At 2 A.M. Monday morning, Border Police came to a home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiyah, seeking to arrest one of the family’s sons, a 16-year-old suspected of terrorist activity whose nature is still not clear.

There are certain discrepancies between the family’s version of what happened in the house and that of the police. Police claim that the troops were attacked by the parents, while the parents claim that the masked policemen refused to identify themselves and assaulted family members. But there is no disagreement about what happened afterward: Following a brief confrontation the entire family, including D., age two-and-a-half, was taken away by the policemen, shoeless and still in their pajamas.

For some four hours the family was left, restrained, in the parking lot of a Border Police base in Jerusalem. The oldest son was held in a prone position, face down, while the rest of the family was handcuffed. The mother’s hands, which were holding D., were free, but her legs were in restraints.

D. was given to his grandfather only after four hours. It was another 12 hours until his mother and the other family members (other than the 16-year-old suspect) were released.

According to national police regulations, when there’s a need to arrest an adult who is responsible for a child, an ill person or a disabled person, the responsible officer must make sure that contact is made with “the appropriate person to take over [the dependent’s] care.”

But as with many other sections of Israeli law, this one doesn’t seem to apply to East Jerusalem. Just as in East Jerusalem minors are not always questioned by juvenile crime investigators, the regulations regarding the use of sponge-tipped bullets are not always followed, and the rights of those arrested and of their children are not consistently upheld.

Over the past two years Isawiyah has become one of the most highly fraught zones of confrontation between Israeli security forces and Jerusalem Palestinians. In the face of the incessant violence, the Israel Police must take extra care to uphold the rights of Palestinian residents and observe the boundaries of the law. This is not only a legal and moral requirement; there is also a security logic to it.

Police officers in Jerusalem must also think about the day after the arrest, and what is being engraved on the heart of D. and his siblings when they’ll remember their night in the police base parking lot, next to their restrained parents.