A UN official calls on Israel to ease up on the detention of Palestinian children. AFP writes:
“Practically every child I met (in the Palestinian territories) was in detention or had met somebody who has been in detention, or whose brother has been in detention,” UN special representative for children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy told reporters….
“This kind of detention practice is feeding the cycle of violence. I think children are getting very hard and bitter through this experience,” she said following a visit to the Hasharon detention centre.
But as the Times of London, Reuters and the Globe & Mail have already documented, a lot of Palestinian kids look forward to being sent to an Israeli prison and deliberately get themselves arrested. Behind bars, they pursue an education, live well, and get street cred. Parents receive generous benefits from the PA, and some kids finishing their sentences find a way to return. The Times estimated that in the past two years, 200 Palestinian kids deliberately got themselves arrested.
We commiserate with the people really fueling what Coomaraswamy thinks is a cycle of violence: Israeli taxpayers.
