Politics of Precarious Childhood: Ill Treatment of Palestinian Children under the Israeli Military Order

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the corollaries of the exceptional treatment of Palestinian children under the Israeli military rule. It is shown how the widespread and systematic ill treatment of Palestinian children accrues from exceptional provisions and lack of legal cover of the Israeli military law. Such lack constitutes a precarious condition under which Palestinian children are not treated as children but as a security threat legally accountable for their acts, in many respects with ways similar to adults. Precarity, the paper argues, is produced through three conditions. First, the lack of protection is institutionalised through the legal, territorial and population-regulating techniques internal to state channels. Second, the lack of protection delegates significant power to the discretion of what Judith Butler calls the ‘petty sovereigns’ – to the soldiers, interrogators, police officers, etc., who are asked to rely on their own judgment when making decisions on the fundamental matters regarding the order and justice, even life and death of children. Third, the use of discretionary power is not only encouraged by the legal system and its exceptions; it also works in tandem with the institutional culture of impunity that accepts the violent disciplining, even torture, of Palestinian children.