IOF troopers manhandle children picking vegetables

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Viral Video Shows IDF Arresting Vegetable-Picking Palestinian Kids at Behest of Israeli Settlers
"There were [dozens] of soldiers around, and one of the soldiers dragged one of the children to the vehicle and the other soldiers followed and started to arrest them... We begged the soldiers to wait until the children's families could come and talk to their families, but that didn't help."
https://www.mintpressnews.com/idf-arrests-vegetable-picking-palestinian-children-behest-israeli-settlers/276394/

OCCUPIED WEST BANK — On March 10, five Palestinian boys hoped to spend their day foraging for vegetables south of their home in the occupied West Bank. Instead, they spent it detained for hours in Israeli custody.

The children — ages eight to thirteen — were violently arrested by Israeli forces in southern Hebron while picking akoub, a wild, thistle-like vegetable that blooms in spring. Video of the arrest sparked international condemnation and called into question Israel's routine practice of detaining Palestinian children.

In the video, the visibly frightened children are seen being pulled and shoved into army vehicles by soldiers. Bystanders are heard shouting as the boys cry and struggle to get away from the soldiers.

Nasser Nawajaa, a field researcher for Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, captured the children's arrest on camera. "One of B'Tselem's volunteers called me and said, 'The army is chasing children who are picking akoub,'" Nawajaa said. When he arrived from nearly two miles away, Nawajaa immediately began filming.

"There were [dozens] of soldiers around, and one of the soldiers dragged one of the children to the vehicle and the other soldiers followed and started to arrest them," Nawajaa said. "We begged the soldiers to wait until the children's families could come and talk to their families, but that didn't help."

The children were taken to a police station in the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba and detained from 12:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m., Nawajaa said. The two older boys, ages 12 and 13 — were called back into the police station for questioning on March 21 because they are over the age of criminal responsibility, which is 12 according to Israeli law. Nawajaa said they were interrogated for about two to three hours before their release.

Arrested at the "request of settlers"
The children were collecting akoub near the illegal settlement outpost of Havat Ma'on — notorious for settler violence. While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, they are not illegal under Israeli law. Only settlement outposts are considered illegal by Israeli authorities because they are built without government approval. Before the coronavirus outbreak, Palestinian children had to be escorted by the military when going to school because of frequent settler attacks.

Sarit Michaeli, B'Tselem's international advocacy officer, said on Twitter that the children were arrested at the "request of settlers" for allegedly stealing parrots from the outpost.

However, Roy Yellin, director of public outreach at B'Tselem, said the army's accusation that the children were caught stealing parrots came out only after B'Tselem published the video. "According to Gaby Lasky, the children's lawyer, the allegations of stealing parrots did not come up in the interrogation," Yellin said.

"It's also unclear why the army operated at the behest of the settlers and took their rather outlandish version of events at face value," Yellin continued. "I can swear to God that if a child in Tel Aviv had stolen parrots from a pet shop, nothing like this would have ever happened to him."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the children were arrested for "entering a private property." A military patrol located the children and then "transferred them to the Israeli police for further processing," the IDF told MintPress News.

Israel Police did not respond to repeated requests for comment.