Prisoners' institutions reported today, Thursday, that the Israeli authorities are detaining more than 200 Palestinian children in its prisons, including 23 children from the Gaza Strip who are detained in "Megiddo" prison, and are subject to enforced disappearance, as are all Gaza detainees, noting that this is the only information available regarding children. Gaza detainees, and the number may be higher.

The prisoner institutions added, in a statement on the occasion of Palestinian Children’s Day, which falls on April 5 of each year, that this year constituted the bloodiest year for Palestinian children, in light of the occupation’s comprehensive aggression and the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza to this day.

It indicated that after the seventh of last October, child prisoners faced retaliatory measures imposed by the occupation on various categories of prisoners in all prisons. It initially worked to completely isolate the prisoners from the outside world, isolate them from each other inside the prisons, and withdraw all electrical tools and supplies. From inside the rooms, hot water was cut off from them and their clothes were confiscated. The prison administration contented itself with providing very meager meals of very poor quality. The Israeli forces also committed torture against prisoners at an unprecedented rate.

It indicated that since the beginning of the aggression, the number of arrests among children in the West Bank has reached more than 500, as the policy of arresting children constitutes one of the most prominent policies that the occupation has pursued over the decades and up to the present day. Since the first years of the occupation of the Palestinian land, Israel has targeted children in various ways and means directly, without any consideration for any agreements guaranteeing children their rights, as Israel considers them a main target.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli state is considered the only country in the world that systematically tries between 500 and 700 Palestinian children before military courts every year, in a way that lacks basic rights to a “fair” trial.

The prisoner institutions explained, in their statement, that child prisoners had a share of the retaliatory methods used against male and female prisoners. According to testimonies of child prisoners who were released recently, Israel worked from the first day to isolate them from the rest of the prisoners and sections, and several testimonies were recorded indicating that they were beaten. Excruciating pain during their stay in prisons.

Statistics and documented testimonies of child prisoners indicate that the majority of children who were arrested were subjected to one or more forms of physical and psychological torture, through a number of systematic tools and methods that contradict international laws and norms, and agreements on children’s rights.

Under Israeli policy of pursuing liberated prisoners and constantly targeting them, the occupation re-arrested 15 freed prisoners who were liberated during exchange deals last November. Two detainees were later released while 13 were kept in detention, including 5 children, to be transferred. Two freed young prisoners were placed in arbitrary administrative detention.

These practices, according to the statement, come within the framework of the Israeli authorities’ continued persecution of liberated prisoners and the imposition of further oppression and control against the Palestinian people.

In the same context, the statement of the prisoner institutions indicated that the Israeli authorities use the policy of arbitrary administrative detention against the Palestinians as a tool for oppression and control in light of the escalating events and as a means of punishment as well, and children are not spared from this policy, as the occupation today detains in its prisons more than 3,660 administrative detainees, including 41 children, most of whom were arrested and administrative detention orders were issued against them after the 7th of October, without indictments being filed against them, and under the claim of the existence of a “secret file” whose childhood is being stolen in cells that kill their childhood and rob them of their right to education.