Israeli security forces
Child recruitment and use
The Israeli intelligence services (Shabak)
continually seek to recruit children as informants.
A field survey with former child detainees
conducted in 2003 by Defence For Children
International-Palestine Section (DCI-PS),
estimated that 60 per cent of the children
interviewed, some of them are as young as 12,
were reported to have been tortured or subjected
to other forms of coercion or inducement in an
attempt to make them cooperate.3 By late 2003
in Gaza alone there were on average 40 attempts
to recruit minors every month. In January
2004, a 17 year old was arrested at the Rafah
crossing between Gaza and Israel, questioned
about his and his family’s political affiliations,
and reportedly beaten and threatened until he
agreed to inform on his family. After his release,
he handed himself over to the security forces of
the Palestinian Authority. Travel or work permits
may be offered in exchange for information. In
February 2004 a 16 year old was detained on
his way to work through the Erez checkpoint
and, when he refused to be an informant, was
photographed being hugged by an intelligence
officer. He later agreed to cooperate after he was
threatened with publication of the photo, but was
subsequently arrested by the security forces of
the Palestinian Authority.4
The Israeli armed forces were reported to
have used children as human shields. On 22 April
2004 soldiers reportedly made a 13-year old
boy sit for four hours on the front of their armed
jeep, with his arm tied to the windshield, to stop
stones being thrown at them by demonstrators
protesting at the building of the separation wall
in Biddo.5
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