Adalah to Supreme Court: Israel Prison Service’s Refusal to Allow Palestinian Children Aged 6-10 to have any Physical Contact with their Incarcerated Parents is Inhumane

On 31 March 2008, Adalah filed a response to the Supreme Court of Israel regarding the insistence of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to prohibit Palestinian children to have any physical contact with their incarcerated parents who are classified by the IPS as “security prisoners” in Israeli prisons. The response was filed in the context of a petition filed by Adalah against the IPS in August 2004 seeking an order obliging the IPS to allow the children of Palestinian political prisoners to have physical contact with their parents held in Israeli prisons during family visits. Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker filed the petition and is representing the petitioners in the case.

Following the filing of the petition and subsequent court hearings, the IPS retracted its initial position to ban all physical contact between children and their incarcerated parents, and  established new criteria to allow physical contact in some visits, and amended these criteria several times following objections from the petitioners and court rulings delivered over the course of the four years of litigation.

At the last hearing, held on 13 July 2007, the Supreme Court ordered the IPS to reexamine its position regarding restricting the ages of children allowed to have physical contact with their incarcerated parents to six years of age and under and the issue of the lack of a clear and systematic method for open visits. This order was made subsequent to objections put forward by the petitioners concerning the age restrictions. The petitioners further objected to the IPS’s refusal to allow physical contact during all visits for reasons of logistics relating to the available work force, and because children over six years of age have a reasonable ability to communicate makes them a high-level threat that cannot be averted. In January 2008, the IPS announced its intention not to back down from its position regarding children’s ages and the ways in which visits are conducted despite the petitioners’ objections and the court’s reservations.

Attorney Baker strongly objected to a response sent by the IPS to the court on 31 March 2008, arguing that the IPS’s stance is illegal and inhumane and holds that the ability of children aged six and over to express themselves through speech cancels out their human need to have physical contact with their parents, and to give and receive love and affection.

Adalah emphasized in the response that the IPS is disregarding its duty to allocate specific resources and manpower to facilitate these visits. This conduct is even more egregious particularly given that approximately 9,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel and that these people were transferred from the Occupied Palestinian Territory to prisons inside Israel, in violation of international law. Their transferal to Israel also poses a huge obstacle to their receiving family visits given the geographical distances involved and the severe difficulties in obtaining permits to enter Israel. Therefore the IPS is doubly obliged to allow and facilitate these visits.

Adalah further emphasized that logistical and budgetary considerations cannot be used to justify the violation of human rights. Adalah absolutely opposed one of the criteria stipulated by the IPS according to which the IPS may prevent a prisoner from having physical contact with his children as a punishment for a behavioral offense in prison. Physical contact between prisoners and their children, argued Adalah, is not a favor or privilege that can be removed as a punishment for a behavioral offense. Indeed, doing so is tantamount to imposing collective punishment against Palestinian children for matters which are unrelated to them. Thus Adalah contended that the criteria set down by the IPS for allowing physical contact are illegal and violate the constitutional rights to family life, to receive visits, and to dignity and privacy. The next hearing is scheduled on the petition for 15 July 2008.

H.C 7585/04, Hakeem Kana’ni, et al. v. The Israel Prison Service (pending)