A new Zionist colony ‘law’ authorizes Palestinian children as young as 12 years old to be sentenced to life imprisonment in contravention of international human rights standards.

Youth Law (Adjudication, Punishment and Methods of Treatment) (Amendment No. 25 – Temporary Provisions) recently ratified in the Zionist ‘parliament’, Knesset, which permitts life imprisonment for 12-year-olds if they were convicted of “terrorism” and “terrorist acts” in the occupying regime’s courts.

Alongside the controversial rule, another law — the National Insurance Law (Amendment No. 251) (Revoking Allowances for a Child Imprisoned due to Terrorist Offence) — allows the illegal entity to suspend financial aid meant for children’s welfare, further impacting vulnerable groups.

Both laws were passed in November 2024 amid heightened tensions in the region, especially affecting Palestinian children living under occupation in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.Official reports said a record 37 percent of all Palestinian child detainees are held in administrative detention without charge or trial, while Zionist colony authorities enact systematic restrictions on access to legal counsel, family visits, and parliamentary oversight.

As many as 323 Palestinian children have been detained in Zionist colony prisons since March 31, the latest data available from the Israel Prison Service (IPS), which is the highest number since 2017.

Since the onset of the Gaza war in October 2023, the Israeli regime has turned prisons and detention centers into “death chambers,” the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs in Gaza said.

Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation, and other forms of abuse of Palestinian prisoners have been normalized across Zionist colony’s jail system, the ministry added.

PressTV report