Yusef Meshech was sleeping in a bunk bed when Israeli forces stormed his house at three in the morning. Within moments, the 15-year-old Palestinian claims he was lying on the floor as soldiers punched and insulted him. A soldier hit his mother in the chest with the butt of a rifle and locked her in the bedroom, where she called out to her sons.
Yusef and his 16-year-old brother Vael were forcibly taken from their home in the Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Yusef was wearing a trick shirt and couldn't see because he didn't take his glasses.
"I can't forget that night," Yusef told the Associated Press agency while sitting in the living room where photos of Vael, who is still in custody, are displayed. "When I go to sleep I still hear screams and gunshots."
The Israeli military arrested and interrogated hundreds of Palestinian teenagers in the occupied West Bank in 2022, without court orders or notifying their families, according to a report by the Israeli human rights organization Hamoked.
Charges against the arrested teenagers range from being in Israel without permission to throwing oysters or Molotov cocktails. Some teenagers say they were arrested to give information about neighbors or family members.
The report, as reported by AP, also states that in the vast majority of pre-planned military arrests of minors last year, children were taken from their homes in the dead of night. After being dragged out of bed, children as young as 14 are interrogated while disoriented and deprived of sleep. They are often not given water, food, or access to a toilet. Yusef said the soldiers beat him when he asked them to go to the toilet during the seven-hour journey to the detention center.
The Israeli army claims it has the legal authority to arrest minors during nighttime raids, according to the AP agency.
Human rights activists and lawyers say the tactic runs counter to Israel's promise to warn parents about their children's alleged misdeeds.
A tactic designed to instill fear
After a Supreme Court petition launched by Hamoked two years ago, there has been little progress as Israel has asked the military to first call the Palestinian parents of the accused children. However, progress was short-lived. Last year, the Israeli army rounded up hundreds of West Bank Palestinians between the ages of 12 and 17 in late-night raids, Hamoked said. Human rights activists claim that such tactics are designed to instill fear.
"The fact that the military is not making an effort to reduce the number of these traumatic night arrests indicates that their purpose is actually to create trauma," Jessica Montel, director of Hamokeda, told the AP. "This intimidation and terrorizing of communities seems to be actually part of politics."
According to data reported to the Supreme Court, the military served subpoenas to Palestinian parents to interrogate their children only a handful of times in 2021. Last year, not a single family received a court notice in nearly 300 cases identified by Hamoked in the West Bank.
Petty offenses and cases where children were released from detention without charges - as was the case with Yusef - are no exception. In Hamoked, they believe that the numbers are actually much higher because dozens of similar cases have not been reported.
"They don't apply the procedures they created themselves," said Ayed Abu Ektaish, from the organization Defense of Children in the Palestinian Territories. "The beating and abuse of children during night raids is actually what worries us".
The Israeli army, in response to an AP journalist's request for comment, announced that it is trying to serve subpoenas to children suspected of minor crimes, who do not have a history of serious crimes. However, the military maintains that the policy does not apply to serious offenses or "when a subpoena would harm the purpose of the investigation."
The military would not comment on Yusef's arrest, but said his brother Wael was facing charges related to "serious financial crimes" including "contacting the enemy", "illegal carrying of money" and aiding an "illegal organization". These accusations typically refer to cases of Palestinians communicating with people from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Although, according to Hamoked, most cases are dismissed quickly, the late-night arrests haunt the children for a long time.
Since his arrest on Nov. 7, Yusef "hasn't been the same," his mother, Hanadi Mesheh, told AP. He can't focus in school, he doesn't play football anymore, sometimes she sleeps next to him at night comforting him because he has nightmares.
"I feel like I'm being watched all the time," said Yusef. "I'm afraid when my mother wakes me up for school in the morning."
Similar stories abound. The northern city of Nablus emerged as a hotbed of violence last year after Israel launched a crackdown on the West Bank in response to a series of Palestinian attacks inside Israel.
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian boy yesterday near Bethlehem in the West Bank, where the army said it opened fire after they were pelted with Molotov cocktails.
Two boys killed in a month
"The Guardian" reports that 14-year-old Omar Kmur was shot in the head in the early hours of the morning in the Deisheh refugee camp in the southern part of the West Bank and that he "succumbed to his injuries."
The Israeli army announced that the soldiers opened fire after "suspects threw stones, explosive devices and Molotov cocktails at them."
The British newspaper recalls that this is the second boy in Deisheh who was killed this month during a military incursion by the Israeli army.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa announced that the army entered the camp "at dawn and began raiding citizens' homes."
Kmur is the fourteenth Palestinian killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, including civilians and fighters, most of whom were killed by Israeli forces, according to Agence France-Presse.
Last year, Israeli forces killed at least 146 Palestinians, including 34 children, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, making 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in 18 years. According to the Israeli army, most of the Palestinians killed were militants. However, young people protesting the invasion and others who did not participate in the clashes also died. Meanwhile, 31 Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks last year, according to AP.
Israel says the operations are aimed at exposing extremist networks and preventing future attacks. Palestinians claim the raids are collective punishment aimed at cementing Israel's 55-year occupation of the land they want for a future state. Israel conquered the West Bank in the 1967 war, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Night raids and arrests are not limited to the West Bank. Israeli police also regularly conduct raids in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
Helpless to save their children
Last fall in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanuna, Rania Elias heard a pre-dawn banging on the door. Her youngest son Shadi Kuri was sleeping in his underwear. The Israeli police burst into their home, threw Kuri to the floor and punched him in the face. There was blood everywhere as police dragged him to a detention center in Jerusalem for questioning, she said.
"You can't imagine how it feels when you are helpless to save your child," said Rania.
Commenting on the case to the AP, Israeli police said they accused Kuri of being part of a group that threw stones at a Jewish family's car on October 12, injuring one of the passengers.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new ultra-nationalist government, parents say they fear for their children more than ever. Some of the most powerful ministers are Israeli settlers who promise a tough stance against the Palestinians.
"This is the darkest moment," said activist Murad Shitavi, whose 17-year-old son Kalih was arrested last March in a nighttime raid on their home in the town of Kar Kadum on the West Bank. "I worry about my sons".
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