JERUSALEM -- Heavily armed Israeli police dragged the Dana brothers from their home before dawn, tossed them in armored jeeps and hauled them in for interrogation, the Palestinian boys and their father told The Associated Press.
While Israel has long relied on night raids like this to nab Palestinian militants who seek to kill Israelis, the Dana brothers didn't fit the bill. Their alleged crime: throwing stones. Their ages: 14 and 16.
In a report released Monday, the Israeli rights group B'Tselem says the youths' arrest is part of an Israeli campaign targeting Palestinian minors - one just 5 years old - for stone throwing in east Jerusalem. It says police often arrest minors from their homes in the middle of the night and interrogate them, sometimes with no parent present, in ways that violate Israeli law.
Israeli police say the arrests are not only legal but necessary to stamp out stone throwing, which often targets police or Jewish settlers. It's especially common in parts of east Jerusalem, where tensions run high between Palestinian residents and Israeli police, settlers and their security guards.
"As soon as the law is broken and as soon as people are attacked, we will respond very quickly by making arrests," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
The fate of east Jerusalem is the most sensitive issue in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel captured the area in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it, a move the international community has not recognized. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
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