Israel inflicts 'appalling abuse' on detained Palestinian kids, STC report finds

Israel is meting out "appalling" abuse of Palestinian children in its military detention system, Save The Children said in a report released Monday.

After consulting with hundreds of children who have been held in Israeli military detention, the charity found that 86 percent of former child detainees had been beaten.

Among a whole host of other violations, almost 70 percent of the children had been strip-searched, and 60 percent had been held in solitary confinement for durations ranging from one day to as long as 48.

"There’s simply no justification for beating and stripping children, treating them like animals or robbing them of their futures," said Jason Lee, Save the Children’s Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"This is a child protection crisis that can no longer be ignored. There must finally be an end to this abusive military detention system."

Lee said Palestinian children "are the only children in the world to experience systematic prosecution in the military courts".

There are currently 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, about 160 of them children.

Israel has detained about 1 million people in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967, including tens of thousands of children.

The children detained in this way are most commonly accused of stone throwing, the charity said, which can carry a jail sentence of up to 20 years for minors.

Child detainees are often left haunted by their experience in Israeli military detention, Save The Children said, with more than half left suffering frequent nightmares and almost three quarters suffering from insomnia or difficulty sleeping.

The Save The Children report came on the same day that Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, gave evidence to the Human Rights Council on Palestinian detainees.

"During interrogation, Palestinian children endure severe ill-treatment: they are strip searched, kept blindfolded and tightly bound for long hours, insulted and ridiculed, physically abused and denied basic needs including access to toilets and medical care, despite injuries they may have sustained during arrest," the report presented to the council said.

Children are left "deeply traumatised" by their treatment, according to the report.

Palestinian children are also subject to other abuses by the Israeli military.

Children are often among the dead as Israel conducts raids on camps in the occupied West Bank.

Last month, a two-year-old child died after being shot in the head by Israeli forces.