What does it feel like to be led away from your home by a soldier, while blindfolded?

What happens when a military occupation looms over an entire childhood?

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest.

Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper.

After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

From the moment of arrest, Palestinian children encounter ill-treatment and torture at the hands of Israeli forces. Three out of four experience physical violence during arrest or interrogation.

Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children in military courts each year.

Ill-treatment in the Israeli military detention system remains “widespread, systematic, and institutionalized throughout the process,” according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report Children in Israeli Military Detention Observations and Recommendations.

Recent amendments to Israeli military law concerning children have had little to no impact on their treatment during the first 24 to 48 hours after an arrest, when most of the ill-treatment occurs at the hands of Israeli soldiers, police, and the security service.

International juvenile justice standards, which Israel has obliged itself to implement by ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, demand that children should only be deprived of their liberty as a measure of last resort and include universal prohibitions against physical violence and torture among other protections. Despite these obligations Israeli authorities persistently disregard and fail to comply with international law.

Fawzi J., 16, from the southern West Bank city Hebron was subjected to Israeli military arrest on December 7, 2017, amid a widespread crackdown on protesters after U.S. President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. During the course of his detention, Israeli forces repeatedly assaulted him, both physically and verbally. DCIP lawyers represented him and worked to get Fawzi medical treatment for an injury sustained during detention.

Detaining Dreams features the stories of four Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system.

» Click here to download a study guide for "Detaining Dreams"

Night Raid is a photo exhibition curated by photojournalist Richard Cahan from photos he took during a visit to the occupied West Bank in 2013. Concerned by the impact of Israeli military night raids on Palestinian communities, Cahan decided to conduct his own photographic "night raid."