By Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 17 (IPS) – Israel released over 200 Palestinians from Israeli jails in a “goodwill gesture” Monday. This followed the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha and was an attempt to boost the waning popularity of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Several prisoners spoke to the assembled local and international media about their time in detention. They accused the Israelis of maltreating and physically abusing detainees despite Israeli claims that torture and the abuse of prisoners have been outlawed and no longer occur.
Most of the detainees were Fatah members, the movement associated with Abbas and the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
Some belonged to smaller Palestinian resistance groups such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
While Israel’s “goodwill gesture” was much touted by the Israeli media, the majority of the prisoners were mostly small-time political detainees, who were due for release fairly shortly, having already served most of their sentences.
Many were teenagers when imprisoned and none were convicted of injuring or killing Israelis.
As negotiations were under way for the release of the 227 prisoners, hundreds more Palestinians were arrested by Israeli security forces.
The move was widely seen as an effort to boost Abbas’s floundering PA. The PA is currently engaged in a political battle against the rival Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.
Hostility between the two main Palestinian political factions is rising as the end of Abbas’s term nears.
Abbas stated he would not step down, while Hamas said it would no longer recognise his authority after Jan. 9, when his term ends.
The released detainees were greeted by tearful family members, friends and hundreds of supporters who crowded into Ramallah’s presidential headquarters in the central West Bank.
Scenes of jubilation erupted against a sea of Fatah and Palestinian flags as patriotic music boomed into the winter air.
Muhammed Abdul Razik, 22, from the town of Qabatia in the northern West Bank, served two of his four-and-a-half-year sentence.
He was convicted in an Israeli court of weapons possession and being a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah.
“I was beaten very badly when I was arrested by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers. I was kept in the back of a jeep for over four hours in the freezing cold,” Razik told IPS.
“During detention my head was covered with a foul-smelling dirty sack as I was shackled to a chair with my hands handcuffed behind my back in a stressful position.
“Periodically, between punches and slaps, the interrogator would suddenly pull me forward causing extreme pain to my wrists and back,” he said.
Razik added that beatings, insufficient medicine, poor food and lack of family visits were routine while he was incarcerated.
The Israeli Landau Committee into torture in 1987 ruled that Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shabak, or Shin Bet, could use “moderate physical pressure and psychological pressure during the interrogation of detainees.”
The committee did not elaborate on its definition of physical pressure in its report, nor did it outline the circumstances in which it could be used. The details were kept confidential and the full report was never published.
Following petitions by several human rights organisations against the ubiquitous use of torture in the country, the Israeli High Court prohibited the use of certain forms of torture during its 1999 ruling.
However, it authorised the use of “physical means” against detainees including “pressure and a measure of discomfort.”
Rights groups B’Tselem and Hamoked released a report last year ‘Absolute Prohibition: The Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees’ in which they accused the court ruling of “legitimising severe acts, contrary to international law, which does not acknowledge any exceptions to the prohibition on torture and ill-treatment.”
The organisation added that the beatings, painful binding, humiliation and denial of basic needs appeared to be designed to “soften up the detainees” prior to interrogation.
B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli told IPS, “There has been an improvement, but there are still many cases of ill-treatment occurring.”
B’Tselem and Hamoked interviewed 73 former detainees for their report and found roughly two-thirds had been subject to some kind of mistreatment.
Rabie Al-Latifah from Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq used stronger terms. “Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons is both widespread and systematic,” Rabie told IPS.
“The United Coalition Against Torture, of which Al-Haq is a member, has observed and recorded evidence of acts, omissions, and complicity by agents of the State at all levels, including the army, the intelligence service, the police, the judiciary and other branches of government,” he added.
The Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association says that more than 800 Palestinians are currently in administrative detention.
Detainees are held for six months at a time without being brought to trial on the basis of “secret evidence”.
This six-month period can be renewed repeatedly with some administrative detainees being jailed for up to six years without being convicted of any crime.
“Confidential material” denied to the detainee’s lawyer determines the period of detention.
Since 2001, the Israeli State Attorney’s Office received over 500 complaints of ill-treatment by Shin Bet interrogators, but not a single criminal investigation was carried out.
These decisions were based on the findings of an investigation conducted by an inspector who was himself a member of the Shin Bet.
Even in cases were interrogators were found guilty of abusing a detainee the State Attorney’s Office closed the case on the basis that the abuse was carried out in the “necessity of defence”. (END/2008)
Peace and Justice Post 
Israel Deeply Wary of 2009 Anti-Racism Meet
December 20, 2008By Wolfgang Kerler | Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 (IPS) – At their anti-racism conference in Geneva next April, United Nations member states may find themselves — once again — in a heated dispute over how to properly address the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the context of racism, xenophobia and racial discrimination.
Meant to assess and accelerate progress on the implementation of anti-racism measures adopted at the somewhat infamous 2001 World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, the Durban Review Conference will now have to deal with renewed resentments among U.N. member states.
The Asian countries reminded all parties of what had happened seven years ago: In their contribution to a still to be discussed draft declaration for the review conference, they called Israel’s policies towards Palestinians “a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, [and] a form of genocide.”
Back in 2001, even a groundbreaking apology for slavery and colonialism by the developed world was not enough to save WCAR from being seen as a failure by many critics. Events at the forum of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) taking place parallel to the governmental negotiations had just been too tumultuous.
A number of NGOs — presumably backed by Iran and other Muslim countries — put through a final NGO declaration that condemned Israel with words similar to those now used by the Asian region: “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansings”, and “acts of genocide”. Clearly anti-Semitic cartoons and books were circulated at the forum — accompanied by statements that were equally anti-Semitic. To express their protest, Israel and the United States left WCAR.
Nevertheless, in early 2007, after the U.N. General Assembly had decided to hold a follow-up conference, Israel announced that it will take part in the Apr. 20-24, 2009 “Durban II” — as it is sometimes referred to — as long as there was no similar anti-Israel atmosphere. On Nov. 19, shortly after the release of the statements by the Asian region, Israel decided to withdraw from Durban II.
“It was perfectly predictable — and preventable,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, told IPS. “There is no country in the world that would want to willingly subject itself to a kangaroo court where it is demonised and delegitimised,” he added.
However, Navanethem Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and appointed secretary-general of Durban II, told the press that “the ambassador of Israel came to see me to say if the objectionable language is remedied, they will continue to participate.”
She stressed that “we are a long way from coming up with the draft outcome document for the Review Conference” and urged that all countries participate, asking: “How can you influence the outcome document unless you are there?”
In April, a group of 94 NGOs — including Human Rights First and the American United Nations Association, for example — released a statement on the core principles for Durban II, pledging to “reject hatred and incitement in all its forms, including anti-Semitism, to learn from the shortcomings of the 2001 WCAR.”
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international human rights advocate, also published a position paper on the Durban Review Conference. It called on participants to avoid “a repeat of the conduct that so marred the 2001 conference” — especially the singling out of Israel as the focal point of hostility.
HRW “does not seek to exempt Israel from criticism of its human rights record”, but is rejecting “hyperbolic accusations that cannot be factually supported or singling out one government to the exclusion of other comparable offenders,” the paper said.
For example, human rights violations and discriminatory policies are reported across the world, including in Libya and Iran — which have been elected to chair and vice-chair the preparatory committee of the Durban Review Conference, respectively.
Worried that the single focus on the question of anti-Semitism might further flaw the legacy of WCAR — or “Durban I” — Ibrahim Wani, chief of the Research and Right to Development Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR), told IPS: “[While] there is no question about the highly insensitive displays and statements at the [2001] NGO-Forum, it is important to distinguish this forum from the inter-governmental process.”
“There is no allegation anywhere that the governmental meeting itself witnessed a display of anti-Semitism,” he stressed.
Wani, who is involved with the preparations for Durban II, added that “at the end of the day [the U.N. member states] were able to reach compromise on some key issues — the Israel-Palestinian question, the issue of reparations and apology for slavery and colonialism, or the issue of migration.” No offensive language could be found in the outcome document.
With the mechanism put in place within the U.N. system, the commitments the member states agreed on, and the framework of actions it provides to address racism, Wani called the “Durban Declaration and Programme of Action” (DDPA) “a significant step forward in historical terms.”
Another historic event that occurred immediately after conference doors closed in Durban might cause dissent at Durban II — the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Western counter-terrorism policies that followed.
Mourning the rise in Islamophobia since 2001, Muslim countries are pushing to include language regarding “defamation of religion” — especially of Islam — in the Durban II outcome document. Western countries oppose such claims, assuming that some states may want to excuse their own human rights violations — especially concerning freedom of speech – as “defamation of Islam”.
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Tags:a new kind of apartheid, anti-racism conference, Human Rights Watch, Islamophobia, Israel, Israel-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians, racial discrimination
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