By Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 23 (IPS) – New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has sent urgent letters to Palestinian leaders in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, urging them to commute the death sentences of 11 Palestinians currently awaiting execution.
The death-row inmates, including one who was a juvenile at the time of his conviction, were sentenced this year by Palestinian military and state security courts. Two of the inmates received trials that lasted just one day.
Joe Stork, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, appealed to Gaza’s Hamas leader, and de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to urgently review the cases.
Under Palestinian law the penalties have to be either ratified or commuted by the PA president before they can be carried out.
“It’s deeply disturbing that Palestinian courts have resumed issuing death sentences at a time when the rest of world is moving toward abolishing capital punishment,” said Stork.
“President Abbas should make clear that he will commute all of these sentences when they arrive on his desk. Palestinian officials should announce an immediate moratorium on the death penalty and eliminate its use in Palestinian law.”
In separate letters to the Palestinian leaders, HRW also expressed concern about one of the defendants, Sa’id Jameel Zuhod, who was 17 when he together with three adults was found guilty of murdering and raping a child in Gaza in 2003.
In 2004 a Palestinian lower court sentenced Zuhod to life imprisonment on grounds of his youth. However, the Gaza Court of Appeals overturned this in 2005 and sentenced him to death. The sentence was upheld by the Gaza Court of Cassation in October this year.
HRW argued that if Zuhod’s execution goes ahead, the Palestinian territories will join the notorious club of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen in being the only governments to have executed juvenile offenders since 2005. Iran is the only country to have executed juveniles since 2007.
International human rights law prohibits the death penalty for all crimes committed by persons under age 18 at the time of the offence. Furthermore, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) puts stringent restrictions on when the death penalty can be used in cases involving adults.
The Palestinian Penal Code allows courts in the West Bank to impose the death penalty for 17 separate offences. In the Gaza Strip, 15 offences are subject to the death penalty.
According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PHRC), Palestinian law justifying the death sentence is based on the Jordanian Penal Code which applies to the West Bank and the Egyptian Penal Code which applies to Gaza. This followed the two countries’ occupation of the two respective territories following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
In addition to these two laws the application of the death penalty was reinforced by the Revolutionary Penal Law of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) of 1979.
However, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has not ratified this law, especially as it relates to Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel.
Many Palestinians who were sentenced to death by Palestinian courts or those who were arbitrarily executed, vigilante-style, by members of the resistance organisations were accused of treason by collaborating with Israeli death squads.
Despite the harsh attitude towards those accused of treason, the Angus Reid Global Monitor carried out a survey several years ago and found two-thirds of Palestinians reject the use of capital punishment.
The last time a Palestinian court sentenced someone to death or carried out an execution was in 2005. From 1994 to 2005 the PA issued 74 death sentences, some of which were commuted.
Israeli rights group B’tselem says that Palestinian military and state security courts, which pass many of the sentences, do not meet international standards of fairness before an independent and impartial court, in addition to violating human rights.
The courts are further accused of carrying out summary trials while the accused are denied access to effective legal counsel.
The late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat issued a presidential decree which established the state security courts without determining their mandates or the nature of the cases to be considered.
In 2001, in an attempt to partially overcome fierce international criticism for the application of the death penalty under its jurisdiction, the PA passed the Penal Procedures Law of 2001.
This enabled a condemned person to appeal the death sentence within 15 days of being sentenced. If this was rejected by the appeal court, the case would be referred to the PA president.
However, this new law didn’t preclude previous state security court death sentences, without the right to appeal, being carried out.
The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) stated that Abbas followed the new law with a decree issued in 2005 requesting all death sentences before the notorious state security courts be re-tried before civilian courts. However, WCADP notes that this decree has not been followed through and that death sentences continue to be declared in “conditions that contravene both international standards and Palestinian national legislation.”
The Palestinian territories do not constitute a sovereign state and neither Palestinian leadership are signatories to international human rights treaties. However, HRW points out that both Hamas and the PA committed themselves to upholding international law in regard to human rights. (END/2008)
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Peace and Justice Post 
Inside Gaza: ‘The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside’
December 28, 2008By Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza city
The Independent, UK, Sunday, 28 December 2008
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I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father’s house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.
Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighbourhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception. All I could do was step outside, where I found crowds of frantic people, lines of rising smoke and the smell of charred buildings and bodies that lay around targeted sites nearby. Somebody said the bombs had been launched in parallel raids over the entire Gaza Strip. What was the target here? Perhaps a police station about 200 metres away. Other bombs annihilated blocks less than a kilometre away, where one of the main police training centres stood. When the strikes began, a graduation ceremony for more than 100 recruits in a civil law enforcement programme was under way. These were the young men trained to organise traffic, instil civil safety and maintain law and order. Many of them were killed, it is said, in addition to the Gaza Strip’s police chief.
News came by word of mouth. There had been more than 150 deaths and more than 200 people were injured or missing under rubble after the first two hours of bombing. Israel had said it would continue the offensive and deepen it if necessary. Likewise, it was said that Hamas had launched more rockets at southern Israeli towns, causing one death and four injuries. Gaza had never seen anything like the numbers of dead bodies lying on its streets. Hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.
Bombs targeting a Hamas security force building badly damaged an adjacent school, and several children were injured. We heard of many other targets around the Gaza Strip. It reminds me of the “shock and awe” campaign the Allies launched over Baghdad in 2003. But shock and awe did not bring stability or peace.
These bombs were launched by Israel, as we had known they would be. The world watched the situation simmer then boil over, but did nothing. There are some who believe that hell is divided into different classes. The ordinary people of Gaza have long been caught in the tormenting underworld. Now, if the world does not heed what has happened here, our situation will worsen. We will be trapped in the first class of hell.
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