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This program contains scenes that may concern some viewers. This land was promised to the Jewish nation by God. For more than 40 years, Israel has controlled the West Bank. But now there are serious claims that Palestinian children are being systematically targeted, arrested and jailed in the battle to control this disputed territory. It's that fear and intimidation that makes this system work so effectively well. You never know when there's going to be the bang on the door in the middle of the night. Let me say this very clear. There is no such policy. A policy to create fear, there is no such thing. A declaration of hatred in the making. Welcome to Four Corners. Imagine in a major Australian city or in any other civilised society regular late night raids on family homes by heavily armed soldiers to take away children in blindfolds and handcuffs for interrogation. Imagine a military prison where the inmates include children as young as 12, in shackles. Such is the distortion of life in a region of broken peace plans and deeply embedded hostilities. There have been 2.5 million Palestinians and 350,000 Israeli settlers after more than 40 years of military occupation. A UNICEF report last year found that Palestinian children had been threatened under interrogation by Israeli security forces with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault against themselves or a family member while demanding confessions for alleged offences, most commonly stone throwing. UNICEF estimates that over the past decade an average of 700 children a year have been detained, interrogated and processed through Israel's military court. In tonight's story, a joint investigation by Four Corners and the Australian newspaper outlines the way justice is practiced with regard to the children of the West Bank. The reporter is the Australian's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons. A peaceful evening in a small Palestinian village. A 14-year-old boy and his family sleep. Suddenly the night is shattered. The Israeli army is making a raid. Their target, the boy who they claim has thrown stones at them. His mother recalls that moment. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE Husey Zamara insists he's done nothing wrong, but this begins an 18-day nightmare. At the age of 15, the life of this boy was also turned upside down. Fatima Fuz would spend the next 82 days in prison, beginning with an interrogation. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE As a 14-year-old, Islam Darayub has also come up against Israel's security services. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE These boys are part of the new front line in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They're among the 700 Palestinian children brought each year before Israel's military court. You never know when there's gonna be the bang on the door in the middle of the night and soldiers are gonna demand that you bring out your children and one of them is taken away. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE On to this front line has walked Australian lawyer Gerard Horton. He left his practice as a commercial law barrister in Sydney six years ago and is now leading a campaign to end a system under which Palestinian children have fewer rights than Israeli children, including being subjected to night-time arrests by heavily armed soldiers. That has a paralysing effect on whole communities and it's that fear and intimidation that makes this system work so effectively well with relatively few soldiers on the ground and so it also makes it quite a cost-effective occupation. Let me say this very clear. There is no such policy. A policy to create fear, there is no such thing. The only policy is to maintain law and order, that's all. There's no violence, there's no enforcement. The President of the United States. But US President Barack Obama told Israelis last year that this problem will not resolve itself. And put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements, not just of those young people, but their parents, their grandparents, every single day. However, leaders of Israel's settler movement like Daniela Wiese do not agree. We came to a land where there were other people living. But this land was promised to the Jewish nation by God. All the other people who live here will accept Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land. This is the only way I see it. So those who accept it, live nicely. Those who do not accept it, encounter confrontations. Those confrontations occur mostly near settlements. In 1967, Israel began occupying the West Bank, which is also known as the Palestinian Territories. Since then, settlements, widely regarded as illegal under international law, have come to dominate the West Bank. Israel insists they are not illegal. So take a situation involving two children in the West Bank throwing stones, one a Palestinian child, one an Israeli child living in the settlements. The Palestinian child will be prosecuted in a military jurisdiction with far fewer rights and protections, whereas his Israeli counterpart, living sometimes 500 metres away, will be prosecuted in a juvenile justice system which meets international standards and complies... It's the sort of system you would expect in any Western-style democracy. It is, without question, very problematic when you see that there are possibly very young children being arrested in the early hours of the morning. But there was a case... Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hirsch is the Israeli army officer who oversees prosecutions at the military court. It's unfortunately an operational necessity because of the widespread disturbance of the peace that occurred once we tried to carry out the rest during the day and the reluctance of the Palestinian population to cooperate a priori with the law enforcement agency. To understand Israel's two different legal systems, it helps to come to Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank. Here, 800 Israeli settlers leave in the centre of Hebron, surrounded by 180,000 Palestinians. The West Bank is the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank. There are 180,000 Palestinians. This used to be a thriving Palestinian market. The effect of Israel's occupation is obvious. Now it's a ghost town. Israeli soldiers will not allow Palestinians to walk along these streets. Palestinians say they've been forced out of the buildings taken over by the settlers, protected by soldiers. This Palestinian man wants to walk along this street. I am from Hebron. I can or I cannot? You cannot. The first time I visit here, I can? No, you can't. Can I ask why can't the Palestinians walk this way? This is the order I got. As a Palestinian, why can't you walk there? I asked him that I want to go to the cemetery to visit my father's grave. He said that you cannot. Just find it interesting that we as foreigners and I as an Australian can walk there, but you two are Palestinians in the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank and you cannot walk. When we visited Hebron, it was early morning. Many Palestinian children were walking to school. Suddenly, we heard tear gas being fired. The Israeli army told us it was in response to stone throwing. We couldn't confirm this, but we saw these Israeli police assembling. Then they fired tear gas towards the children. We saw no provocation from the children who were trying to avoid the gas. The teachers said tear gas was fired here almost every day. And why do you think the Israelis do it? Hi, how are you? You speak English? We approached the police. We're from Australian television. We cannot talk with you. Can I just ask one thing? Excuse me. We've just been standing here now. Why did you fire the tear gas towards those children going to school? We can't talk to you. We cannot talk to you. No, but they appear to be children going to school normally. Can I ask you why you fired this and the other tear gas at them? Hebron has long been a flashpoint. What occurs openly here, one law for Israelis, one for Palestinians, is typical of the West Bank, according to Yehuda Shaul, who served here as an Israeli army commander. The DNA of the military operations that we see in Hebron we see all over the West Bank. Yehuda Shaul founded Breaking the Silence, 950 current and former Israeli combat soldiers trying to end human rights abuses. I've never broken into houses in the middle of the night here in Jerusalem and tear apart apartments. But in Hebron, where I served for 14 months, 24-7, that's what we've done in order to make our presence felt. The stone was killing somebody. No, of course not, but he was a child. But he will say he is going to stop it. Last July, one case shocked many. On the streets of Hebron, five-year-old Wadi Yamaswade was picked up by soldiers. An Israeli settler had claimed that he had thrown a stone at him. His friend tried to help. He was a little girl. His sister was a little girl. She had a little daughter. She was a little girl. The man who ran for office, who was a little girl, he was a little girl, he was a little girl. He was a little girl. He was a little girl. The boy is taken by six soldiers. He was released after two hours. One settler making one allegation is able to activate this level of military intervention against a five-year-old. When his father intervenes, he is blindfolded. When you see an Israeli soldier in the street, what do you think? And what happened when they took you into the van? What happened then? Look, from my service, I actually don't remember children. Like, you know, I have some memories of Palestinian children when you burst into houses in the middle of the night and children start to cry or whatever. But these are the vague memories I have from my service. Because just the idea that there is children and adults is not an idea that you have there. OK, when you're in uniform, it's them and us. I want people to think what they would do if their five-year-old child was being taken by an occupier's army, even by your local police. Gabi Lasky is a prominent Israeli lawyer who defends Palestinians. If a five-year-old was being held by an authority that is not you, you would do anything in order to try to get your child back. Military courts are the long arm of occupation. We are not talking about courts of justice. We are talking about courts of occupation. Look, I grew up believing that our actions as a military in the occupied territories are here to protect Israel from terrorism. What I've learned from my three years of service and nine years of activism and breaking the silence, after reading testimonies of over 950 soldiers, is that the main story here is about maintaining our absolute military control over Palestinians. Palestinians say the soldiers are working in concert with the settlers. Palestinians say the soldiers are working in concert with the settlers. This vision, shot by a Swedish documentary maker, shows settlers attacking Palestinian children while soldiers stand by. I say, go there! OK. All right. And here, a settler fires live ammunition, hitting a Palestinian youth in the side of the head. Again, soldiers stand by. They're attacking a Palestinian youth. When we see settlers attacking a Palestinian, our orders are not to intervene. Palestinian children face danger on two fronts. Night arrests from the army and violence from settlers. To get to school each day, these children need to walk past this settler outpost. Attacks from settlers have become so bad that the army escorts the children. But school has finished early and the army has not turned up. Today, the children are on their own. Their only protection is this Israeli volunteer, who hopes by carrying a camera he will deter settlers. How do you feel, though? You're a Jewish Israeli. How do you feel about this? I can't describe this in words, because I feel myself as partly a Holocaust survivor because my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He was partisan. He was a Christian. He was a Holocaust survivor. He was partisan. He ran away for a few years and all his family died in the Holocaust. And I don't get it how from one who made... who was suffering from all those stuff, we became people that are making other people suffering for our behaviour. It's... It's... It's... It's... It's... It's... It's really to break me. But the suffering is on both sides. Three-year-old Adel Biton has brain damage and may never recover. Eight months ago, I was driving back from my parents' home, back to my home in Yakil, where Palestine carries through a large building of stones on my car. The stones, the building stones hit Adel's head and also caused me to bump into a truck. We're fighting together to get our back to life. I don't think that it's fair for her to sleep here in the bed and don't do things like children in her age. It's not fair. When someone throws stones or blocks, building blocks, whether they're Palestinian or Jewish, do you think it should be the same law for both? For both, because we need to highlight the words, stones, kills. Stones, kills. Her three-year-old child is basically... is still in hospital and it's unlikely that she will recover from that event. That is terrorism. Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hirsch says arrests have been made following the attack. We're now dealing with five miners who threw stones at some 20-yard cars on a fast road at night-time. They stood as a group at the side of the road and pounded the passing cars with stones. They hit a number of cars on the way. If you throw a stone at a vehicle travelling at 70km an hour, that can kill. There's no question it can be very dangerous. And that's why I think it's so important to look at the evidence. The evidence collected by the Israeli organisation B'Tselem shows that since November 2000, four people have been killed in the West Bank from people throwing stones at vehicles. One was a Palestinian, three were Israeli settlers, two of those were infants. While stone-throwing can indeed be serious, critics say it's been used as a catch-all charge to arrest Palestinian children. When Kusai Zamara was woken by soldiers at 2am, he had no idea what was ahead of him. He had no idea what was ahead of him. He saw soldiers in his bedroom, which was a very frightening experience for him. One of the soldiers kicked him with his boot, he grabbed him from his T-shirt, pulled him out of bed and dragged him outside. Kusai watched his father, totally helpless, his mother crying and shouting, unable to do anything, his younger siblings, his sisters, totally devastated by what was going on. Kusai was taken by military vehicle to an interrogation centre. Kusai wanted to know what the interrogator wanted him to confess to. And he said, I want you to confess to throwing stones. And he said, how do you expect me to confess to something I didn't do? And then the interrogator got very upset and he actually slapped him with a piece of plastic hose that he had and threatened to electrocute him. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE Finally, Kusai gave in. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE After the arrests, children are brought to facilities such as this, to stop the West Bank and are used by the army and police to imprison and interrogate. Threats are often made at these centres. You'll be subjected to violence if you don't confess. You'll be detained for an extended period of time if you don't confess. Again, the intelligence is usually very good, so the interrogator will know if that child's father has a work permit, for example, to work inside Israel. If that's the case, the threats sometimes are of the nature of, we will revoke your father's work permit unless you confess. Could you show me what happened to you? When Fatih Mahfouz was returning home, he came across confrontations between the army and youths. He says he was not involved but was taken away for 82 days. He was just 15. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE The interrogator started yelling at him and then what Fatih says is that he was then placed on some sort of wooden device on the wall. Similar in shape to a cross, although it had two legs. He says that his legs were shackled to this wooden structure. His hands were shackled to the structure and he was left there for several hours. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE Fatih says after five hours, he was taken down from the structure. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE From his experience interviewing hundreds of Palestinian children, Gerard Horton says one interrogator stands out. This particular interrogator specialises in threatening children with rape and he makes very specific allegations. He will name someone who apparently is waiting outside the interrogation room who will, if the child doesn't confess, will come in and rape that child. The Australian lawyer found one boy's testimony particularly disturbing. What he says happened is somebody then put some food, he thinks it was bread, on the top of his head and then the dog was brought over and made to eat the food off his head. He was terrified by this experience. You could hear the dog next to him drooling all over him. He was fearful that he was going to be bitten at any moment. Then someone put food, he was dressed, but someone put food on his genitals and the dog was then made to eat the food off that part of his trousers. After interrogation, children are brought here for trial, over military prison near Jerusalem. It's time he would not let Four Corners film inside. I've been behind these walls three times. I saw children shuffling across the courtyard, handcuffed and shackled. Some hearings lasted 60 seconds. I saw one boy shout the name of his prison so his mother would know where he was being held. I saw the judge convict some children without even once looking at them. Through it all, what I saw was a conveyor belt. Convicted children. I think, perhaps to give you some indication of how efficient, from a military perspective, this system is, according to the military court's own records, their annual report, the courts have a conviction rate of around 99.74%. Go, go, go! Typically, a Palestinian boy convicted of throwing stones will be sentenced to about three months imprisonment. The United Nations Children's Agency, UNICEF, last year released a scathing report on Israel's system. It found that Palestinian children had been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault against themselves or a family member. The report found that that ill treatment was widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the system from the moment that the child was arrested, right up until the sentencing process. The natural reaction is that this is an intolerable... These are intolerable cases and that I would like my authorities to do their utterance at the utmost to make sure that this will not be repeated and that this will change. And I believe that this is precisely what we are doing. Last month, under pressure from human rights groups, Israel stopped the long-standing practice of keeping children overnight in outdoor cages. Children had been kept freezing in the cages during snowstorms. While Israel appears to be making concessions, this disguises a harsher reality. Four Corners has learnt that the Israeli security services now have a new strategy. They bring Palestinian children as young as 12 to massive interrogation facilities like this one. The security services are now targeting the children as a way of gathering intelligence on their villages, including asking the children about their neighbours and members of their own family. There's a pattern that Israel hasn't been able to put down the non-violent movement in the occupied territories through violent means. So the best way to do it is by incriminating those leaders. And the easiest way to do that, to achieve, to get those incriminations, is by arresting children, which are the weakest link. So they're using children to gather intelligence? 100%. Islam Dar Ayub was 14 when Israeli soldiers arrived at his house at 2am. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE Islam's arrest was part of a practice by the Israeli army known as mapping. Palestinian children are now regularly woken up at night, photographed and questioned about which bed they sleep in. This video shows Islam on the right and his brother being photographed by Israeli soldiers after being woken up. What the army has done is that they have come to all the houses in the village and asked for the children in the house to show them where they sleep. They take pictures of the child, they ask for their ID numbers and they map them. Three days after mapping this house, the army returns in a night-time raid and arrests Islam. Later, police come for Islam's nine-year-old brother, Karim. HE SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE He was nine years old, I think, when he was first arrested, which is completely unacceptable, even to the army authorities. Islam's interrogation was filmed. It quickly becomes clear that what the authorities really want is information about the leaders of the non-violent protest movement in the town, including Bassim Tamimi. Enormous pressure can be applied during these interrogations. You tell the child, you can be released today if you just, from time to time, provide us with a little bit of information about who the troublemakers in the village are. Or sometimes there's offers of money, generally not a great deal of money. But the child can be offered money, mobile phone, threatened sometimes. They are trying to know information about the village and about the life of people, their families, their attitudes, the attitudes of the community and all of these, and the most vicious and the most horrible thing, to push people to collaborate as collaborators with the occupiers, to put them under the stick-and-carrot process. If you reject this, if you are refusing this, you will be punished, you will stay longer in prison. So this kind of converting a child who is not responsible in his act to be a collaborator is not just helping in information gathering for the Israelis. It's breaking this child forever. There has to be a pattern, because the interrogators will want to gather information about possible violence emerging from a certain area or from certain people. And I think that's perfectly legitimate to ask people who were arrested for being involved in violent actions to ask them where they come from, why they have been involved in such violent actions, who sent them, and whether there are more people coming from the same place with the same intent. Bassem Tamimi rejects the violence supported by his cousin Ahlam Tamimi, who in 2001 masterminded a terror attack in Jerusalem. We reject all types of terrorists around the world. We are against harming the human being life for any reason, but we are struggling for our right to live in peace and to build a state of peace for everyone, and we ask our enemy to remove the occupation. This is the Samaritan's, and we see here... But this will never happen, according to Daniela Weis, a founder of the settler movement. In the 1970s, Daniela Weis would regularly meet Ariel Sharon, then Minister for Agriculture, to plan settlements so no Palestinian state could emerge. You and Ariel Sharon were determined there would not be a Palestinian state. With my many talks with Ariel Sharon and my work with Ariel Sharon, there was a clear understanding, a very clear planning of spreading the Jewish communities that there will be no option for a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. Despite international condemnation, settlement growth is surging. If a Palestinian child said to you, uh, what is the hope for me, for my future, to have my own state, what would you say to that child? The promise of God was promised to the Jews by God. And all of it. It's true that in course of history Arabs came to this area from all over, but the promise of God is more important than the changes in history and the political changes. That is why you have to put it deep, deep into your mind that you do not have any chance whatsoever at any point of history, neither you nor any of your offsprings to ever have an independent state of your own here. For five-year-old Wadia Maswade and his friend Diya Kafishe, there seems little hope. Do you feel safe in your home, in bed at night? Do you want to stay living in Hebron? You want to leave? Where do you want to go to? For me. In Jordan, in Ahmed. This is how these communities are torn apart in the middle of the night when no one is watching and it is done one family at a time, one house at a time and it's systematic and relentless. The system is devastating families. Mwah. The boys are clearly traumatised. Sometimes you feel that these kids will be lost forever, so our work with them is to help these kids get rid of the psychological impact which might destroy their lives, and this might lead them to whatever extreme you can imagine. This long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of cycles and revenge. Today, Israel is strong, but what happens when this generation of Palestinian children comes of age? Israeli authorities have responded to some of the recommendations made in UNICEF's report, Children in Israeli Military Detention. They have agreed to pilot two areas in the West Bank where children are issued with summons rather than being arrested at home at night. To date, this pilot hasn't begun. Next week on Four Corners, inside the secret state of North Korea, with rare hidden camera footage providing further evidence of the abuses and hardship of life in the Hermit Kingdom. Until then, good night. For more UN videos visit www.un.org