Child Recruitment in Israel

This report examines the many and varied forms in which children are being recruited by the Israeli armed forces and by Jewish militias. A parallel report has been prepared by a Palestinian human rights group – Defence for Children International in Palestine – examining the recruitment of Palestinian children. Together, we hope that these two reports will prove to be a first step in a concentrated effort, aiming to take children out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such an effort, we hope, can be joined by almost everybody on both sides, regardless of their position on the political and other issues involved.

As Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu put it, “Children should be playing, not being pawns in dangerous adult games”. Child recruitment cynically violates the rights of children, and stopping it is a worthy cause in its own right. But we also hope that by drawing children out of the circle of present, and hopefully also future, participants in the conflict it will be possible to remove them from the circle of victims as well, and this, one could hope, would be a first step in the direction of resolving the conflict itself. We would like this report, together with its counterpart, to provide information and analysis to be used for these noble goals.

The report examines:

• Legal, Historical and Cultural Background on Child Recruitment
• Israeli Children as Soldiers-to-Be
  • Militarised Education and Symbolic Recruitment of Children in Israel
  • Soldiers in Israeli Schools
  • Preparation for Military Service Programmes
  • The Legal Status of ‘Intended for Security Service’
• Children in Military Functions
  • Military High Schools
  • Military Training for Children
  • Military Use of Child Labour
  • Children in the Civil Guard
• Involvement in Hostilities
  • Children Guarding Jewish Settlements in the West Bank
  • Child Soldiers in Jewish Militias – The Case of Kahane Chai
  • The Use of Palestinian Children for Military Purposes by the Israeli military and other agencies