Queen Rania denounces Israeli military detention of Palestinian children

“For decades, the world has turned a blind eye as they are arbitrarily taken into custody, denied due process, and held indefinitely in a notoriously brutal prison system. Most parents can barely allow themselves to imagine it: Their 12-year-old taken at gunpoint; driven away somewhere they cannot follow. It’s inconceivable. Yet, it happens to Palestinian families all the time. Not occasionally – routinely.

“I would warn you that children’s accounts of detention are disturbing – difficult to hear. But this is not a situation where we have the luxury of sheltering behind disclaimers. We do not get to turn away. Because to protect our own comfort would be to enable the inhumanity. Children tell of a grim, familiar pattern: Ripped from their homes in the middle of the night, not knowing where or why they are being taken. Brought alone, handcuffed and blindfolded, to interrogation sites; hauled before military courts; pressured to sign documents they don’t understand. Assaulted and threatened with rape. Kept underfed, isolated, and afraid.

“A recent UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed what had long been documented: the torture of Palestinian children in Israeli custody. The conditions described by child detainees in Save the Children’s survey are harrowing. But one figure stopped me cold. Two-thirds reported being held in solitary confinement…for up to 45 days. Picture a child, trapped in a cell, terrified and alone, for 45 minutes. Crying, apologising, banging on the walls, calling for their parents… But 45 days? What would that even look like?

“Last year, Walid Ahmad, a Palestinian teenager, died after six months in Israeli custody. An autopsy showed he had been starved. Yet an Israeli judge closed the case, saying the evidence wasn’t enough to prove a crime. A year and a half later, Israel still holds his body – a prisoner even in his death. His family is still denied the dignity of laying him to rest. Walid is the first known Palestinian child to die in Israeli custody. But so much of his experience was typical. He was taken in a pre-dawn raid. He was held without charge. He requested medical assistance that never came.

“This routine cruelty isn’t the work of a few abusers. It is the product of a political, legal, and security apparatus that normalises violence against children – as long as those children are from Palestine. And I just don’t understand. What is so terrifying about Palestinian children? Before they even come of age, Palestinians are cast as threats: demographic threats, security threats, presumed guilty of future crimes they haven’t committed. Their innocence stripped away, they are dehumanised so thoroughly that even a kid with roller skates, a soccer ball, or a kite can be seen as something menacing. And a child can be branded a terrorist – as if they were never a child at all.

“I’ll leave you with the words of a young Palestinian, detained at 15: ‘We need help from everyone who can help us. The world must know what we’re going through, the suffering we are experiencing.’ Well, now you know. And I know that much of what I said has made you uncomfortable. But Palestinians deserve our discomfort. Palestinian children deserve our pain. Because only when we feel their pain can we begin to heal it.”