After Six Years of Litigation by Adalah, Supreme Court Rules: Children under Eight may Embrace Parents, defined as ‘Security Prisoners', during Family Visits

On 13 April 2010, the Supreme Court of Israel accepted Adalah’s petition and instructed the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to permit children of prisoners classified as “security prisoners” to have physical contact with their parents during the course of their visits in prisons. Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker submitted the petition against the IPS on behalf of 10 children of Palestinian prisoners, the Prisoner Association and in Adalah’s own name in 2004.

Visits to prisoners classified as security prisoners by the IPS - overwhelming Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) - are conducted with a glass wall separating between them and their immediate family members. Until 2002, the IPS allowed the prisoners’ children under the age of 10 to embrace their parents during the last fifteen minutes of the visit. However, in May 2002, the IPS changed its policy and prohibited the petitioners and other children of security prisoners to engage in any physical contact with their incarcerated parents.

According to the court’s decision, and with the consent of the parties, children under the age of 8 will be permitted to have direct contact with their imprisoned parents for a number of minutes in the framework of the visit; the frequency of the “open visits” will be no less than once every two months; in appropriate circumstances, this frequency may be increased according to the judgment of the authorized official. This arrangement will enter effect on 1 August 2010.

The court delivered the decision six years after the petition was submitted and after the court demanded several times that the IPS revise its policies and procedures for visits. A temporary order issued by the court in 2006 stipulated that an “open visit” would be approved for children under the age of 6, without committing to a fixed frequency. Later, the court issued an order nisi on the petition, and the court proceedings focused primarily on examining the possibility of raising the age of the children permitted to have an “open visits”. During the last hearing on 19 November 2009, the court suggested increasing the age to 8. While the State Prosecutor’s Office initially rejected this suggestion, they reconsidered and announced their consent to the proposed arrangement.

It is Adalah’s position that the IPS should allow open visit between all Palestinian prisoners and their families without any distinction. The consequences of the prohibition of physical contact on the lives of the children and their development are especially difficult; for this reason, it was important to turn to the court to enable at least some human contact between the children and their parents. The age limit of eight years does not prevent any child from submitting a special request for an open visit. The issue of physical contact between the prisoners and their children illustrates just one example of a myriad of severe restrictions imposed on the Palestinian prisoners in regard to their connection with family members and the outside world.

According to statistics gathered by human rights organizations Addameer and B’Tselem, as of March 2010, 6,631 Palestinians were imprisoned in Israel, of which 8 were detained under the Illegal Combatants Law (7 of whom are from Gaza) and 237 were administratively detained. 35 were women; 337 were child prisoners, including 39 under the age of 16; and 773 were from Gaza. In December 2009, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that family members from Gaza have no right at all to visit their relatives incarcerated in Israeli prisons. (See HCJ 5399/08, Adalah et al. v. The Defense Minister et al. (decision delivered 9 December 2009)).

Case Citation: HCJ 7585/04, Hakeem Kana'ni, et al. v. The Israel Prison Service (decision delivered 13 April 2010).