A UN human rights group has accused Israel of abuses against Palestinian children that include torture, solitary confinement and threats of death and sexual assault in prisons.

In the report released on Thursday, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said it expressed its "deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police".

The committee said soldiers arrested Palestinian youth regularly during night-time raids, tying the childrens' hands painfully and blindfolding them, and often transferring them to detention centres without informing their parents.

It also said that arrested Palestinian children were subjected systematically to physical and verbal abuse, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, as well as having access restricted to toilets, food and water.

"These crimes are perpetrated from the time of arrest, during transfer and interrogation, to obtain a confession but also on an arbitrary basis as testified by several Israeli soldiers as well as during pre-trial detention," said the committee.

It had obtained its information from other UN rights bodies, military sources and Israeli and Palestinian rights groups. Israel did not cooperate with requests for information on the issue, it said.

Child prisoners

Besides spotlighting abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, it also expressed grave concern at the number of Palestinian children who have been held in Israeli jails.

It said that an estimated 7,000 kids aged from 12 to 17 years, but sometimes as young as nine, have been arrested, interrogated and detained since 2002 - an average of two per day.

Most were taken in after being accused of throwing stones at Israeli forces and settlers, an offence which can carry a 20-year penalty.

In April this year, 236 children were in military detention centres, with dozens aged between 12 and 15, the report said drawing on data from UNICEF and Israeli rights group B'tselem.

The committee expressed its "deepest concern that children on both sides of the conflict continue to be killed and injured", but underlined that kids in the occupied territories were "disproportionately represented among the victims".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/2013620192613601306.html

I pain your feel @vedax.. ultimately conflict in any form has a negative fallout on unintended (and often innocent) victims.. and when you are talking of an armed conflict fueled by equally persistent and aggressive religious and political passions, children and women are the hardest hit.

The UN has failed in a good majority of conflicts around the world especially non-European (particularly Africa) where Foreign Policy (more like economic and political interests of key "UN stakeholders" are not as purposefully defined.

given decades-long deadlock between Israel and Palestine; innumerable deaths of Palestinian women and children later, you can say the conflict still has enough steam to carry on for another 30-40 years.

Just last week in Beijing, The UN hosted an International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace dubbed "Reviving the collective international engagement towards a two-State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".. what ever happened to the sacred Geneva Convention on the Rights of Women and Children in conflict zones.. are they not enforceable? obviously for Peace to take a stand, the party landing the most punches must stop. that means enough of aggression, settlements and occupation.

^^^^

The funny thing is that people like you are only good in posting thread about Islam or muslims, and then engage in a charitable exercise of pr in issues like the above!

there is nothing charitable about PR.. you do it for profitable reasons. What do I have to gain or lose from a State of Palestine or the extermination of Jews. it seems you have strong notions that there is always an 'Islamophobic' factor involved when you raise topics about ISLAM or Muslims.. there are real issues that underpin religion such as Rights of the child. it is not an ISLAM thing, it is a global theme. so stick yoru 'victim' issues where the sun don't shine, not everything has to be used as a leverage for propaganda do you even understand the deeper issues of the Middle-East Conflict?

^^^

Change your ways what ever you stand to gain or lose is yours alone, we know you literally know everything about nothing, but stop the hypocrisy, where you careful digest issues involving non Muslim perpetuating a crime against Muslims and when it turns around being Muslims, it is basically Islam, the same behaviour you keep showing in every single thread about Muslims and non Muslims, when a Muslim thread highlighting the dangers of extreme reactions against Muslims makes the front page you quickly ask our we sensationalizing the issue, when it is the other way round, you ask isn't this shariah, i shake at such duplicitous behaviour, If china violates the rights of muslims, that is how china behave, if muslims do wrong, it is Islam, it is Sharia'ah, again I shake my head at such dubious standards, like I said keep up your charitable exercise of PR, if i was making a case about Muslims I would have posted it in the Islam section, unlike you, my standards recognise wrong as being wrong regardless of the participants and muslims understand that there are bad people who manipulate religion, tribe, race for selfish ends, but mr. doubting large seems to think when it involves muslims the issue have deeper meaning !
i clearly understand who you are!

unfortunately your inadequate indoctrination in ISLAM does not allow you reason with conviction, you need wry insults and poor rhetoric to make your points stick

begone!!!!
your anti muslim Indoctrination has made your Double Face dishonest ways seem fair to you, go and sin no more, it is always a predictable disappointment engaging you in any sort of discuss, as one can only discuss with another if there is truth, but with people like you, Double face semantics seems to be your "truth"