Israel takes action against 4-year-old Palestinian boy for throwing rocks at soldiers

Israeli police took action against a four-year-old Palestinian boy because he threw rocks at the occupying state's soldiers this week, Middle East Eye reported. 

On Tuesday, the boy's father Rabiaa Elayyan was called in for an interrogation over the matter after a warrant was issued against him and his son. Elayyan and his son Mohammad went to the Israeli police station together. They were accompanied by their neighbors, residents of Issawiya, an occupied village in East Jerusalem. 

Local reports stated that Elayyan was "briefly interrogated by police without his child present and released shortly thereafter."

In a statement to Middle East Eye, Elayyan shared details of how his son's case began. 

He said that Mohammad did throw stones at officers when he saw them approach the family home on Monday. The man, however, rejected reports stating that the interrogation warrant had been issued in his (the father's) name alone.

"They sent a warrant to summon both the father and the son. Today, when we went to [the police station], they denied that there was a warrant for the son, and that only the father had been summoned. They saw the media attention and that it would become a scandal for them, so they retracted," he explained.

Elayyan added that during his interrogation, police officers told him he should "confine" his son to the house.

Speaking further of the ordeal, the boy's father said his son didn't fully understand what was going on around him and became "fearful" when he saw the crowd on their way to the police station. 

"The police made a mistake. They've just sent a message of terrorizing young children, of making them scared. Children have rights, but their normal rights are only a dream, of which they are deprived," he stressed.

The case has sparked anger in the father and son's hometown of Issawiya. The town has seen a rise in tensions against Israeli forces since June, when police killed a 20-year-old man named Mohammad Samir Obaid.

In a statement on the matter, Jawad Siyam, the director of the Wadi Hilweh Information Centre in East Jerusalem, said the interrogation summons were part of a broader policy aimed at terrorizing Issawiya and oppressing its residents. 

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld claimed that only Mohammad's father was called in for questioning in a statement to Middle East Eye. Rosenfeld also said that calling parents in for violations committed by minors is considered a "standard procedure." 

The military law in the apartheid state allows authorities to detain and imprison children who are 12 years old or above. But, that doesn't mean Israeli police don't jail those who are younger in age.

In a statement to StepFeed last year, The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD) raised concerns over children being terrorized by Israeli authorities. The NGO's officials told us that around 700 children are arrested by Israel every year, adding that in 2017 alone, Israeli forces arrested 1,150 Palestinian children. Some of these children are as young as nine and 10 and undergo severe and traumatic experiences that scar them for life. 

Arrests often take place in the early hours of the night, while the children are sleeping in their beds. The kids are taken to centers for interrogation, where they experience physical and psychological torture.

When all that is over, they appear in court and are either sentenced or kept in prison under administrative detention — an arbitrary form of prolonged detention. During interrogation, children are placed under very stressful conditions. They are kept in solitary confinement. They face threats of sexual violence, rape, or physical violence, and are denied visitation from their families and lawyers.

"76 percent of arrested children suffer physical abuse. 71 percent suffer verbal abuse, humiliation, and intimidation. 45 percent suffer threats and coercion," PIPD's statement added.

PIPD and several other organizations are working to break the silence on Israel's illegal crackdowns on children.