Prisoners in Israel and Palestine

Both the Israeli Government and Hamas keep prisoners in conditions that violate human rights. This article presents some information on the way both sides treat people imprisoned as a consequence of their role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (This article does not deal with the imprisonment of Palestinian dissidents by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority nor Israeli dissidents by the Israeli government. It also does not deal with common criminals imprisoned for non-political actions.)

Hamas

Hamas holds one Israeli soldier as a prisoner, Gilad Shalit. He was captured in an ambush on an Israeli military post by Palestinian militants on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza on 25 June 2006. He was 19 at the time. During the morning attack, two Palestinian militants and two IDF soldiers were killed and three others wounded, aside from Shalit, who, reportedly, suffered a broken left hand and a light shoulder wound after his tank was hit with a Rocket propelled grenade (RPG).

Hamas authorities have refused requests from the Red Cross (ICRC) to allow visits by the ICRC.

On 25 June 2007, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem issued a statement saying "international humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force in order to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to harm or kill the person if the demands are not met", and thus holding Gilad Shalit as a hostage to their demands is a war crime. B'Tselem also notes that denying access to ICRC visitations is also a violation of international law.

Therefore, both the circumstances under which Shalit was captured and the manner of his incarceration are in violation of international humanitarian law. [1]

Israel

According to Amnesty International's 2009 country report on Israel and the Occupied Territories:

Hundreds of Palestinians, including scores of children, were detained by Israeli forces in the OPT and many were held incommunicado for prolonged periods. Most were later released without charge, but hundreds were charged with security-related offences and tried before military courts, whose procedures often failed to meet international standards for fair trial. Some 8,000 Palestinians arrested in 2008 or in previous years were still imprisoned at the end of the year. They included some 300 children and 550 people who were held without charge or trial under military administrative detention orders, including some who had been held for up to six years.

According to the BBC, by March 2008, more than 8,400 Palestinians were held by Israeli civilian and military authorities, of which 5,148 were serving sentences, 2,167 were facing legal proceedings and 790 were under administrative detention, often without charge or knowledge of the suspicions against them. [2]

There is long history of detaining Palestinians and holding them without trial. Between 1967 and According to the Guardian newspaper, approximately one-fifth of the population has at one time been imprisoned since 1967. [3]

Amnesty records some of the details of those arrested:

Salwa Salah and Sara Siureh, two 16-year-old girls, were arrested at night from their homes in June and were still held in administrative detention at the end of 2008.

Mohammed Khawajah, aged 12, was arrested by Israeli soldiers at his home in Ni’lin village at 3am on 11 September. He was beaten and detained with adults in an army detention camp until 15 September, when he was released on bail. He was charged with throwing stones at soldiers and sent for trial before a military court.

Dozens of Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament and ministers in the former Hamas-led PA government remained detained without trial, up to two years after their arrest. The Israeli authorities held them apparently to exert pressure on Hamas to release an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas’ armed wing since 2006.

The main prisons in which Palestinian prisoners apprehended by Israel are held are in the Ofer Prison in the West Bank and the Megiddo and Ketziot prisons in Israel. Amnesty explains, “Almost all Palestinian detainees were held in prisons in Israel in violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the removal of detainees to the territory of the occupying power. This made it difficult or impossible in practice for detainees to receive family visits.”

Other human rights violations of prisoners documented by Amnesty include:

• Some 900 Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip were denied any family visits for a second year.
• Reports of torture and other ill-treatment by the Israeli General Security Service (GSS) increased, especially during interrogation of Palestinians suspected of planning or involvement in armed attacks. Methods reported included prolonged tying in painful stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats to harm detainees’ families. Beatings and other ill-treatment of detainees were common during and following arrest and during transfer from one location to another. [4]

According to a report released on 14 October by the Israeli Human Rights groups Hamoked and B'tselem, “335 Palestinians [are] still being held without trial, 29 of them from 2-5 years continuously.” [5]

Israel has a prison called Facility 1391 that was a secret until 2003 when the Israeli Supreme Court ordered information about the prison to be made public. The Israeli Human Rights Group, Hamoked, wrote in court papers, “The detention conditions... are not proper for holding a human being, and are liable to cause physical and psychological injury, which may even be irreversible.” [6] In 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture requested that Israel identify the location of the camp and allow access to the Red Cross. [7]

Furthermore, the Committee has written:

Although the State party has indicated that the secret center of detention and interrogation called "Camp 1391" was not used since 2006 to interrogate or detain persons suspected of crimes related to security, the Committee notes with concern several appeals before the Supreme Court to inquire about this camp have been rejected and that the Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli authorities had acted reasonably in not only instigating investigations into allegations of torture, ill treatment and poor conditions of detention in this camp. The State party should ensure that in future no one is detained in secret detention facilities under the state authorities, the existence of secret detention centres constitute a per se violation of the Convention. The State party should investigate and know there are other detention centres of this type and under what authority they have been implemented. It should ensure that all allegations of torture and ill-treatment made by inmates of Camp 1391 [are investigated]. [8]

At a meeting hosted by Open Shuhada Street (OSS) in October 2009, at the Albow Centre in Cape Town, OSS was urged to publicly highlight Gilad Shalit's incarceration by Hamas. We promised to look into the matter and update our website accordingly. Shalit's imprisonment by Hamas is a grotesque violation of human rights. We condemn it unreservedly. Anyone with a basic sense of humanity would agree that Shalit should be released immediately. And until such time as that occurs, at least the Red Cross should be able to visit him.

Also, anyone with a basic sense of humanity would agree that Israel should end its policy of administrative detention, imprisonment of children, denial of family visits and, most importantly, torture of prisoners.

With regard to the accusation of bias against Open Shuhada Street it is worth pointing out the following:

A search of “Gilad Shalit” on Google returns about 724,000 hits. There is a website dedicated to securing his freedom and there is a detailed entry on him in Wikipedia. There is indeed a massive worldwide campaign to secure his freedom. OSS hereby adds our voice to this call.

A search of "Nidal Abu 'Aqer", a Palestinian detained without trial since March 2008 with a one month break, returns 1 hit.

A search of “Islam ‘Arafat Mustafa al-Hedmi” held in detention since 3 December 2007 returns 1 hit. The same pattern can be seen for the other prisoners detained in Israel without trial discussed in the Hamoked/B'tselem report.

It is quite possible that these two examples of Palestinian detainees were involved in violent activities. We do not know though because they have not been tried.

The most well-known Palestinian detained without trial is probably Mohammad Othman, an outspoken activist, imprisoned for his non-violent resistance over a month ago. There are 128,000 Google hits on his name and he also has a Wikipedia entry. It is in Norwegian. A campaign for his freedom has recently begun. It is not nearly as well organised or well-known as the campaign for Shalit's release. (Shalit has of course been incarcerated for much longer.)

References:

[1] ICRC. 2008. Gaza: still no ICRC access to Gilad Shalit. http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/israel-interview-111208

[2] Who are the Mid-East prisoners: Palestinian prisoners BBC News. 2008-03-31 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5211930.stm

[3] “Israel releases 198 Palestinian prisoners”, The Guardian, Tuesday August 26 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/26/israelandthepalestinians1

[4] Amnesty International. 2009. Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/israel-occupied-territories/report-2009

[5] Hamoked. 2009. Israel’s policy of detention without trial is illegal. http://www.hamoked.org/

[6] BBC. 2003. Israel court lifts prison secrecy. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3255396.stm

[7] Cook, Jonathan. 2009. How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have? http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15111

[8] Convention contre la torture et autres peines ou traitements cruels, inhumains ou dégradants. 2009. Examen des rapports soumis par les etats parties in application de l'article 19 de la convention. (translated from French to English using translate.google.com) http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/CAT.C.ISR.CO.4_fr.pdf