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| In this Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013 photo, a Palestinian boy walks around his home in the village of Beit Ummar near the West Bank city of Hebron. At the age of 15, the boy was held for nine months in an Israeli military jail for throwing rocks at passing Israeli cars near his village in the West Bank. An Israeli 15-year-old boy was arrested for a similar crime at the same time but faced a different justice system. The Israeli boy refused to allow his photo to be taken. |
BEIT UMAR, West
Bank (AP) -- The boys were both 15, with the crackly voices and
awkward peach fuzz of adolescence. They lived just a few minutes away
from one another in the West Bank. And both were accused of throwing
stones at vehicles, one day after the other.
But there was a crucial difference that helped to shape each boy's fate: One was Israeli, and the other Palestinian.
The
tale of the two teens provides a stark example of the vast disparities
of Israel's justice system in the West Bank, a contested area at the
heart of the elusive search for a lasting peace.
While
Israeli settlers in the West Bank fall mostly under civilian rule,
Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. Israeli and
Palestinian youths face inequities at every stage in the path of
justice, from arrests to convictions and sentencing, according to police
statistics obtained by The Associated Press through multiple requests
under Israel's freedom of information law.
The results can ripple for years.
"Jail destroyed his life," said the Palestinian boy's father.
Only
53 Israeli settler youths were arrested for stone-throwing over the
past six years, the data shows, and 89 percent were released without
charge. Six were indicted. Four of those were found "guilty without
conviction," a common sentence for Israeli juveniles that aims not to
stain their record. One was cleared. The sixth case was still in court
as of October, the most recent information available.
By
contrast, 1,142 Palestinian youths were arrested by police over the
same period for throwing stones, and 528 were indicted. All were
convicted. Lawyers say the penalty is typically three to eight months in
military prison.
Israel's Justice Ministry
said more than five Israeli stone-throwers were indicted in the past six
years, but declined to provide examples. Itzik Bam, a lawyer who
represents Israeli settler youths, said he knew of 20 Israeli minors in
the West Bank indicted for stone-throwing in recent years, including six
who pleaded guilty and six who were cleared. He said the other cases
are still in court.
The police numbers are not
comprehensive, because the Israeli army also arrests Palestinian
youths, and because the state prosecutor also issues indictments against
settlers in more serious cases. However, the gap between the numbers
for Israelis and Palestinians is clear and wide.
Israel's
Justice Ministry said the numbers reflect the fact that Palestinians
threw more stones than Israelis,
rather than unequal treatment.
"Though
the legal systems are different - military court versus civil court -
the relevant law is implied impartially," said Yehuda Shefer, a deputy
state prosecutor who is head of a Justice Ministry committee for West
Bank law enforcement.
The Israeli Justice
Ministry says it would like to rehabilitate Palestinian youth, but ends
up jailing many offenders because their parents and leaders support
their crimes. However, critics accuse Israel of dismissing Israeli
crimes as youthful indiscretions, while treating Palestinian youths like
hardened criminals.
"Everyone knows there is a
problem with the treatment of minors in the West Bank, a systematic
discrimination between Israeli minors and Palestinian minors," said
Michael Sfard, an Israeli attorney and Palestinian human rights
defender. "Now you have the figures to prove that."
-----
Stones
have become an iconic weapon in the West Bank, an arid land where they
are plentiful. In the past six years, more than half of all arrests of
Palestinian youth have been over stone-throwing, which Israel claims can
be the first step toward militancy. Extremist Israeli settlers have
also adopted the tactic.
On Feb. 20, 2012, the
Israeli boy joined a group of youths pelting a bus with rocks at the
entrance to Bat Ayin, according to police reports. The settlement,
located in the southern West Bank between Jerusalem and the biblical
city of Hebron, is known for its hardline population.
Police said they targeted the bus because the driver was Arab. The rocks damaged the bus but did not harm the driver.
The
boy, whose name cannot be published under local law because he is a
minor, was brought to the Hebron region police station at 9 p.m., with
his father by his side. In his interrogation, the boy invoked his right
to remain silent. He spent a night in the station and four days under
house arrest. Then he was freed without charge.
The
following day, according to police reports, the Palestinian boy lobbed
rocks at Israeli cars zipping past his hometown of Beit Umar, a farming
town of 14,000 people perched near an Israeli military tower. Police
said he and others wanted to show solidarity with a high-profile
Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike in an Israeli jail.
The
rocks shattered the front windshield of a white Mazda and damaged three
other vehicles on a busy highway. There were no injuries. The incident
was caught on tape and broadcast on Israeli evening news.
Two
weeks later, at 3:30 a.m., Israeli soldiers kicked down the door to the
Palestinian boy's bedroom, carried him to a jeep, blindfolded him and
tied his hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he said. He was
slapped by soldiers, kept awake all night and placed in a military jail
cell with 10 other Palestinian youths, he said.
It would be more than nine months before he could go free.
An
Israeli psychological exam conducted in prison found the boy showed
signs of anxiety and depression.
He told the prison's clinical
psychologist and social worker that he looked at a photo of his family
to help him sleep, and had nightmares about soldiers killing his
relatives. The exam also found he was short-breathed and had a cough,
which he said was from soldiers hitting him in the chest during his
arrest.
---
The West
Bank, an expanse of rocky hilltops blanketed in olive trees, is central
to the current round of U.S.-brokered peace talks. For Palestinians,
the West Bank is the heart of a future state, along with adjacent east
Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. For Israel, the land known by its biblical
name of Judea and Samaria is significant to Jewish heritage and to
security.
Since Israel captured the West Bank
in 1967, it has built more than 100 settlements, creating "facts on the
ground" that complicate any future withdrawal. Some 60 percent of the
West Bank is under full Israeli control.
Today,
more than 350,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, amid roughly
2.5 million Palestinians. The two sides have little interaction, and for
the most part live under separate - and often unequal - systems of law.
While
the Palestinian Authority governs day-to-day affairs, the Israeli
military wields overall control. Palestinians need Israeli permission to
enter Israel or to travel abroad through the Jordanian border.
Palestinians frequently suffer from poor roads, creaky infrastructure
and water shortages.
Israeli settlers, by
contrast, are Israeli citizens. They are subject to Israeli law, vote in
Israeli elections, move
freely in and out of Israel and have access to
Israel's modern infrastructure. They serve in and are protected by the
Israeli army.
Israel says that extending its
laws to Palestinians would be tantamount to annexation, and that many of
the restrictions, such as military checkpoints, are needed for
security. Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry,
said Israel tries to help the Palestinians but acknowledged the setup as
problematic.
"We're stuck in this interim
status and it's not good," he said. "This is precisely the reason we
need to resolve
this thing through negotiations."
Israel's
Ministry of Justice says it attaches "great importance" to narrowing
the differences in the law regarding juvenile detainees. In 2009, Israel
created a juvenile military court. In 2011, it raised the age of
minority for Palestinian youth from 16 to 18. And in 2013, it shortened
the amount of time a West Bank Palestinian minor can be held under
detention, from eight days to, in most cases, one or two days - still
double the time allowed for an Israeli minor.
"In our perspective, a minor is a minor," the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
-------
The
Israeli boy's journey through the justice system was one of repeated
second chances. The middle child of a psychologist mother and a
psychiatrist father, he lived and studied at a religious school in Bat
Ayin, a rural community of about 200 families.
After
his release from jail, the case remained closed until he was arrested
again. This time, he was accused of attacking two Palestinians with
pepper spray while in possession of a knife and a slingshot decorated
with the words "Revenge on Arabs."
During a
court hearing on the pepper spray charge, prosecutors brought up his
previous rock-throwing arrest. Only then was he indicted for both
offenses.
The Israeli minor pleaded guilty to pepper-spraying but denied throwing rocks. He was put under house arrest for nine months.
While
at home, he prepared for Israeli national matriculation exams. During
the final three months, he was permitted to attend school. Then he was
freed. It was nearly two years after the alleged stone-throwing incident
that he finally stood trial, which is ongoing.
There
was no such leniency for the Palestinian boy. The youngest of four
brothers, he grew up in a modest cement home surrounded by bougainvillea
plants and verdant farm lands. He liked to play basketball. His lawyer
would only permit the AP to identify him by his first name, Zein.
Zein's
father, a short man with a cigarette perched under his mustache and a
forehead carved with lines, described the boy as a B-plus student who
could have gone on to a professional career.
That
all changed after his arrest. While many Palestinian prisoners accept
plea bargains in exchange for reduced imprisonment, the boy pleaded
innocent and went to trial. After nine and a half months in prison, he
was put under house arrest. Seven months later, he was convicted and
sentenced to time already served.
In the
ruling, the judge criticized the police interrogator for not asking the
boy if he understood his rights, and not giving him the opportunity to
consult with his lawyer or parents.
"It
appears from the interrogation in this case that the Israeli police do
not understand the sensitivity obligated in interrogating juvenile
suspects," military judge Shahar Greenberg wrote.
Requests for response from the Israeli police were not answered.
-----
In
the end, the Israeli and the Palestinian teens had one thing in common:
Despite Israel's stated goals, neither was rehabilitated. Instead, both
were embraced by communities that condone stone-throwing.
After
his release from house arrest, the Israeli boy joined an extremist
group known as the "Hilltop Youth" and moved to an unauthorized
settlement outpost called Hill 904. These defiant, ideological Jewish
teens squat on West Bank hilltops, and attack Palestinians and their
property. There was a big celebration when he arrived, the boy said.
He
built makeshift homes on the hill for six months and studied Jewish law
with his comrades. Then he moved to another outpost. And another. And
another.
He still denies throwing rocks, but
said it was an acceptable tactic to fight Palestinians, citing a
teaching by an extremist rabbi. He described himself as a warrior in an
ideological battle for Jewish control of the West Bank.
"Wherever
soldiers are needed, I go," he mumbled outside the courtroom after a
recent hearing. He wore the settler youth uniform of long side locks and
tattered cargo pants, with a few chin hairs of adolescence. "We are
commanded to inherit the land, and to expel (Palestinians)."
When
the Palestinian boy got out of jail, he rejoined his 10th-grade class
at the end of the school year, but couldn't catch up and dropped out.
For a while he tried to sell knock-off shoes hoarded in his bedroom.
Now
he mopes around his parents' house, not doing much of anything.
"My
school wanted me to go back to classes, but I quit," he said with a
shrug, sitting in his parents' living room in sandals, with greased
hair.
His lawyer, Neri Ramati, is appealing
the conviction, while prosecutors are seeking a tougher sentence of six
more months in jail.
His father, Hisham, said
Palestinians have every right to throw stones to achieve independence.
He said he and two other sons were all arrested by Israel when they
threw stones, unlike his youngest son, who claims innocence.
His father's conclusion? "He's a coward."
