العربية
HE
العربية
HE
In late 2020, HaMoked petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) to compel the Israeli security forces to cease the widespread practice of night arrests of Palestinian minors in the West Bank, and to rely instead on a summons via their parents as the first recourse when minors are wanted for interrogation. The petition was based on dozens of affidavits of minors who had been thus arrested, indicating that pre-planned night arrests are highly traumatic and accompanied by numerous violations of basic rights, yet are used by the security forces as the default for bringing in minors for interrogation.
In its July 2021 response to the petition, the State announced a classified procedure had been introduced by the military and the Israel Police regarding “the summoning of suspected minors before a pre-planned arrest in the Samaria and Judea Area [i.e. the West Bank]”. The State stressed that the new procedure would not apply to minors “required for interrogation not by the Israel Police” [i.e. wanted for ISA interrogation] or minors suspected of “severe offences” or “with past conviction for severe offences”. Following HaMoked’s concern that the situation would remain unchanged – given that the security forces consider a wide range of offences as severe – the Court ordered the State to submit an updating notice regarding the implementation of the procedure, after which HaMoked would be allowed to submit a revised petition. In February 2022, official data was received – in the framework of the State’s updating notice and also as part of a Police response to HaMoked’s freedom of information request – from which it emerged that the new procedure had resulted in no change on the ground.
Therefore, on March 2, 2022, HaMoked submitted a revised petition to the HCJ, reiterating its demand that summons via the parents or legal guardian serve as the primary method for bringing Palestinian minors for interrogation and that the new procedure be amended to bring about actual change on the ground.
After repeated delays, the State finally submitted its response to the updated petition on August 8, 2022. In its response, the State reiterated its position that the petition should be dismissed out of hand as there was no call for judicial intervention, given that “the IDF policy regarding the arrest of Palestinian minors in the Judea and Samaria Area is in line with the legal stipulations [emphasis in the original]”, “more so after the [new] procedure entered into effect… and allows summoning minors for interrogation when possible [emphasis in the original] …”. Regarding the data presented by HaMoked in its petition, the State clarified, among other things, that it had never claimed – and effectively that it never intended – that the procedure would have a significant impact on the scope of night arrests of minors in the West Bank.
In its updating notice of December 7, 2022, HaMoked submitted new data indicating the State was not implementing the procedure or the regulations that preceded it, and that minors were still being taken from their homes at night in preplanned arrest without first being summoned to interrogation, even when they were not suspected of severe offences. Thus, for example, asserted HaMoked, of the 58 families who contacted HaMoked in the six-month period from May to October 2022 to locate their children who had been arrested from their home at night, not one had received a summons for the child’s interrogation beforehand (and only one family received the required form during the arrest specifying where the child would be interrogated and on what allegations).
HaMoked added that the data in its possession also indicated that in many cases even minors who were clearly not suspected of severe offences were arrested from their homes in the middle of the night, contrary to the military’s professed policy. Of the 58 minors thus arrested between May-October, the majority were released with no indictment filed against them. In some cases, the children were released within a day or two following the traumatic night arrests.
The Court is to hear the petition on January 9, 2023. Meanwhile, more and more Palestinian families are subjected to this lasting trauma of a sudden nighttime invasion of their homes and having their teenage boys taken handcuffed and blindfolded from their beds.
