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Israel is detaining children without charge in record numbers, a rights group has said, subjecting them to hellish conditions that include beatings, the denial of food and water and other forms of torture.
New figures from the Israel Prison Service show that of 351 child detainees, 51% are held in so-called “administrative detention”, where people are imprisoned indefinitely without having committed a crime on the grounds that they intend to break the law.
The rights group Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) said on Wednesday that this is both the highest number and the highest percentage on record since it began monitoring these figures in 2008.
“These numbers come at a time when Palestinian children consistently report appalling and debilitating conditions within Israeli detention facilities,” the group said.
This includes being denied “adequate food and water, being subjected to beatings and verbal harassment, lacking access to medical care, and being subjected to torture, including the use of solitary confinement.”
The IPS figures for child detainees do not include those who are held in military detention or interrogation centres, which are separate from the prison service.
“There is no available data for the number of children or adults detained at these sites,” the group said, “though DCIP has gathered firsthand testimonies from previously detained children describing systematic torture and dehumanising conditions.”
For those held in the prison system, their lawyers are “forbidden from passing on simple messages from families, and children who wish to pass along messages to their families”.
Under Israel’s apartheid system, being charged is not a reliable indicator that a Palestinian has committed a crime. In 2024, a UN agency said Palestinians had been coerced into falsely confessing to links to Hamas.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said in January that Israel runs a network of torture camps where thousands of Palestinians are subjected to a “living hell” – and that the country’s political, media and legal institutions are complicit in maintaining them.
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