Ramallah: The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has urged the international community to act with immediate effect against Israel after it was proved, via Israeli reports, that the occupation forces have been torturing Palestinian children.

“The international community is urgently required to act against Israel and punish the occupation state for violating international laws in the first instance, and in the second to save arrested Palestinian children who are under Israeli torture,” said Zeyad Abu Ain, the undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees’ Affairs in an interview with Gulf News.

“The international community must show some respect to its own laws and regulations, which have never been observed by the occupation state of Israel.” He said that the PNA has submitted hundreds of official written complaints to various international bodies in relation to Israeli violations through the torture of Palestinian children.

“Meetings have been organised between European Union ambassadors and Palestinian children released from Israeli prisons and detention centres where the children told the ambassadors their torture stories,” he said. “We have solid and undisputed proof of violations by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian children and the Israelis cannot deny this occurs,” he stressed.

“If the international community continues to not punish Israel for the torture of Palestinian children, the Palestinian people will,” Abu Ain warned.

“The Palestinian people can no longer keep their mouths shut about torturing kids who are under 18 years of age,” he said.

Abu Ain said that 3,000 Palestinian children were arrested and tortured in 2013 and that a total of 200 children below 18 year are serving terms in Israeli prisons.

“These are the actual and real standards and ethics of the occupier. The world should open its eyes and see this ugly face of the oppressor and occupier,” he said.

An Israeli human rights group has accused the Israeli government of torturing Palestinian children by keeping them in cages.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) has published a report which states that Palestinian children arrested for minor violations had been subjected to public caging, threats and acts of sexual violence and military trials without any representation.

The (PCATI) report contained shocking details about a visit by Israeli lawyers from Israel’s Public Defender’s Office to a detention centre in Al Ramla where they saw Palestinian children kept in iron cages.

Various Israeli organisations have urged the state of Israel to make an immediate change in the law, and it is understood that the Israeli cabinet and Knesset may address the issue. A senior official from the Palestinian Prison Club said that Palestine is losing some of its most promising members of the coming generations.

“Those patriotic children are usually sent to unauthorised detention centres in the spreading colonies in the West Bank,” the official told Gulf News. “The children are not kept in official detention centres or prisons so the occupation forces can treat them in their own way.”

The official said that children are usually held in the colonies for the interrogation period which may be 21 days or longer.

During this time, no one, not even parents, are allowed to visit the children.

“It is complete isolation for the children and they are treated in the toughest ways,” he said.

“In their solidarity confinement, those children are exposed to cigarettes, drugs (mainly marijuana) and pornography left by the occupiers. In several cases, women have visited them to have intercourse,” he said.

The Palestinian authorities have been aware of these tactics of the occupation after it was proved that many of those children have ended up collaborators with the occupation, which blackmails them with taped evidence of them having sex or doing drugs.

“The international community can never imagine the kind of loss Palestinians are suffering due to the arrest of children,” he said.

“This is a central issue. We have repeatedly brought it to the attention of the Palestinian leadership and submitted several complaints to international institutions but the response has been very poor,” he stressed.

Under Israeli law, the arrest of children is not permitted from 8.00pm to 7.00am but occupation forces usually raid the houses of Palestinian children in the early hours and in a terrifying manner.

Occupation forces do not allow a parent, as stipulated by the law, to accompany his child during the arrest.

“Can you imagine a child being interrogated by an experienced security officer who has both the stick of the iron cages and the carrots of drugs and women?” he said. “This is a tragedy,” he stressed.