The war between Israel and Palestinians negatively impacts children because children are being indiscriminately arrested. They busted down the doors of the village before sunrise, and about 30 Israeli soldiers overspread the family home.
The subject for the arrest was twelve-year-old Ammar, whom they blamed for attending a protest against the land clearances in the Naqab region. But as per his mother point of view, their family is still not sure why they took him, because their child was at home at that time.
As per his mother view, “We do not know why they took him. At 5:30 in the morning, soldiers came and hit the door with their legs. We freaked out, and they asked for him while he was sleeping.”
She further addressed that their child is just 12-year-old, he can’t go to school because he was under house arrest for ten days, which started yesterday. I was amazed when they informed us of this. I yelled at them: what could a 12-year-old do to you? I was afraid they would hit or torture him in prison; he was terrified and crying.
However, police detained him and eventually sent him home, but he has not spoken a word since he returned, and his family is worried about what happened to him in police custody.
For days, protests in the Naqab desert have circulated as the Palestinian Bedouin fight for their very presence and fight an assertive forestation project overseen by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a Zionist organisation.
JNF has been planning non-native pine trees on Palestinian land for decades, with the highest aim of growing Israel’s settlement programme.
This project is worth a staggering $48 million and full backing from the Israeli government.
According to Abu Frieh, a field researcher and Naqab office coordinator for Abdallah, “the Israeli police have started a campaign of arrest and detained about 150 people, in which 40 per cent of them legally being minors. However, 16 are still detained.”