that national standards are consistent with international human
rights frameworks and protocols.1 In response to the increased global political influence
of external stakeholders such as the World Bank, international non-governmental organ-
isations (INGOs), and bilateral and UN organisations, scholars have criticised these organ-
isations as being inefficient interveners in the communities they claim to serve, failing to
protect these populations, provide aid or reduce poverty.2
Reflecting on the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, Razack concluded that the world’s wit-
nessing of Rwandans’ pain has served primarily to dehumanise further the suffering of
CONTACT Bella Kovner bella.kovner@mail.huji.ac.il Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 617
black men and women, and in the process to reinstall white westerners as morally
superior.3 The images of black bodies situated within a desolate African landscape not
only displaces the ‘narrative testimony of the Rwandans themselves but actually silence
[s] and dehumanise[s] Africans by presenting them as a mere, bare, naked, or minimal
humanity’.4 The pain and suffering of the black natives constructs western society and
its values as more civil and morally superior. Said defines ‘Orientalism’ as the west’s
basic distinction between east and west and the west’s stereotypic perception of Arab
people and their culture as exotic, backward, uncivilised and dangerous in comparison
to the United States (US) and Europe. Said’s intervention suggests that western political
economy of knowledge production about the east is a modality of Eurocentric discourse
to maintain western supremacy, and reproduce the unequal power dynamic between Eur-
opeans and their colonial subjects.5 In conjunction, scholars’ analysis of human rights
interventions with Palestinian Bedouin women in Israel engages with what is defined as
‘funding pain, an economy of international donors offering funding through the lens of
Arab/Muslim/Bedouin individualised and violent oppression, while maintaining the dom-
ination of those in power, and further reproducing it’.6 According to Fassin, the tension
between inequality and solidarity and between domination and assistance is used to
justify the common sense of superiority and ambivalence of donors and agents working
for the good of others and accounts for ‘compassion fatigue’: the wearing down of
moral sentiments and, in some extreme circumstances, even a sense of aggression
towards the victims of adversity. This power structure often explains the shame felt by
the poor – the beneficiaries of aid – and accounts for the resentment and hostility
expressed by the disadvantaged towards foreign parties.7
Weizman claims that the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s brought the idea of huma-
nitarianism into crisis. The Ethiopian zone of humanitarian management was not only the
site where relief was provided, it was the frame through which the story of the famine was
told and disseminated. The controversy surrounding the Ethiopian crisis of the 1980s
revealed the potential for abuse in humanitarianism – specifically, the fact that humani-
tarian intervention can aggravate the suffering of the people it is intended to help.8 At
the outset of the twenty-first century, governments in poor and middle-income countries
began passing laws restricting the ability of INGOs to access and use foreign aid while
operating on their sovereign territory.9 Indeed, in their longitudinal study analysing
public trust in human rights organisations in 60 countries, Ron and Crow found that
without substantial support from local human rights organisations and other civil
society actors, the international human rights toolkit of treaties, declarations, UN
audits, and NGO reports are likely to have little effect on conditions on the ground.10
Allen distinguishes conceptually between ‘human rights’ and the ‘human rights indus-
try’. In contrast to the former – the principles outlined in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR) – the human rights industry comprises the material and financial
infrastructure and institutions that function under the banner of human rights, relying on
the funding streams that this industry generates.11 Indeed, notions of what amounts to
human rights can vary; Kennedy finds many interesting analogies to human rights
ideas in various cultural traditions. However, he concludes that the particular form
these ideas are granted in the human rights movement in practice is the product of a par-
ticular moment and place: post-enlightenment, rationalist, secular, western, modern and
capitalist.12
618 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
Suggesting that human rights organisations yield little positive effect on impacting
social change, Merry claims that the spread of human rights institutions and discourses
may not actually address inequalities.13 Indeed, Jad articulates the disconnect and dis-
parity between donors’ agendas and the local lived experience of female aid beneficiaries,
noting that NGOs are seen increasingly as ‘donor-driven’ and ‘reflecting a Western
agenda’.14 Petras views NGOs as entities that undermine local democracies by taking
social programmes and public debate out of the hands of the local community and its
elected leaders, creating in its place a dependence on non-elected officials (for example,
UN officials and advisors) who are disconnected from local needs. By doing so, NGOs
foster a new type of cultural and ‘democratic’ colonialism under the guise of international
aid.15 This imposed regime is democratic according to the donors’ agenda but on the
receiving end, the local population and its leadership do not have a say in terms of the
aid they receive.
Mutua distinguishes the human rights narrative into a three-tiered construct: savage-
victim-saviour. This perceived three-dimensional structure constructed in the human
rights discourse includes the UN, western states and INGOs on the ‘savior’ side.16
Mutua interprets the human rights story as one in which the saviour is the human
rights corpus itself, with the western players as the rescuers and redeemers of a benighted
world.17 Furthermore, he claims that the human rights corpus is fundamentally Euro-
centric and suffers from interdependent flaws reflected in the triad model.
Examining the role and mandate of civil society organisations in addressing the socio-
economic needs of Bedouin women in the Nagab,18 scholars found that donor-funded
NGOs sought to engage with Bedouin communities with the goal of ‘saving’ women
from their allegedly patriarchal culture through the imposition of ‘superior’ European
values, thereby failing to acknowledge oppression in the political, historical, or economic
spheres. Studying Palestinian Bedouin women in the Nagab, Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al.
looked closely at how and who is marked out as deserving care, and what the conditions
are for intervention, protection and prevention.19 Spivak argues that an epistemological
disconnect exists between human rights advocates and those whom they seek to
protect.20 The human rights project in colonial and settler colonial contexts is regulated
by complex and exclusionary colonial rules that promote the economic advancement
and political interests of the colonisers through coercive means.21 Often, human rights
activists are regulated, used and co-opted by those whom they claim to challenge, simul-
taneously manipulated by colonising powers who insist that oppressed communities are
‘primitive’, ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, and ‘untrustworthy’.22
In an attempt to explain how the international human rights framework can be better
used to help reduce child poverty and improve child survival rates, Pemberton et al. claim
that some rights should be prioritised over others.23 Any comprehensive understanding of
the root causes of poverty cannot ignore the legal and institutional structures that create
and perpetuate income and wealth imbalances. Thus, human rights should challenge these
structures.24 To ensure that institutional structures are aligned with international conven-
tions, Van Bueren stresses that both domestic and national judiciaries should follow the
inventive and progressive approach of treaty committees that regularly report on nation
states’ adherence to the conventions.25 In the children’s rights context wherein the
intended beneficiaries are particularly vulnerable, this issue is even more pronounced.
To move the child rights discourse from the realms of rhetoric to that of tangible
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 619
reality, there is a need to prioritise the realisation of rights in policy so that action is
divided into successive stages responding to degree of severity of transgression and avail-
able resources. Civil society stakeholders should challenge the structure of global poverty
through a rights-based strategy, which is necessary to the development of not only inter-
national and national jurisprudence but to a global civil society movement.26
Research by UNICEF suggests that human rights organisations aimed to address the
needs of children are fragile even in peaceful settings, due to difficulties in translating
the vision of the child embodied in the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC)
into social and political reality; the need to navigate national governance systems while
dealing with socially sensitive issues; the low status of children’s rights on the global
agenda given the limited understanding of their practical implications; competing budget-
ary priorities; and social resistance based on concerns that principles are irrelevant or
inappropriate.27 In conflict-ridden zones, these weaknesses tend to become significant
obstacles to the objective of safeguarding children’s rights. Linnarsson and Sedletzki
found that international legal protection of children affected by armed conflict remains
largely ineffective, and the gravest children’s rights violations are often left untouched
or addressed only following resolution of the conflict.28 Overall, national conflict compli-
cates the work of children’s rights organisations as it disproportionally affects children,
disrupts the functioning of services, and makes it more difficult to ensure that children
are being served.
another to resonate with the new location. These are the in between people that are con-
versant with both sides of the exchange but can move across borders of ideas and
approaches. This is the role of power and vulnerability.33
Referring to the human rights sector as a parallel system that has the ability to both
undermine local governance and civil society and to create dependency on foreign aid,
Allen further remarks that the influx of the human rights industry in the Occupied Pales-
tinian Territories (OPT), a phenomenon that was encouraged by the infusion of donor
funds, has led to the professionalisation of human rights work but has not resulted in
the improvement of most Palestinians’ political and social circumstances.34 Detailed
legal analyses by human rights researchers have also revealed the contradiction between
the ideology of rights espoused by the international community and the inability (or
unwillingness) of those same states to hold Israel accountable for its abuses.35 Thus,
Allen suggests that despite its dominance, the human rights system has the tendency to
promote social justice only when it is understood in explicitly political terms and motiv-
ated by political goals.36
Methodology
To assess the state’s treatment of arrested Palestinian children in OEJ and examine the
role, mandate, and effectiveness of civil society organisations and the Israeli judicial
system in safeguarding their rights, we conducted a broader study involving a series of
interviews with children and their families.61 For this article, we engaged in further
research from March 2015 to May 2016 to study and analyse the encounters of Palestinian
child residents of OEJ with the Israeli legal system, incorporating four methodologies: (a)
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 623
Interviewing 14 key informants representing the judicial and welfare systems, as well as
Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organisations. Interviewees include
two Public Defence officers, the Head of Investigations at the State Attorney’s Office,
one parole officer, the special assistant to the Mayor of Jerusalem for OEJ, and seven repre-
sentatives of human rights organisations. These professionals were chosen to represent a
range of both official state and civil society stakeholders. The in-depth interviews were
semi-structured, open-ended and taped. Most spanned one to two hours in length and
focused on the respondent’s professional perspective of the situation of child arrests in
OEJ, as well as on civil society’s role in safeguarding children’s rights within the unique
context of OEJ. The interviewees’ selection was based on snow-ball sampling which
aimed to include stakeholders representing both the formal and informal sectors that
handle child arrests in OEJ; (b) Reviewing both Israeli and Palestinian media coverage
on child arrests in OEJ for the years 2014–2016. For this purpose, we reviewed the Pales-
tinian online English website ‘Electronic Intifada’, which brings the perspectives of chil-
dren and parents, while juxtaposing these with newspapers and human rights reports
representing the Palestinian political scene in relation to child arrests in OEJ; we also
included the Israeli online English newspaper Haaretz, which covers Israeli official and
civil society reports, while juxtaposing these with interviews with Israeli judicial and
law enforcement officials, representing the Israeli political scene in relation to child
arrests in OEJ. The rationale for choosing the e-magazine and leftist newspaper is based
on the authors’ assumption that these sources provide both comprehensive and
updated coverage of the events and legislative changes concerning child arrests in OEJ.
The media coverage provided through these sources reflects both formal and informal
voices representing both the Palestinian and the Israeli stakeholders, as well as a thorough
documentation of each specific event and legislative decision. This methodology is limited
in its representation of only online English publications. Moreover, both Haaretz and
Electronic Intifada do not necessarily reflect the mainstream political attitudes and
public opinions. However, we selected to include these two channels as they voice a
range of approaches, opinions, and publications; (c) Conducting both a roundtable and
focus group discussions held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during 2015–2016.
The focus group comprised individuals who specialise in youth delinquency, juvenile
justice, and children’s rights, and included a member of the Child Rights Legal Clinic at
the Hebrew University and professors from the faculties of law and social work at the uni-
versity.62 The selection of participants was based on their research interest and expertise
surrounding various aspects concerning youth delinquency and juvenile justice. The focus
group discussion explored avenues to address the escalation of violence against youth in
OEJ. The roundtable included four lawyers from the Public Defence Office in the Jerusa-
lem District, the Head of Arrest Teams from the Jerusalem State Attorney’s Office, the
Special Advisor to the Mayor on East Jerusalem, members of Israeli NGOs ACRI and
the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a lawyer from the Socioeconomic Legal
Clinic at the Hebrew University, a lawyer from the Child Rights Legal Clinic at the
Hebrew University, and faculty members from the Hebrew University who specialise in
youth delinquency.63 The rationale for selecting these roundtable participants was to
include representatives of both formal and informal organisations which handle different
aspects of child arrests in OEJ; and (d) Conducting participatory observation in a Knesset
624 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
Results
Discriminatory treatment of children in Occupied East Jerusalem
Despite the protections offered by the law, our findings point to the fact that violations of
children’s rights seem to be the norm in the encounters between Israeli law enforcement
agencies and child residents of OEJ. The professionals participating in this study, as well as
both Israeli and Palestinian media outlets, express this reality quite clearly.
Media representations
Both Israeli and Palestinian media present and discuss the escalation in violence against
children. The reports describe cases of extreme abuse and violations of child rights by
the Israeli authorities in conducting arrests, house demolitions, searches, pre-trial deten-
tion, interrogations, and other intrusive practices. The following blog entries on Electronic
Intifada, for example, provide graphic stories of child arrests and mistreatment:
[An] Instagram user … captured these dramatic images and voices of heavily armed Israeli
forces arresting a Palestinian girl in Eastern Occupied Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday after-
noon … there were about 8 soldiers (as I counted) surrounding this girl and handcuffing her,
she was quiet but her eyes showed fear, she seemed bewildered and was offering no resistance.
It all seemed surreal to see all these soldiers armed to the teeth overwhelming this child and
the soldiers were behaving as if they had caught a dangerous criminal. The soldiers did not
want people around, especially as they had their phone cameras out, and started pushing
them away. Despite being handcuffed and completely restrained, two soldiers were
holding her arms each. She was wearing a sweater saying ‘I <3 Palestine’. I tried asking
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 625
what was happening and I couldn’t get anything concrete from people there, most were
passers-by and they were as surprised as I was by what they were seeing. More soldiers
started coming after about 10 minutes until they were 15 in total, all surrounding the girl,
they formed a corridor and rushed her out of the Old City to a police car.64
Another blog entry demonstrates the threats and terror used to elicit confessions from
child suspects, as well as the violations of due process (as verified and explained below
by the child rights lawyers participating in this study):
An Israeli interrogator allegedly forced a Palestinian child to sign a confession after threaten-
ing him with sexual violence, according to a signed affidavit collected by Defense for Children
International – Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine) … Othman S., 14, was arrested by Israeli
forces in Occupied East Jerusalem on the morning of 25 November 2013. Along with his
brother, he was taken to the Russian Compound, an Israeli interrogation center in Jerusalem.
During the interrogation, an intelligence officer accused him of throwing a stone and then a
Molotov cocktail at a police car and, when Othman would not confess, the officer threatened
to sodomise him. ‘[The interrogator] then brought a broomstick, about 1.5 meters (6 feet)
long, from one of the corners and threatened to shove it up my bottom’, Othman said,
adding that the interrogator said to him: ‘You want me to shove this stick up your ass so
you’ll feel pain and tell me the truth?’ The interrogator also insulted Othman’s mother
and sister and warned him that he would ‘demolish my home if I did not talk’, he said.
The boy was subsequently forced to sign a prepared confession in Hebrew, a language that
he does not understand.65
Discussing the harsh conditions of house arrests and their impact on children and their
families, another blogger reports:
Said Mufid Abu Ghannam, the father of two children ages eight and nine claims; ‘The border
policy do not bring security to Al Tur [neighbourhood], they bring terrorism against small
children’. Apart from the strict conditions imposed on children and their families, children
under house arrest face almost daily raids by the Israeli police.66
Palestinian social worker Dalal Ali-Oweis describes one particular case of a house arrest,
and then argues that the impact of house arrest on children and their families has not been
studied adequately:
Abir Abu Shahwan, the mother of Nour Abu Shahwan, 14 years of age, who has been in
house arrest since November 2015 claims ‘The Police break into our house regularly. They
come after midnight to confirm that my son hasn’t violated the house arrest’. The mother
of Fadi Shaludi claims He [Fadi] fears going downstairs, let alone to the corner shop next
to his home … he is utterly devastated … this house arrest has completely changed him.
He is nervous and angry all the time … he bangs his head against the wall in frustration.
He used to have a strong and daring character, but his voice is barely audible now and he
can hardly string sentences together … House arrests shifted the battlefield from the
courts and prisons to our own homes … they transform the house into a prison, the
mother into a prison guard who ensures her son does not violate the conditions of his
house arrest. This provokes endless divisions and conflicts among the one family.67
The Israeli media also describes the harsh reality surrounding East Jerusalemite children
and the escalation in violence used against children. Other articles reflect on questionable
cases of youth arrests:
Jerusalem police detectives on Sunday arrested four local Palestinian youths on suspicion of
burning and looting a gas station in a demonstration a week ago. The September 7 attack on
626 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
the Menta station in French Hill, a Jewish neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, followed the
police shooting and death of Mohammed Sunuqrut during a stone-throwing protest.
Police said they shot Sunuqrut, 16, in the leg and he died from hitting his head on the pave-
ment after falling, but Israeli and Palestinian sources say the boy’s autopsy … showed that he
died from a bullet to the head. His family say photographs from the scene show Sunuqrut was
not throwing stones at time he was shot.68
Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass explains the complexity of OEJ as experienced in chil-
dren’s encounters with the Israeli law enforcement system as follows:
Nasser Kos recalls a 12-year-old boy who returned from school to find his home demolished.
‘He cried “revenge” so the whole world would hear him and then he went to throw a
firebomb,’ Kos says. ‘Today he is 18 and still in jail.’69
In contrast to PA enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza, there is no buffer between the
youths and the Israeli occupation and there is no place in which it is possible to pretend
the occupation doesn’t exist. There are no PA security forces preventing Palestinian youth
from confronting the Israeli police as there is in Bethlehem and Nablus.
The reports from both Palestinian and Israeli media shed light on the disparities between
the legal framework and the current practices as manifested by the law enforcement
agents. Both the Israeli and Palestinian media outlets reveal the failure of the Israeli crim-
inal justice personnel to abide by Israeli law and the unwillingness to apply regulations and
codes of conduct properly.
A.C. from the NGO the Human Rights Defenders Fund added: ‘There are many more
arrests and suspicions regarding stone throwing than the acts themselves. In some
cases, no direct connection exists between the arrest and the act for which the child
was arrested.’ Adv. N.A. from ACRI claimed that current law enforcement practices
involve a more thorough usage of the exception as the norm, meaning that the age of
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 627
the accused is increasingly young and that children who are arrested do not benefit from
the presumption of innocence, but rather are imprisoned without a fair trial. She states,
Amendment 14 in the Youth Law should reflect the CRC. In reality, the police contradict and
negate the law. Through the present, we have been continuously stipulating that the usage of
the exceptions as the norm completely contradicts basic children’s rights.
Experts in the field of children’s rights affirm the vast inconsistencies between the law and
practice in East Jerusalemite children’s access to the juvenile justice system. Adv. T.S. from
the Children’s Rights Clinic at the Hebrew University claimed,
It is clear that discrimination exists, that Palestinian children are treated differently than
Jewish children. Current legislation, specifically the Youth Law, is sufficient; but its
implementation is lacking. Overall, there is a gap in the implementation of the law
between East and West Jerusalem.
A.C. from the Human Rights Defenders Fund affirmed this notion, saying that ‘the Israeli
Youth Law is very advanced and touches upon most issues related to juvenile justice. The
problem is the lack of application of the law by law enforcement officials and judicial
system alike.’ L.M., an advocate who represents cases of Palestinian children who are
arrested for stone throwing, further asserted that ‘the major issue in East Jerusalem is
the gap between reality and rhetoric’. A.E., an advocate from B’Tselem, added that
‘while the law should apply similarly in both sides of the city, in the case of East Jerusalem,
it is often manipulated by the law enforcement and justice authorities’.
K.A. and D.S., public defence lawyers from the Jerusalem District, state that the courts
presently convict all cases of stone throwing with a punishment of either imprisonment or
community service. Furthermore, the district court handles all such files, reflecting the
exaggerated severity of the offence in the eyes of Israeli officials:
The district court is called upon when the state seeks imprisonment. The judges in district
courts, despite the age of the accused, do not place emphasis on their rehabilitation, but
only on punishment. Even in cases involving youth without a criminal record, where the
Parole Officer recommends the accused’s release, the court’s decision will contradict the
recommendation.
This criticism seems to be supported by the statements of Adv. A.M. from ACRI: ‘No child
is arrested for stone throwing and released before serving a period of at least six months of
imprisonment. This is also the case when a stone is thrown without malicious intention to
hurt another human being.’
Indeed, some of the participating experts at the roundtable discussion stressed the
criminal justice system’s tendency to use punitive measures instead of a rehabilitative
approach when handling East Jerusalemite children. Prof. Mona Khoury Kassabri noted
that severe punishment in cases pertaining to youth has been proven to be an ineffective
method, both in Israel and abroad. Referring to economic sanctions of parents, she
claimed that parents are generally not aware of the child’s behaviour unless the child
has already been arrested and detained. ‘In such cases, families, even those who are impo-
verished, will allocate funds for alternatives to detention. If we impose economic sanctions
on parents, the youth’s situation will worsen.’ In discussing the approach applied by the
police handling arrested children in OEJ, Prof. Badi Hasisi added:
628 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
In times of crisis, such as the present, a need exists for accountability within the criminal
justice system. Currently, the police’s ability to monitor arrest practices is limited, and
there is no way to control police officers who handle children.
Prof. Hasisi’s statement is supported by the preliminary interviews with children and
families, which demonstrate that the East Jerusalemite Palestinian community distrusts
the Israeli justice system.
In discussing alternatives to detention, Adv. A.M. from ACRI noted that the govern-
ment decided that there should not be alternatives to arrest in OEJ and that all arrested
children should remain in pre-trial detention. She rightly affirmed, ‘this completely con-
tradicts the mandate and purpose of the Youth Law’. Currently, there are more children in
custody and awaiting plea-bargains than in appropriate legal proceedings. In addition, the
courts are unable to handle the overflow of cases involving children. Given the massive
numbers of Palestinian children in Israeli detention, the timeframe for setting up a trial
hearing is unnecessarily long. Whereas in previous years the child could see a judge
once every month or every six weeks for a proof discussion, judges’ schedules have
become overcrowded, and discussions concerning children’s cases are held approximately
once every three months following the arrest. This situation leads parents and children to
sign a plea deal simply to end the arduous process. Adv. T.S. claimed that among the many
violations of child rights is the scarcity of the use of home arrest as an alternative to impri-
sonment. The state rationalises the lack of home arrests on grounds of its inability to use
electronic handcuffs due to the lack of phone infrastructure in OEJ. Yet the limitation of
such an alternative results in high conviction and detention rates. Overall, our discussions
with the various practitioners involved reveals that a major pillar of the Youth Law, reha-
bilitation, is yet to be put into practice in regard to Palestinian children from OEJ. Pro-
fessionals explained that alternatives to imprisonment are rarely implemented, as in
most cases the state’s intent is to enforce its power over Palestinian minors.
Another common complaint by the professionals involved in the study relates to the
broader treatment of minors from OEJ as if they were adults and the denial of the
special channels the law provides for when dealing with child defendants. The Israeli
Youth Law, Section 34f of the Penal Code 1977 upholds that no person is ‘criminally
responsible for acts committed before the age of twelve years’ (Israeli Penal Code,
1977). Yet, as noted in the roundtable discussion, children are being arrested at a young
age. D.S. from the Public Defender’s Office stated:
A minor under the age of 12 should be referred to the welfare system. In most cases, the
police refer the cases to the Public Defence and there is nothing we can do to help, as
these cases are not under our jurisdiction.
Furthermore, The Youth Law determines that in order to create a child-friendly environ-
ment, all cases should be handled by the Magistrate Court and by a judge who specialises
in Youth Law; yet the professionals involved noted that this ideal is rarely realised in
relation to cases from OEJ.
Moreover, the discrimination against child defendants from OEJ is apparent even in the
police’s internal complaints and review process. Further complicating matters, Palesti-
nians’ lack of trust in the due process of the state results in families refraining from fight-
ing for their children’s rights, considering it to be a lost battle. K.A. and D.S. from the
Jerusalem Public Defender’s Office noted that Palestinian families from OEJ regularly
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 629
Notably, in contrast to this child-centred approach, E.P., the Head of Investigations at the
State Attorney’s Office, claims that the point of departure for the justice and law enforce-
ment systems is the rule of law. ‘These systems attempt to guard the rights of suspects and
630 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
those who are found guilty. At the end of the day, there is a reality of severe delinquent
behaviour of a huge magnitude.’ Such statements reveal the contradictory discourses
among various players: one centres around the goals of law enforcement, and the other
focuses on the child’s best interest. The current situation in OEJ can be summarised by
the words of P.L., Advisor to the Jerusalem Mayor for East Jerusalem Affairs:
When a child in West Jerusalem encounters a police officer, he thinks of how he can help
him to cross the street. When a child in East Jerusalem encounters a police officer,
the immediate response is fear and the expectation that he will be targeted rather than
protected.
Indeed, human rights NGOs often comprise news sources for media outlets reporting on
the issue – as demonstrated by the following example from Electronic Intifada:
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 631
The human rights group B’Tselem reported last year that Israeli occupation forces fre-
quently accuse Palestinian youths and children of violent attacks and then subject them
to abuse and torture, including solitary confinement and threats of rape in order to get
them to confess.72
Electronic Intifada also reported that in a response to a six-month sentence given without
charge or trial to a 17-year-old resident of OEJ, Amnesty International demanded his
immediate release, in the following blog entry:
At present al-Hashlamoun is one of two minors in administrative detention by Israel, which
rights groups say amounts to arbitrary detention under international human rights law and
violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Four other children were released in
January; Amnesty reports that Israeli forces took Muhammad al-Hashlamoun from his home
in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amoud in the early morning hours
of 3 December … Muhammad was reportedly beaten during his arrest … According to tes-
timonies collected by human rights groups, Palestinian minors routinely face physical and
emotional abuse while in Israeli custody in order to force confessions or extract
information.73
The Israeli media likewise describes some actions undertaken by ACRI and the Palestinian
Ambassador to the UN as a response to the escalating violence used against children in
OEJ:
Zakariya Julani, a 13 year old boy from the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, lost his eye –
apparently from a sponge-tipped rubber bullet fired last Tuesday by a female Border Police
officer. Julani’s family and friends said there were no disturbances or rock throwing in the
area before the firing … Researchers from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel raised
the possibility that Julani was hit by a black sponge bullet of the type introduced into
regular use over the past year by Jerusalem police, and is harder and considered more danger-
ous than the previously used blue sponge bullet.74
Another case documented by Haaretz follows the proceedings of and response to the
arrest and detention of a 9-year-old boy:
Police arrested and detained a 9-year-old boy from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem on Tuesday,
without allowing his parents to meet with him. Part of the time the child was held in a squad
car, and during questioning he was asked if he wanted to be a martyr.75
The Palestinian Authority has complained to the United Nations Security Council after a 9-
year-old boy from East Jerusalem was illegally detained by police last week. The minor was
held for eight hours after the police said he had thrown rocks at a bus. The boy, A.Z., was
detained along with his 12-year-old brother … The Palestinian ambassador to the UN,
Riyad Mansour, sent a letter to the president of the Security Council last Friday, complaining
of Israel’s handling of Palestinian children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mansour
claimed that A.Z. was questioned for hours without his parents being informed, and
without receiving food or water … The ‘arbitrary arrest’ of a child under 12 is illegal and
Israel has violated the international standard in doing so, as well as its own law, wrote
Mansour. He also listed a number of other incidents in which he claimed Israel had allegedly
harmed Palestinian children and youth, and called on the international community to inter-
vene in providing help and protection.76
G.P, UNICEF’s child protection specialist, stressed the existence of competition between
the NGOs working on the issue of child arrests in East Jerusalem. This competition dis-
courages collaboration and prevents these agencies from building on each other’s
632 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
efforts and strengths. A.C. from the Human Rights Defenders Fund noted that public
interest in OEJ child cases both within Israel and abroad is limited. She considers it to
be human rights organisations’ role to create awareness regarding the rights of Palestinian
minors. Israeli human rights organisations that work with Palestinians suffer from the
challenge of gaining trust among the Palestinian public. Distrust is also manifested in
the form of unwillingness to cooperate with both formal and informal organisations
(including public defence, the PID, and academic legal clinics) that represent Israeli
civil society and legal and law enforcement systems. L.M., an advocate who represents
Palestinian children arrested for stone throwing, asserted with some cynicism that
INGOs are not genuinely interested in what is actually happening on the ground or in
safeguarding children’s rights. Rather, he claimed, ‘they are only interested in promptly
submitting their monthly reports’. According to D.S. from the Public Defender’s Office,
since the recent upsurge in violence, 95% of the cases of child arrests in OEJ are being
defended and contested by NGOs. Palestinian residents have lost their confidence in
the Israeli judicial system and, as a result, have increased their reliance on NGOs.
Lawyers paid by the NGOs represent the children en masse with no consideration for
the unique characteristics of each individual case. Furthermore, N.K., an advocate from
the Palestinian NGO Addameer noted that no coordination and partnership exists
between the NGOs, the international entities, and the Israeli institutions, thus limiting
the utility of NGOs’ work. A.C. from the Human Rights Defenders Fund further directed
her criticism towards Palestinian NGOs: ‘Palestinian NGOs are highly politicised, as they
would prefer their actions to have a political nature rather than focus on the rights of indi-
vidual children.’
The evidence gathered through the interviews, focus groups, roundtable discussion and
both Palestinian and Israeli media seem to imply that the emergence of human rights
organisations involved in the rights of OEJ children is causing an epistemic shift.
Working within the mechanism of the occupier’s oppressive rule of law, the human
rights organisations, which represent the human rights industry, are using the grammar
that feeds into the judicial culture and rule of law of the state. Hence, some doubt
remains regarding the utility of the interventions and actions performed by the human
rights organisations for the arrested children. Articles in the Palestinian media written
from the perspectives of parents and children reveal that while human rights organisations
express extreme criticism towards Israeli’s alleged security claims and treatment of chil-
dren, the reality on the ground is that their actions do not improve the implicated individ-
ual child’s situation and well-being. Indeed, it seems that these organisations use their
mandate not to challenge the inherent injustice embedded within the Israeli system, but
rather to ‘help’, ‘represent’, and ‘protect’ children. Therefore, it is crucial to unravel the
political nature of the specific context of OEJ and how it disrupts, complicates, and
requires a new analysis concerning the role and effectiveness of such humanitarian inter-
ventions that function within the discriminatory Israeli system.
Conclusion
In her speech at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg,
Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, endorsed the
legal obligation that human rights conventions place upon states, noting that ‘a human
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 633
rights approach adds value because it provides a normative framework of obligations that
has the legal power to render governments accountable’.77 Our findings and correspond-
ing analysis show an escalation in violence used against Palestinian children in OEJ. The
current usage of exceptions as the norm completely contradicts basic children’s rights as
framed within the human rights conventions. Those stakeholders that are responsible for
keeping the government accountable to adhere with the current child rights discourse,
including the CRC and other binding international and national frameworks and insti-
tutions, have been either sucked into the mainstream system, and their regimes of dispos-
sessions, are failing to challenge the current systems and institutional practices to enforce
accountability, or are accomplices to maintaining the hegemonic matrix of power.
The underlying process of colonisation, the elimination and replacement of Jerusalem’s
Palestinian population, is justified and enabled by the criminalisation of the Palestinian
children in the Israeli state’s security discourse, which marks these children as terrorist
others.78 Indeed, the Israeli state’s law enforcement system constructs each Palestinian
child as a potential terrorist.79 As such, each Palestinian child is said to embody violence.
Thus, these children are positioned in times, spaces, and conditions of insecurity and
aggression, stripped of their humanity and evicted to zones of death.80 Our evidence
shows that instead of challenging the existing structures, both the formal judicial
system and the human rights organisations active in OEJ are co-opted by the state and
ultimately function within these discriminatory security frameworks and discourses.
Our examination revealed that child arrest in conditions of continuous political vio-
lence and colonial dispossession rendered legislation, law enforcement personnel, criminal
proceedings, and even children’s rights defenders as entities controlled by the state’s ideol-
ogies. In this context, the applicability of child-centred laws to protect, prevent and inter-
vene when children’s rights are violated are curtailed, and state officials manoeuvre these
laws when handling Palestinian children in OEJ. The state uses ‘securitised’ claims to
justify a discriminatory ideology, violate children’s rights, and increase their suffering.
Such ‘security theology’81 maintains a continuous and systematic status quo in which
Palestinian children and their families mistrust both their defenders at human rights
agencies (as representatives of local and international civil society) and the formal stake-
holders involved in administering ‘justice’: welfare practitioners, judges, public defence
lawyers, and police officers. Indeed, Palestinians in OEJ perceive most parties involved
to be participating in a self-perpetuating cycle that accepts and turns violent exceptions
used against children into norms.
Overall, both the informal and formal stakeholders fail in addressing the needs of the
child, as children’s rights are connected to the Israeli legal system that is inherently discri-
minatory and ideologically embedded in an exclusionary and eliminatory regime of
control. The analysis that we propose in this article leads to questioning the utility and
meanings of the children’s rights narrative, and its politics of care in a settler-colonial
context. Instead of challenging the systems that are embedded within the settler-colonial
setting, the human rights organisations reinforce the existing status quo and the state’s
control by operating within its system and according to its rules. In so doing, these entities
help the state in keeping Palestinian children in a state of suffering within their otherised
spaces.
Moreover, human rights organisations should be criticised from another perspective,
based on our findings in this study. Civil society and human rights stakeholders are fed
634 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
and legitimised by the same governmental structures that they are meant to criticise.
Referring back to the analysis of the west’s response to the Rwandan genocide – which
amounts to ‘stealing the pain of others’82 – as well as to the finding that for many
Bedouin women, sourcing funding to improve their lives failed to look beyond donor
desires and the state’s ideological underpinning and neglect,83 we claim that keeping
OEJ children in conditions of suffering reinforces the survivability, mandate, and justifica-
tion for the continuous operation of local and international human rights organisations in
the area and provide another technology of exclusion and dispossession.
The intricate, contradictory, and dehumanising logics inherent in the various interven-
tions in child arrest suggest that violence against children is more than a legal issue; it is a
health, social and psychological issue that must be prioritised. Despite the influx of Israeli,
Palestinian, and international human rights organisations specialising in health, edu-
cation, child protection, juvenile justice and rule of law, which operate to ‘safeguard’ chil-
dren in OEJ, the Israeli juvenile justice system continues to treat East Jerusalemite children
in an increasingly exclusionary manner. The Israeli state brutally contradicts the spirit of
the CRC and other national and international children’s rights agendas through legislation
facilitating long-term detention of Palestinian youth, lack of implementation of the Youth
Law, a focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation, and violent treatment of children.
The mandate and corresponding strategy of children’s rights organisations is to ensure
that Israel upholds its responsibilities and duties in protecting children and their rights
according to the CRC’s framework. Considering the unique status of OEJ, we question
the effectiveness of these representatives in fulfilling their mandate and their ability to
be held accountable to their mission. Follow-up research focused on operative suggestions
for improving the impact and effectiveness of human rights organisations operating in
OEJ will be important for supporting a more responsive and meaningful civil society.
We argue that the performance of civil society organisations and human right defen-
ders must be re-examined. Their intervention apparatus raises critical questions not
only in relation to their ability to care for and protect children from state criminalities,
but also their role in maintaining the state’s abusive power. The complicit nature of
their interventions, their inability to challenge existing laws and regulations, and challenge
the ‘trail of justice’, and the injustices that strip children of their right to safety and secur-
ity, further children’s suffering and pain.
Rather than examining how various actors used the existing system to care for children,
this study focused on the nature, logic, and modalities of power inherent in human right
and legal interventions. The congenital complex condition in OEJ, and the marking of
children’s bodies as unwanted, non-human others, must be the focus of intervention.
Failing to attend to the state’s machinery of dispossession, and the state’s targeting of chil-
dren, situates children at the limits of justice, and allows the state to further perpetuate its
oppression. Policymakers, judicial, law enforcement and civil society stakeholders must re-
examine their mandate, role and responsibilities in addressing the needs of East Jerusale-
mite children throughout and following the different stages of their encounters with the
Israeli juvenile justice system. Failing to counter Israel’s logics of control and its use of
Palestinian children and childhood to further its militarised occupation, divests Israel of
any responsibility, curtails legal activism, and ultimately turns children’s rights defenders
into tools in the hands of the colonial state.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 635
Notes
1. Peggy Levitt and Sally Merry, ‘Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global
Women’s Rights in Peru, China, India and the United States’, Global Networks 9, no. 4
(2009): 441–61; UNICEF Office of Research, Championing Children’s Rights: A Global
Study of Independent Human Rights Institutions for Children – Summary Report, Office of
Research (Florence: UNICEF, 2012); Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humani-
tarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza (London, New York: Verso, 2011).
2. For example, Sherene Razack, ‘Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Huma-
nitarian Responses’, Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 29, no. 4 (2007):
375–94; Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better
Way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009); Didier Fassin, Humanitarian
Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2012); Lori Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in
Occupied Palestine (Stanford, CA: Press Stanford, 2013).
3. For example, Razack, ‘Stealing the Pain of Others’.
4. Ibid.
5. Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1978).
6. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al., ‘Funding Pain: Bedouin Women and Political Economy
in the Naqab/Negev’, Feminist Economics 20, no. 4 (2014): 1–22.
7. Fassin, Humanitarian Reason.
8. Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils.
9. Sarah E. Mendelson, ‘Dark Days for Civil Society: What’s Going Wrong – And How Data
Can Help’, Foreign Affairs, March 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-03-
11/dark-days-civil-society (accessed 2 October 2015); Thomas Carothers and Saskia Bre-
chenmacher, Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014); Darin Christensen and Jeremy
M. Weinstein, ‘Defunding Dissent: Restrictions on Aid to NGOs’, Journal of Democracy
24, no. 2 (2013): 77–91; Kendra E. Dupuy, James Ron, and Aseem Prakash, ‘Who Survived?
Ethiopia’s Regulatory Crackdown on Foreign-Funded NGOs’, Review of International Politi-
cal Economy 22, no. 2 (2015): 419–56; Jude Howell et al., ‘The Backlash Against Civil Society
in the Wake of the Long War on Terror’, Development in Practice 18, no. 1 (2012): 82–93;
Maina Kiai, ‘In Kenya, Averting a Move to Strangle Civil Society with the Financial
Noose’, openDemocracy, December 2013, www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/
maina-kiai/in-kenya-averting-move-to-strangle-civil- society-with-financial-noose (accessed
16 November 2015); Douglas Rutzen, ‘Aid Barriers and the Rise of Philanthropic Protection-
ism’, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law 17, no. 1 (2015): 5–44.
10. James Ron and David Crow, ‘Who Trusts Local Human Rights Organizations? Evidence
from Three World Regions’, Human Rights Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2015): 188–239.
11. Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights; see also M. Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia: An
Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); W.H. Sewell,
‘Historical Events as Transformation of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille’,
Theory and Society 25, no. 6 (1996): 841–81.
12. David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Prin-
ceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
13. Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into
Local Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
14. Islah Jad, ‘NGOs: Between Buzzards and Social Movements’, Development in Practice 17, no.
4–5 (2007): 622–9.
15. James Petras, ‘NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 29, no. 4
(2007): 429–40.
16. Makau Mutua, ‘Savages, Victims and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights’, Harvard
International Law Journal 42, no. 1 (2001): 201–9.
636 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
17. Ibid.
18. The Nagab is a desert and semi-desert region of southern Israel.
19. Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al., ‘Funding Pain’.
20. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Righting Wrongs’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 2/3
(2004): 523–81.
21. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Birthing in Occupied East Jerusalem: Palestinian Women’s
Experience of Pregnancy and Delivery (Jerusalem: YWCA, 2012).
22. Ibid.
23. Simon Pemberton et al., ‘Child Rights and Child Poverty: Can the International Framework
of Children’s Rights Be Used to Improve Child Survival Rates?’, PLoS Med 4, no. 10 (2007):
1567–70, doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040307
24. Ibid.
25. Geraldine Van Bueren, ‘Combating Child Poverty – Human Rights Approaches’, Human
Rights Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1999): 680–706.
26. Pembertonet al., ‘Child Rights and Child Poverty’.
27. UNICEF Office of Research, Championing Children’s Rights.
28. A. Ann Linnarsson and Vanessa Sedletzki, ‘Independent Human Rights Institutions for Chil-
dren: An Actor for the Protection of Children’s Rights during Armed Conflict?’, Human
Rights Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2014): 447–72.
29. Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights.
30. Ibid.
31. Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005).
32. Zvika Orr and Daphna Golan, ‘Translating Human Rights of the “Enemy”: The Case of Israeli
NGOs Defending Palestinian Rights’, Law and Society Review 46, no. 4 (2012): 781–814.
33. Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence; Levitt and Merry, ‘Vernacularization on the
Ground’.
34. Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Guido Veronese et al., ‘“We Must Cooperate with One Another Against the Enemy”: Agency
and Activism in School-aged Children as Protective Factors Against Ongoing War Trauma
and Political Violence in the Gaza Strip’, Child Abuse and Neglect 70 (2017): 364–76, doi:10.
1016/j.chiabu.2017.06.027.
38. Guido Veronese, Alessandro Pepe, and Marco Castiglioni, ‘Fundamentalism in the Mental
Health System-Children Agency and Activism in the Shadow of PTSD Industry: A Palesti-
nian Case Study’, Countering Radicalisation and Violent Extremism Among Youth to
Prevent Terrorism (2015): 220–30.
39. Asher Ben-Arieh, Mona Khoury-Kassabri, and Muhammad Haj-Yahia, ‘Generational,
Ethnic and National Differences in Attitudes Toward the Rights of Children in Israel and
Palestine’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 76, no. 3 (2006): 381–8.
40. Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), ‘East Jerusalem – By the Numbers’, http://www.
acri.org.il/en/2013/05/07/ej-figures/ (accessed 15 July 2015).
41. Bella Kovner and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Children’s Rights, State Criminality and
Settler Colonialism: Violence and Child Arrest in Occupied East Jerusalem’, State Crime
Journal 5, no. 1 (2016): 109–38.
42. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), ‘Children in Israeli Military Detention: Obser-
vations and Recommendations’, http://www.unicef.org/oPt/UNICEF_oPt_Children_in_
Israeli_Military_Detention_Observations_and_Recommendations_-_6_March_2013.pdf
(accessed 15 July 2015).
43. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – Occupied Palestinian
Territory (UNOCHA OPT), ‘East Jerusalem: Key Humanitarian Concerns’, https://www.
ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_Jerusalem_FactSheet_August2014_english.pdf
(accessed 15 July 2015).
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 637
44. B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,
‘Statistics on Demolition of Houses Built without Permits in East Jerusalem’, http://www.
btselem.org/planning_and_building/east_jerusalem_statistics (accessed 5 September 2015).
45. Ibid.
46. Emily Schaeffer, Jeff Halper, and Itay Epshtain, ‘Israel’s Policy of Demolishing Palestinian
Homes Must End: A Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)’, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
http://icahd.org/2013/03/03/israels-policy-of-demolishing-palestinian-homes-must-end-
icahd-submission-to-the-un/ (accessed 26 October 2014).
47. Ibid.
48. UNOCHA OPT, ‘East Jerusalem: Key Humanitarian Concerns’.
49. Israel Police, the National Unit for Public Complaints, 10 July 2016.
50. Police reply to ACRI, 19 October 2015. Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI),
‘Arrested Childhood: The Ramifications of Israel’s New Strict Policy toward Minors Sus-
pected of Involvement in Stone Throwing, Security Offences, and Disturbances’, http://
www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Arrested-Childhood0216-en.pdf (accessed
4 April 2016).
51. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Childhood: A Universalist Perspective for How Israel is Using
Child Arrest and Detention to Further its Colonial Settler Project’, International Journal of
Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 12 (2015): 223–44; Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Security
Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015); Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Stolen Childhood: Palestinian Children and the Struc-
ture of Genocidal Dispossession’, Settler Colonial Studies 6 (2015): 1–11.
52. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Palestinian Children as Tools for “Legalized State Violence”’,
Borderlands, 13, no. 1 (2014): 1–24.
53. Mimi Ajzenstadt and Mona Khoury-Kassabri, ‘The Cultural Context of Juvenile Justice in
Israel’, Journal of Social Policy 42, no. 1 (2013): 111–28.
54. Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 2007.
55. Ajzenstadt and Khoury-Kassabri, ‘The Cultural Context of Juvenile Justice in Israel’.
56. The Youth Law (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment), 1971, determines the methods
of operation of government agencies that focus on youth involved in criminal activities.
57. Ibid.
58. According to the Israeli Youth Act, Section 34f of the Penal Code 1977: ‘A person shall not be
held criminally responsible for acts committed before he was twelve years old.’
59. Israeli Government Proposed Law: The Youth Law (Adjudication, Punishments, and
Methods of Treatment), Amendment No. 14, 5766–2006, Government Proposed Law 244,
June 12, 2006, 468.
60. 29 June 2014: Publication of Decision 1776 of the 33rd Government Strengthening Enforce-
ment in Offenses of Stone Throwing (ACRI 2016). 29 July 2015: Enactment of the Penal Code
(Amendment No. 119), 5775–2015, which added the offense of throwing stones/other objects
at a police officer/police vehicle, an offense incurring a penalty of up to five years’ imprison-
ment; the offense of throwing stones/other objects at vehicles, an offense incurring a penalty
of up to ten years’ imprisonment; an offense of throwing stones/other objects with the goal of
hitting a passenger or a person in his vicinity, an offense incurring a penalty of up to 20 years’
imprisonment. ‘Penalty Law, Amendment 119’, July 2015, http://fs.knesset.gov.il//20/law/
20_lsr_313581.pdf (accessed 6 March 6, 2017). 12 October 2015: The Knesset proposed
Amendment 24A to the Youth Act (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment), entitling
the court to impose a fine on the minor as part of the verdict, and allowing the court, follow-
ing conviction and in addition to punishment, to require a letter of commitment from
parents holding them accountable for the minor’s future behaviour and obligating them to
pay a fine to the person hurt by the offense or to cover trial expenses. A Bill Proposal for
the Youth Act (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment), Amendment 20’, October 12,
https://knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillGoverment/959/959.pdf (accessed 9 January 2017). 2
November 2015: Enactment of the Youth Act (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment),
638 B. KOVNER AND N. SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN
Amendment 20, 5776–2015, enabling the state to impose a fine, legal expenses and payment
of compensation to any injured party upon the parents of a convicted and sentenced minor.
18 November 2015: Legislative memorandum: Youth Act (Trial, Punishment and Modes of
Treatment) (Amendment) (Means of Punishment), 5776–2015, proposes custodial sentences
for children as young as 12 who are convicted of ‘nationalistic-motivated’ violent offences
under Israel’s civilian legal system. The actual serving of sentences would be deferred until
the child reaches the age of 14. In serious manslaughter offenses, it would be possible to
imprison minors who are sentenced before they reach the age of 14 (ACRI 2016).
61. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘Palestinian Children as Tools for “Legalized State Violence”’; Shal-
houb-Kevorkian, Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear.
62. Prof. Dorit Roer Strier, Prof. Mona Khoury-Kassabri, Prof. Leslie Sebba, and one of the
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63. Prof. Mona Khoury-Kassabri, Prof. Leslie Sebba, Dr Roni Factor and Dr Badi Hasisi.
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Palestinian Child’, Electronic Intifada, 21 March 2014, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 639
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by The Israel Science Foundation [grant number 1019/16].
Notes on contributors
Bella Kovner is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Criminology – Faculty of Law, at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. Ms Kovner holds an MA in Sustainable International Development
from Brandeis University and is a counter-trafficking and child protection specialist. For the
past decade, she has been working in Nepal, China, Albania, Uganda and Cambodia on EC,
USAID, USDOL, UNICEF, WFP and Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) funded projects
aimed at combating trafficking in human beings and exploitative child labour.
Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-
Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew Univer-
sity of Jerusalem. She is a Palestinian feminist activist and the director of the Gender Studies
Program at Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa. Her research
focuses on law, society and crimes of abuse of power. She studies the crime of femicide and
other forms of gendered violence, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial contexts, surveillance,
securitisation and social control, and trauma and recovery in militarised and colonised zones. Shal-
houb-Kevorkian’s previous book is titled: Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict
Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study published by Cambridge University Press,
2010. Her newly published book is titled: Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear,
published by Cambridge University Press.