SIPPING sweet aromatic coffee in a community that Israel would rather didn’t exist, a 10-year-old walks into the room brandishing a bullet. The child’s older brother calmly takes it from his hands, and their mother resumes her tale of life under occupation.

The bravest woman I have ever met is explaining how she strives to bring her children up to understand right from wrong in a social landscape where the powerful act with impunity.

It was three years ago when her 17-year-old son, then 14, was shot in the leg by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). It is not just the injury that disables, so does living with the knowledge that your parents can’t protect you and that the conscripted teenage soldiers who harass, maim and kill will never be held accountable for their actions.

In the week I was there, a further six youths from the same village, Nabi Saleh, have been shot in the legs by the IDF.

Nabi Saleh is a small community of 600 people, this tiny enclave has hit international headlines due to the weekly ritual of violence between the rock-throwing residents and the heavily armed IDF.

The IDF regularly use live ammo against the villagers, two have been killed by soldiers over the past three years, to date no-one has been prosecuted. Over 10 per cent of the villagers in Nabi Saleh have been permanently disabled by the IDF.

It isn’t the live rounds of ammunition fired by the IDF, or even the tear gas thrown into residents’ homes that causes the most damage to the community; it’s the terror faced by families who live with the knowledge that every night, their children could be woken by soldiers in their bedrooms.

Sometimes to enter without sparking resistance from the village, the IDF attach devices to silently pop front door locks. The first a family knows is when they are woken by scared and heavily armed teenagers shouting in Hebrew.

Once this happens, it is perhaps unsurprising that sleep ever after is disturbed. A small mercy, thanks to the British government, the families of those arrested are now sometimes given a slip of paper detailing where their loved ones have been taken to.

What strikes me as most chilling about this gross abuse of human rights is that the terror created is meticulously planned. The Israeli state ensures that from the simple supply of civil amenities (the village has access to water for 12 hours each week) to the might of the IDF, Palestinians exist knowing that their lives are worth less than those of their Israeli neighbours.

At present around 200 men, women and children from Nabi Saleh have been detained in Israeli jails. The case of Nabi Saleh is just one example of a pattern of injustice across the West Bank. Although the settlements have been declared illegal under international law, the IDF has been charged with protecting the squatter residents.

The most efficient way to do this is to show Palestinians that any opposition to the annexation of their water, farms or houses is futile, and the most powerful weapon available to the IDF is the family bond.

Israeli intelligence and armed forces strategically target the children in the communities in the vicinity of illegal settlements, typically those within a two-mile radius.

As with the family of my host, children are arrested at night, at gunpoint and taken without family members or lawyers.

After being transported on the floor of trucks, many are left for hours without food, sleep, water or toilet breaks before being aggressively interrogated and coerced into signing confessions in Hebrew, which few understand.

After such treatment, it is really no surprise that around 95 pr cent are convicted in Israeli courts. This is of course heralded by the Israeli government as evidence of the efficacy of the judicial system.

It is not just the legal processes that are wielded as weapons, the laws themselves are starkly biased. For example, it is illegal for Palestinians to wear gas masks for “security.” What parent would want to let their children out of the house, let alone take part in demonstrations themselves, when a rock thrown by one frustrated teenager can cause such ripples through an entire community?

Palestinian children who are imprisoned are traumatised by the experience. Education in prisons is patchy and often on their return, children fail to return to school and find it impossible to reintegrate into the routines and rituals of daily life.

Of course, detention of children is illegal under international law, and as a wider point, the disregard Israel shows for international law from the Geneva Convention to the UN Rights of the Child has set a dangerous global precedent.

Once a Palestinian of any age has left detention, be that years in prison or days in jail, they will be treated by the community with an understandable suspicion.

Becoming an informer is often offered as a way to reduce sentences or indeed secure the work permits necessary to pursue a career or education. It is estimated that there are between 20,000 and 100,000 Palestinians who collaborate with the Israeli intelligence force Shin Bet. Given the poverty and limited life chances for most Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, this is a perhaps an understandable if perfidious move.

To the West it might seem reminiscent of Islamist extremism, but terming ex-detainees “martyrs” offers a desperate pride to the families affected.

As a feminist, I loathe machismo that celebrates acts of violence but in a patriarchal society scarred by occupation, it is perhaps understandable. It is an effort to regain some of the standing that is stripped away by the humiliation of living under occupation.

In a conflict where children committing minor acts of civil disobedience is termed “terrorism” and a threat to the state, their own communities celebrating them as martyrs is perhaps not so strange.

Returning to the sultry afternoon in the sitting room of our host in Nabi Saleh, she returns her phone to the table after taking a call. I politely enquire whether everything is OK, she lightly replies that yes, it’s OK; the IDF have just shot another teenager.