JERUSALEM
Israeli forces arrested Jerusalem journalist Zina Halawani on the night of May 27 while she was doing her job in the Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood.
She was detained for five days at the Maskobiyah interrogation center.
What made an impression, was the fact that cells around her were filled with children, most between 12 and 15 years old.
“There were five children in each cell, which is 2×3 meters (6x9 feet). On the other side were Israeli settlers who were detained due to criminal cases. They deliberately provoked the Palestinian children,” Halawani told Anadolu Agency.
She recalled harsh conditions that the children are living in at the interrogation center -- exposed to insults by settlers, without any intervention by authorities.
“The court gave some of these children a protocol which allows them to call their families once daily, but as I saw the jailers were not responding to this. One of the children was screaming all the time, calling out for the other detainees. He was saying: ‘let her (the guard) allow me to call my mother,’” said Halawani.
On her last night in detention, a child who was supposed to be released was delayed on the whim of one of the officers. Zina said he was asking to go home.
“He was screaming all the time, ‘I want to back to my home, I want my mother.’ Many of the children there are still don’t understand why they are detained,” she said.
The treatment of the children is a microcosm of the attitude that Israeli authorities have toward Palestinians.
Not far from where Halawani was detained, Sultan Sarhan, 16, was in a demonstration in front of the central court in Jerusalem, rallying with hundreds of Palestinians against a court’s decision to evict families from their home in the Silwan neighborhood.
Israeli forces attacked protesters and Sultan was subjected to a severe beating by soldiers. And he was arrested.
“They didn’t take him to any medical center, despite his wounds,” his mother, Hanadi Sarhan, told Anadolu Agency. “Moreover, they didn’t allow me to know anything about him for several hours,”
Sultan, lost his father Samer Sarhan, 11 years ago to Israeli bullets. Since then, additional suffering has been compounded on the life of Sultan and his brothers, Maher, 22 and Mohammad, 17.
The eldest, Maher, was 11 when he lost his father. At 13, he was imprisoned for one year on allegations of throwing stones at police and settlers.
“I can’t remember the number of detentions for each one of my sons,” the children’s mother said, noting how she was alone with her young daughter for days following her sons’ arrests. “All of them exposed to this horrific experience dozens of times. In January 2020, Sultan was in jail. The police stormed our home and arrested Maher around 2 a.m. The next night they were back and arrested Mohammad.”
In 1998, the Samers built their home. A few years later, in 2003, Israeli forces demolished part of it, claiming it was built without an official license. Again, in 2008, they demolished it again.
And today, it is threatened with demolition.
“This frequent demolition for the house creates a feeling of instability, loss of security and disability when seeing the home become rubble,” said psychologist Malakeh Mohtaseb. “Here, when the child starts asking himself or herself, ‘what I should do to save my home? How I will protect myself?,’ these questions lead to scare and indignation.”
The first time Sultan was arrested, he was 10 years old, and at 12, an Israeli court put him under house arrest for one year. He was not allowed to go to his school or leave his house for any reason.
“During that year, Israeli forces used to storm our home every night, around 2 a.m. to take a picture that confirms the presence of Sultan inside the home. It was a real terror,” said his mother.
According to psychological experts, repeated exposure to traumatic events affects a child's behavioral and scientific development.
Sarhan said her children’s education got progressively worse since they lost their father and it reached its lowest point after the frequent detentions.
Naeema, 13, the youngest of her children, was at school when her classmates told her what happened to Sultan.
“She fell apart when she saw the pictures of her brother being beaten,” said Sarhan.
The mother said the frequent traumatic events raised fear but also strength in her children because of what they have experienced every day.
“The absence of the father leads to feelings of the loss of lodestar and a sense of protection that affects their personal identity and their belonging,” said Malakeh.
“The exposure of these events is recognized as serious traumatic events. Trauma harm the psychological well-being of the individuals risking them to form complicated disorders such as anxiety disorders, severe depression or the most popular among these, post-traumatic stress disorder,” Beesan Warasneh, a doctor of neurology, told Anadolu Agency.
The complications do not only interfere with the functionality and productivity of the individual, but also form a critical risk for suicidal thoughts in an advanced and complex stage.
“One traumatic event has the potential to be a life distractor, so we can imagine how does continuous exposure to trauma is unbearable to any human being,” she said.
