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Children as young as 12 are
detained and put on trial. |
With
approximately 20% of the Palestinian population having been in Israeli
detention at one or more times, you would be hard pressed to find an
unaffected Palestinian family. While Westerners decry the continuing
detention of one Israeli soldier in Gaza, they conveniently overlook the
fact that many thousands of Palestinians have been held captive by
Israel for decades. Many are held without trial in what is known as
“administrative detention” and are not even given access to the Israeli
justice system, let alone held under conditions which would satisfy
international law.
Over 8000 Prisoners
When
even Israeli human rights organizations complain of difficulties in
obtaining statistics from Israeli official sources as to the exact
numbers of Palestinians held, it is hard for foreign journalists to
track down updated statistics. According to Israeli NGO Btselem, in January of 2006 over 8200
Palestinians were held in Israeli custody. This figure could be broken
down further as follows: 3,111 held by the army (of whom
741 were in administrative detention), and 5,127 in
Israeli prisons (53 in administrative detention). Others quote
the figures as higher, and it should also include those Palestinian
political prisoners who hold Israeli passports. Israeli citizenship does
not provide freedom of political speech for many Palestinian
citizens.
According to the Palestinian
Prisoner’s Society in March 2005 (cited by Samar Assad, Palestine
Center, USA), 19 prisoners were serving sentences of 20 years, and 140
serving 15 years or more. A report from the PNA Ministry of Detainees
and Ex-Prisoner’s Affairs notes that 400 of these prisoners were
sentenced before the Oslo Accords; the agreement supposedly secured
their release.
Administrative
Detention
|
Women are forced to strip
naked in front of guards, many of whom are male, and are subjected
to brutal body searches. |
What
exactly is administrative detention? Imprisonment without trial – or
continued imprisonment after serving a sentence. Israeli Military Order
No. 1229 (1988) empowers the military to detain Palestinians in the
Occupied Territories for up to six months without trial, and this can be
frequently renewed. Judges make decisions regarding detention orders
based on material that is reviewed in secret and not shown to detainee
or lawyer (a policy which is becoming disturbingly acceptable in a post
9/11 Western world).
Administrative detention is nothing
new for Palestinians – it has been used by the Israelis since the
establishment of the state, first within the territories occupied in
1948 for the few Palestinians able to remain as Israeli citizens, and
then from 1967 to keep an iron rule over the West Bank and Gaza. As a
British writer I am obliged to note that Emergency Regulations, which
empower Israeli forces to make such arrests, originate in Mandate laws
designed to keep both Arabs and Jews from overthrowing the British
colonial occupation. Under the British regime, Jewish Zionists in
Palestine complained bitterly about the violation of their basic rights
by the occupiers. However, as soon as they seized power, they decided to
make use of such “emergency” or “security” regulations, but only for
Arabs.
Children
|
Over 3000 children have been
to Israeli jails since September
2000. |
Defence of Children International (DCI) gives the most recent
statistic: As of last month (June 2006) there were 388 Palestinian
children in Israeli detention. Many hundreds more prisoners are now
adults, but were originally detained as children. The PNA Ministry says
that over 3000 children have been through Israeli jails since September
2000, the majority held only for allegedly throwing stones. According to
Israeli law, children should be 16 before being charged and sentenced,
but in practice those are young as 12 are put on trial.
Israel’s policy towards juveniles
not only violates its own law, but international law which stipulates
that a person does not become an adult until reaching 18. Israel does
not only limit itself to teenagers. In the past weeks (May 2006) DCI has
reported a West Bank child as young as five years old snatched from his
father’s arms and held in detention for six and half hours – allegedly
for throwing stones.
Systematic Torture and
Abuse
|
85%
of Palestinians report systematic
abuse. |
Both
Palestinian and international human rights organizations have documented
Israel’s routine use of torture; a form of humiliation and wearing down
the detainee. About 85% of Palestinians report systematic abuse
including handcuffing in contorted positions, severe beating, solitary
confinement and abhorrent practices such as placing of faeces covered
sacks over the head of the prisoner.
Standards in Israeli prisons do not
meet with the most basic human rights law, which calls for medical
attention for prisoners. Take the case of Suleiman Darigeh, a 53 year
old from Taybeh in the West Bank. Darigeh reported chest pains to the
authorities in Hasharon Prison on April 25th and asked to see the prison
doctor. Instead of a proper medical examination, the prison doctor
merely gave him a pain killer and returned him to his cell. He died in
the night, the thirteenth prisoner to die in custody since the start of
the second Intifada.
While the vast majority of
prisoners are men, over 100 women are detained by Israel, and since
September 2000 there have been at least two births in Israeli custody.
While men have also reported forms of sexual torture in jail, women
prisoners are particularly vulnerable to this as a form of humiliation
by their captors. Women are forced to strip naked in front of guards,
many of whom are male, and subjected to brutal body searches. Many women
prisoners have detailed sexual assault by Israeli military and prison
staff. On some occasions women are detained as a way of threatening or
putting pressure on a male member of the family.
Long-Term Effects on Palestinian
Society
The
long-term impact of such a massive scale of detentions cannot be
underestimated. The fact that the PNA has a ministry especially for
detainees and ex-prisoners demonstrates the cause for concern. Staff
from the Gaza Community Mental
Health Project, for example, report overwhelming
numbers of people who are suffering from long-term damage of torture and
incarceration. How can NGOs and a government that are failing to cope
with the immediate trauma of military attack, unemployment and poverty
even begin to deal with the psychological effects on prisoners and their
families during and after time in captivity?
Unlike members of the Israeli army,
the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners held had not even resorted to
engaging in violence to solve the conflict.
