A Bedouin child looks from a window at a kindergarten in Hameda village near the West Bank city of Hebron. (Haytham Othman, Maan Images)

With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military.

The Israeli group B'Tselem said that security forces had "severely violated" the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months.

The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities. The teenager, Al-Hasan Muhtaseb, described how he had been interrogated without a lawyer late into the night, forced to confess to throwing stones, made to sign a confession in Hebrew that he couldn't read, jailed with adults and brought before a military court. He was only released on bail eight days later, after considerable legal effort by several human rights groups. As he had signed a confession, he still faces a possible indictment for throwing stones – a charge that usually brings several months in jail but carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' jail.

Although most international attention focuses on diplomatic sparring in the Middle East, it is cases such as this teenager's arrest that are the reality for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. The surprise about the teenager's experience is not that it is exceptional, but that it is a common occurrence.

As of the end of February, 343 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli prisons, according to Defence for Children International (DCI), which took up the Muhtaseb case. Israel routinely prosecutes Palestinian children as young as 12 and the Israeli legal system treats Palestinians as adults when they turn 16, but Israelis become adults only at 18. Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children are "widespread, systematic and institutionalised", DCI said in a report last year.

Al-Hasan Muhtaseb was arrested early in the afternoon as he and his 10-year-old brother Amir were walking home through Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, after visiting their aunt.

"Two soldiers came to us and told us: 'Come over here.' We went to them," said Al-Hasan, a slight boy, neatly dressed, who barely looks his 13 years. "They took my brother and I don't know where they took him. I was sent inside the station and I never saw him after that."

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