DR. SHAKEEL SAMDANI discusses violation of human rights of Palestinians by Israeli security forces in particular and the Israeli government in general, and says that Israel has indulged in blatant misdemeanours and breaches of international human rights norms and treaties to which Israel is party and signatory.
The evil deeds committed by the Zionist Jews against the Palestinian Arabs were comparable to crime committed against Jews by the Nazis.
– Prof. Arnold Toynbee
Broadly speaking, human rights may be regarded as fundamental and inalienable rights, which are essential for life as human beings. Human Rights are the rights which are possessed by every human being, irrespective of his or her nationality, race, religion, sex, etc., simply because he or she is a human being. Human rights are thus the rights, which are inherent in our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings. Human rights and fundamental freedoms allow us to fully develop and use our human qualities, our intelligence, our talents, and our conscience and to satisfy our physical, spiritual and other needs. “Human rights are sometimes called fundamental rights or basic rights or natural rights. As fundamental or basic rights they are the rights, which cannot, rather must not be taken away by legislation or any act of government and which are often set out in constitution. As natural rights they are seen as belonging to men and women by their very nature. They may also be described as ‘common rights’ which all men and women in the world would share just as the common law in England, for example, was the body of rules and customs which, unlike local customs, governed the whole country.
The Intifada, which started in 1988 by the helpless and frustrated Palestinians, has given the security forces an excuse to blatantly violate the human rights of the hapless Palestinians. Not only the security forces but Israeli “under cover units” have killed many Palestinians since 1988. The Palestinians political leaders and activist were expelled to Jordan or Lebanon during the first Intifada. Today, they are simply murdered by Israeli death squads. The death squads are not new but their use was relatively rare in the past. According to Israel’s human rights group B’Tselem, Israeli “undercover units” killed only five Palestinians in 1988, 25 in 1989 and a total of 114 in the seven years up to the signing of Oslo Accords in September 1993. Compare this with more than 50 people in less than a year in the present uprising, with an additional 11 bystanders killed as a result of these murderous attacks.
Almost everyone of Israel’s brutal policies from the first Intifada has an even more brutal corollary. Then, tens of thousands of Palestinians were detained in giant desert prison camps like Ansar II, Ansar III and Ketsiot, where torture and abuse were normal. Now, though thousands of Palestinians remain in Israeli jails the occupation army does not bother to haul people for throwing stones or spraying anti-occupation graffiti. Rather Israel has simply turned every city and town in the occupied territories into giant prisons. Israel now holds nearly three million people behind fences, walls and trenches in 63 separate enclaves, cut off from food, work and each other, and unable to move without serious risks to their lives. Every Palestinian child born in the occupied territory today is born in a prison.
The Israeli brutality does not end here. There continues to be about 11,000 Palestinians and Arab prisoners in Israeli Jails and Detention centres and tens of political prisoners inside Palestinian prisons. Palestinian as well as other Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons were hoping to be released after the Oslo agreement which was signed between the PLO and the Israeli government in 1993. In spite of the fact that 14 years have passed since the signing of the agreement there continue to be a large number of prisoners in the Israeli prisons and detention centres, some of whom have been incarcerated for tens of years. One example of such a prisoner is Hamad Jabra, who spent 22 years in Israeli prisons and others who have long imprisonment sentences. The Lebanon’s prisoner Sameer Qintar spent 23 years in Nafhah prison as well as other Arab prisoners from the 1948 area and Jerusalem also suffer from health condition.
One of the dangerous violations committed by Israel against detainees is solitary confinement in harsh condition that causes physical and psychological damage. The detainees in solitary confinement are separated from their surroundings in a way that exceeds the limits and violates the rights given in the international and local rules and regulations. Solitary confinement is a vengeful punishment in particular because its period is not limited and can reach years. This procedure requires placing a prisoner in a cell alone; the cell does not have humane living conditions. There are some of the cases of long years of solitary confinement.
Mahmood Mahajani spent more than seven years in solitary confinement. He was released on September 9, 1999.
Najib Ide’es has been in solitary confinement for five years.
Ahmad Shukri has been in solitary confinement for four years.
There are many other cases of more than two years of solitary confinement such as the case of Mahmood Atwan, Majid Abu Qtaish, Muhammad Taqatqa and Hasan Salami. Prisoners can end up in solitary cells for problems that occur at any time in the different prisons. The prison administration takes several procedures of punishment against prisoners in solitary confinement such as depriving them from having a recess, family visits or from buying things from the prison canteen etc. The British correspondent quoted in his report, which was broadcast on June 16, 1993 by the BBC, Ahmad Al-Batsh, a Palestinian detainee, as saying that the Israeli investigators told him that he will meet the same fate as was met by two other detainees who had succumbed to acts of torture in the prison. Al Batsh said he would never in all his life forget what the Israeli investigator told him and that was:
You will not get out from here in the same condition as you come … you will either go mad or get paralysed or die.
Al Batsh says that all through the 80 days of his detention he remained handcuffed and tied to a small chair in the most uncomfortable posture. Dr. Ayad-Al Seraj, director, Health Centre, Gaza who recently released a report about acts of torture in the Israeli prisons, commented on it by saying that it was a routine affair. He further said the detainees remain in such conditions for days together and are subjected to harassment and non-access to food besides solitary confinements, beatings, exposure to continuous din, fright and threats of killing and paralysing. If they service these, they are sent to solitary cells where they are exposed to intense cold or heat.
The British correspondent presented another case before the Israeli minister. It was the case of detention of a Palestinian journalist Tahir Shrihta, who narrated his tail of woo and horror and said that the Israeli investigator put him in solitary confinement for 11 days in a cell 1.5 mt. x 80cm.
“I was not given any food for 4 days….
I did not go to the toilet and they forced me to urinate in the dungeon itself”.
The Israeli minister commented upon this by saying:
I do not think that food was not served to him for 4 days … It is a lie … you may have been perhaps impressed by it but he lied to you.
The Israeli lawyer, Walecia Langer, who became famous for her defence of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, called upon the world communities to exert pressure on Israel in order to compel it to respond to the United Nations resolution and to contribute to brining in peace in the Middle East. Langer, who called a press conference to talk about, recently released a book entitled Anger and Hope: Palestinian peoples’ journey under occupation, called upon Palestinians and all peace loving forces locally, to organise big campaigns to remind the world that Israel still refuses to implement more than 66 resolutions from among U.N. resolutions pertaining to the right of Palestinian people to self determination and to set up a home land of their own.
The Prison’s department has located special sections for solitary confinement in different prisons and in 1999 the main section for solitary confinement was in Bir-Al-Sabiya prison in addition to solitary confinement cells allocated to prisons where prisoners are held from time to time. A new section for solitary confinement was opened in October 1999 at Telmond prison called ‘Hadarim’. It consists of 40 rooms that can accommodate 80 prisoners, with each room for two prisoners.
Up to August 2003, there were about 13000 Palestinians in Israeli custody for political reasons – there were also 4000 common criminals, out of which 350 prisoners were released as a goodwill gesture by Israel on August 6, 2003. B.B.C. has provided the figures of detainees of Israeli forces. As many as 5,600 are categorised as Palestinian security inmates, 2,420 as serving sentences, 2650 awaiting trial, 530 administrative detainees, 1500 + with blood on hands.
A category of prisoners was those considered to have ‘blood on their hand’; Israel’s term for people allegedly involved in fatal attacks against Israelis.Other categories of prisoners are easier to establish; about 75 are women and 360 boys are under the age of 18 who, controversially, are sometime kept among the adult population. The Prison Service says that of 2700 security prisoners, about 1250 are being held on remand and 1450 have been convicted. The IDF (Army) holds 2900 prisoners, including 970 who have been convicted and 1400 on remand or arrested on Judge’s order. There are also at least 530 administrative detainees in IDF custody, who are held without charge or trial for renewable six months term.
Administrative detention is a system revived from British Mandate times (before Israel was established in 1948) and has drawn harsh condemnation from the Human Rights Watchdog who says it is illegal and arbitrary.
Palestinian lawyers’ NGO ‘aI-Haq’ says even when detainees are tried, the Israeli military authorities responsible for administering justice in the occupied territories overlook the standards of fair trails on several levels. Alleged violations include depriving detainees of proper representation by counsels, the use of confidential evidence not disclosed to counsels and giving evidence briefing in Hebrew without access to translation.
Human Rights Watch says 4500 Palestinians arrested in massive military sweep through the West Bank in March-April 2002 were subjected to widespread ill-treatment such as kicking, beating, squalid conditions, and deprivation of food and drinking. But the most controversial issue remains Israel’s reported use of physical and psychological pressure during interrogations of prisoners, a practice internationally condemned as torture by the United Nations as well as human rights groups.
Israel’s High Court outlawed the use of what was termed “moderate physical pressure” of prisoners in September 1999, but the Public Committee against Torture in Israel says interrogators have gradually reverted to techniques that amount torture but Israel defends its interrogation techniques as it defends whole edifice of legal and penal mechanisms it uses in relation to the Palestinians – as a legitimate way of combating terrorism faced by its citizens.
Such is the enormity of the issue that an entire ministry of the Palestinian Government is dedicated to the prisoners’ affairs, spending an estimating 3 to 4 million dollar a month in support of them, be it legal fees or maintenance for families whose bread winners have been jailed. According to a report on arabmediawatch.com, almost every Palestinian family is affected directly or indirectly. A report prepared by the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs in July 2006 states that “7,00,000 Palestinian have been arrested since 1967, and almost 50,000 since the second uprising of 2000. According to arabmediawatch.com, up to June 29, 2007 some 9,850 were being held in some 30 prisons and detention centres in Israel and the occupied territories of these, 105 were women and 359 children.
Undoubtedly some are imprisoned for crimes committed, but the real issue centres on the arbitrary detention in inhuman conditions and without trial of people who are denied basic human rights and due process. All are held either by military or in Israeli prisons, and many are in administrative detention i.e. without trial and by administrative order, not judicial decree that has been a constant feature in occupied territories. The most recent figure (October, 2006) from administrative detainees stands at 703 according to Israel Human Rights group, B’Tselem.
Conditions are of particular concern given that the Israeli Prison Ordinance (revised in 1971) consists of 114 clauses, but contains no clause or sub-clause defining ‘prisoners rights’. The Ordinance provides a legally binding set of rules for the Minister of Interior, but the Minister formulates these rules himself by administrative decree. There is no prisoner’s minimum standard of life.
In Israel, it is, for example, legally permissible to intern 20 inmates in a cell no larger than 5 metres long, 4 metres wide and 3 metres high. This space includes an open lavatory, and prisoners may be confined indefinitely to such cells for 23 hours a day.
Torture is another highly contentious issue, since it had been commonly used in General Security Service interrogations for years but referred to as ‘moderate, physical pressure”. The methods included violent shaking; binding the detainees in painful positions, sleep deprivation, physical threats, humiliation, and covering the head with a foul-smelling sack. (Arabmediawatch.com, January 29, 2007.)
Following an in-depth study in 2003 entitled “Palestinian Detainees: Inhuman Conditions of Detention”, the International Federation for Human Rights asserts that “the Supreme Court still authorises the use of torture” on the basis of “legitimate defence”, pointing out that one who uses torture needs only to justify his reasons for doing so. In practice, the report continues, “It is legal, therefore, to torture, under certain conditions, in Israel.” (p.20)
The report highlights 11 conventions and international texts adopted by the UN General Assembly regarding the treatment of arrested individuals and prisoners that Israel has ratified, and of which it also in flagrant violation.
The Charter of the United Nations represents a significant advancement so far as faith in and respect of human rights is concerned. The signing of the United Nations Charter marked the formal realisation that human rights are a matter of international concern. One of the purposes for which the United Nations was founded was “to achieve international cooperation in solving international problem of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion, whilst Article 55 and 56 charged the United Nations and member states with achieving among other things, “Universal respect for, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language and religion.” Moreover the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1984, etc., all guarantee the protection of human rights.
It is clear from the above that the observance of these laws is mandatory for the states that have signed the UN Charter and are the members of international community.
Despite the above provisions in law it is clear that the Israeli government, with the help of its security forces and the police, has been consistently violating the human rights of Palestinians. They have even increased their inhuman and brutal activities in the recent past. They have not cared and still not taking care for observing the U.N. Charter, different Conventions, Treaties and Protocols, which are equally applied to signatories and non-signatories to these Conventions, etc. Even the brutalities of the Israeli forces have not reduced the risk to their lives, and the risk is increasing day by day.
Still there is a time that the United Nations and the powerful nations of the world must not only apply their mind honestly and get a just solution of the Palestine Problem but also wake up and take notice of these violations. Their just action would be the first step to resolution of this age-old dispute. With the coming of President Barrack Obama in the White House one may hope that he would have something to say and possibly do something to restore peace in the region considering the fact that he has already set a time limit for the closure of the detention centres at Guantanamo Bay. A similar step in this area would certainly be welcomed.
[DR. SHAKEEL SAMDANI is Associate Professor, Department of Law, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh and President Sir Syed Awareness Forum. E-mail: shakeel.samdani@yahoo.co.in]