ABU DHABI—The abuse of Palestinian children working on Israeli settlement farms in the occupied West Bank is a human rights matter that has to be taken up very seriously by the international community, according to a UAE newspaper editorial.
"Human Rights Watch has reported that minors sometimes worked more than 60 hours a week in hot temperatures picking and spraying vegetables," the Gulf said in a recent editorial.
The paper said hundreds of children, some as young as 11, have been working for low wages and in pathetic conditions on settler farms in the Israeli-occupied sector of the Jordan Valley.
The paper said many of the children suffered cuts and injuries from sharp knives and machinery, and some suffered from vomiting and dizziness after spraying pesticides with little protection.
The rights group has highlighted that children from communities impoverished by Israel’s discrimination and settlement policies are also dropping out of school and taking on dangerous work especially because they feel that they have no other alternative.
"In order to protect the innocent Palestinian children suffering at the hands of the occupation forces, the US and Europe should exclude settlement produce from the preferential tariffs provided to Israeli export products. Israel should also be forced to end its condemnable practice of administrative detentions," concluded the Sharjah-based daily. -end-
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