Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a children’s rights advocate with the Defence for Children International — Palestine, says the ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children was “widespread, systematic and institutionalised before October 7, but now the Israeli authorities are using heavier hand”, Al Jazeera reports.

“Around 700 Palestinian children are persecuted in front of [Israeli] military court every year and these courts lack fair trial frontiers because the whole issue depends on the confessions extracted from children by force,” he told the news outlet.

Abu Eqtaish said information about the conditions faced currently by incarcerated Palestinian children was limited as lawyers and human rights activists’ ability to visit prisons has been restricted after the start of the conflict, while court sessions have been taking place through video links.

He added that according to international law, detainees and prisoners should be able to receive visits and accompanied by a lawyer or a family member during interrogation.

“But according to the Israeli military legal system, they do not allow the child to be accompanied by a family member during interrogation … there is also no original recording of the interrogation process … it becomes very difficult for the child’s lawyer to prove that the confessions have been extracted by force and the lawyer tried to raise this issue before a military court judge, they got the answer that this is not the right place to raise this issue,” Abu Eqtaish said.