THE charity Embrace the Middle East launched its policy briefing and new campaign, Childhood Behind the Bars, on Tuesday of last week.

The report suggests that Israel has been “arbitrarily detaining Palestinian children since 1967”, saying that those children are “denied their right to a fair trial and often face abuse or even torture”.

“The far-reaching consequences of child detention range from disruption to their education, damage to family relationships, and severe long-term harm to their mental and physical health,” it continues.

The document refers to the 2023 Save the Children report, Injustice: Palestinian children’s experience of the Israeli military detention system, which suggests that there is no documented case of an Israeli child being tried in an Israeli military court.

In contrast, “UN estimates and Israeli military data indicate that around 38,000 to 55,000 Palestinian children were imprisoned under military law between 1967 and 2022,” Embrace reports.

“This disparity has widened since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Before the attack, around 170 Palestinian children were being held in detention but since then, over 1,300 children have been detained and, as of June 2025, there were at least 440 children in detention,” it continued.

The charity calls on the UK government to “urge Israel to end immediately the practice of night arrests and the use of inhumane tactics against Palestinian children, including beatings, blindfolding, and hand-tying during arrest and detention”.

The policy briefing references the Israeli military order 101, which came into force in 1967. It criminalised activities such as protesting, flag-waving, and distributing political material without prior military approval.

Article 212 of Israel’s military order 1651, which came into force in 2009, permits up to ten years’ imprisonment for throwing an object — including a stone — at a person or property with the intent to cause harm, and 20 years if thrown at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm it or the person travelling inside.

Embrace’s new campaign states that the most common charge for child detainees is stone-throwing. “Children have been forcibly taken while running errands for their family, playing in their local playground or even pulled from their bed in the middle of the night,” it says.

The report says that, because Palestinians in the West Bank need Israeli-issued permits to enter Israel, and that these are often difficult to obtain, the transfer of children to Israel means that parents are frequently unable to visit them while they are held in detention.

Embrace also refers to a 2023 study undertaken by Military Court Watch. This summarised the testimonies of more than 1000 Palestinian children and found that between 2013 and 2023, “97 per cent of children were questioned without a parent or family member present, while 81 per cent were denied access to a lawyer prior to interrogation.”

Embrace is urging the public to contact their local MP in support of the campaign.

embraceme.org/childhood-behind-bars