Amnesty International Report 1998 - Israel and the Occupied Territories

 (This report covers the period January-December 1997)

At least 1,200 Palestinians were arrested on security grounds. At least 1,900 administrative detention orders were served; 354 Palestinians remained administratively detained at the end of the year. Prisoners of conscience included some administrative detainees and three conscientious objectors. At least 60 Lebanese nationals, including 23 held without charge or trial, or after expiry of their sentences, were held in Israel; a further 150 Lebanese nationals were held without charge or trial in Khiam detention centre in South Lebanon. Other political prisoners included more than 2,500 Palestinians sentenced in previous years. At least 1,450 Palestinians were tried in military courts whose procedures fell short of international fair trial standards. Torture and ill-treatment of detainees during interrogation continued to be systematic and officially sanctioned; beatings of Palestinians by members of the Israeli security services were reported. At least 18 Palestinians were killed in circumstances suggesting that they may have been extrajudicially executed or unlawfully killed. A total of eight houses were destroyed or sealed as punishment. Palestinian armed groups opposed to the peace process deliberately and arbitrarily killed at least 28 civilians.

The Israeli redeployment from Hebron, which had been scheduled to take place in 1996, took place in January. Israel withdrew from 80 per cent of the city. The Israeli Government under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu authorized further building of Jewish settlements; the authorization to build on Jebel Abu Ghnaym/Har Homa in East Jerusalem provoked violent demonstrations.

The Israeli Government made extensive use of border closures especially after suicide bombings (see below). Palestinians from the West Bank without Jerusalem identity cards were consistently prevented from travelling to East Jerusalem. Inhabitants of areas under the sole jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (see Palestinian Authority entry) were frequently forbidden from entering areas partly or wholly under Israeli control.

A draft law which would have defined most activities of the Israeli Defence Force (idf) as "combatant activity", thus invalidating the majority of victims' claims for compensation, passed its first reading in the Knesset (parliament) in July.

The UN Special Rapporteur, appointed pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1993/2 a "to investigate Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law", visited areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority but was denied access to members or officials of the Israeli Government

In May the UN Committee against Torture considered the special report requested from Israel in November 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997). The Committee stated that methods of interrogation used by Israel constituted torture as defined in Article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and requested Israel to cease such practices immediately. The Committee asked Israel to submit its second periodic report by September, but the Israeli Government had not submitted any further report by the end of the year.

At least 1,900 administrative detention orders were served; 354 people remained in administrative detention at the end of the year. Administrative detainees were denied the right to a fair trial, and detention orders were frequently automatically renewed. Detainees boycotted appeal hearings between August 1996 and September 1997 in protest against the apparently automatic rejection of appeals and the denial of the detainees' right to know the evidence against them. Prisoners of conscience included Wissam Rafidi, a journalist detained since August 1994, who was serving his 10th detention order at the end of the year. Ahmed Qatamesh remained in prison for a sixth consecutive year (see Amnesty International Report 1997). Two women were administratively detained, including ‘Itaf ‘Alyan, one of the prisoners released in February (see below); she was rearrested in October and served with a three-month administrative detention order. She remained on hunger-strike for 40 days in protest at her arrest. Marwan Ma‘ali, arrested in August, committed suicide in Megiddo Military Detention Centre in September. Psychiatrists in the detention centre had reportedly diagnosed him as depressive with suicidal tendencies and recommended his release or hospitalization, and an Israeli human rights organization had described his isolation cell as "unsuitable for habitation by any human being". Nevertheless, his administrative detention had been extended for five months shortly before his suicide.

Prisoners of conscience included at least three conscientious objectors and a Syrian student. Yuval Lotem, a conscientious objector, was sentenced to 28 days' imprisonment in July for refusing to serve as a guard of administrative detainees in Megiddo Military Detention Centre. He was released in August. Ilham Abu Saleh, a student at Damascus University from the Golan Heights, was arrested in August and accused of "endangering state security" by spying for Syria. She denied the charge, which appeared to be baseless. She was not allowed to meet her lawyer or family until just before her release on bail 13 days later. No trial had been held by the end of the year and Ilham Abu Saleh remained under house arrest.

More than 60 Lebanese nationals remained imprisoned in Israel. At least 23 of them were held under administrative detention orders or after expiry of their sentences, including 21 who appeared to be held as hostages in exchange for the release of, or information about, Israelis killed or missing in action in Lebanon. Husayn Fahd Daqduq was arrested in Lebanon in April 1987, transferred to Israel, and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for "illegal military activities". By the end of the year he had been detained nine years beyond the expiry of his sentence. Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim ‘Ubayd and Mustafa al-Dirani, abducted from Lebanon by Israeli forces in 1989 and 1994 respectively, had access to lawyers for the first time since their arrest. However, they continued to be denied access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (icrc), as did Husayn Mikdad, a Lebanese national detained since May 1996 when a bomb he intended to use exploded prematurely in his hotel room. At least 150 prisoners remained held without charge or trial at Khiam detention centre in an area of South Lebanon controlled by the Israeli army (see Lebanon entry). Prime Minister Netanyahu offered to exchange detained Lebanese nationals for the body parts of one of the 12 Israeli soldiers killed in action during an Israeli commando attack in Lebanon in September

A total of 31 Palestinian women political prisoners were released in February in the context of peace accords. Shaykh Ahmad Yassin, the leader of Hamas, an Islamist opposition group, serving a life and 15-year sentence imposed in 1991, was released in September in exchange for Israeli intelligence agents arrested in Jordan for the attempted murder of Khaled Mesh‘al, a leader of Hamas living in Amman (see below). A total of 20 Jordanians, including common law prisoners, and 50 Palestinians sentenced for offences such as shooting at cars or carrying arms, were released in connection with this exchange in October. At the same time President Ezer Weizman pardoned three Israeli Jewish political prisoners and reduced the sentences of four others; all had been convicted of killing Palestinians. Those released included two men sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 1993 for killing a Palestinian in Jerusalem in a grenade attack.

More than 2,500 Palestinians sentenced in previous years for political offences, following trials which fell short of international fair trial standards, remained in prison. At least 1,450 Palestinians were brought to trial before military courts for offences such as plotting to carry out "terrorist" attacks or stone-throwing and sentenced to up to life imprisonment. The trials did not meet international standards for fair trial; confessions, often extracted under torture, frequently formed the main evidence against the defendant.

Mordechai Vanunu remained held in solitary confinement for the 11th successive year. He had been abducted in Rome by Israeli agents and sentenced in camera for treason after revealing information about Israel's nuclear capability (see previous Amnesty International Reports).

Torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians continued to be systematic and officially sanctioned by secret guidelines allowing the General Security Service (gss) to use "moderate" physical and psychological pressure. The ministerial committee overseeing the gss continued to extend, for three-month periods, authorization to the gss to use "increased physical pressure". Violent shaking (tiltul), which had caused the death of a detainee in 1995, was also allowed with the authorization of the head of the gss. The High Court of Justice continued to sanction the use of physical force amounting to torture in interrogations of Palestinians, by rejecting court injunctions forbidding the use of physical force

For instance, Ayman Kafisha was arrested in April on suspicion of involvement in the Hamas March suicide bombing which killed three civilians. He was held in Shikma (Ashkelon) Prison where he was tortured, including by being violently shaken and systematically deprived of sleep. The High Court of Justice rejected a petition requesting an interim injunction against the use of physical force during interrogation.

Palestinians were frequently beaten and violently ill-treated at check-points, demonstrations or immediately after arrest by the security services. For example, in July Muhammad Salah was stopped at a check-point when returning to al-Khader from East Jerusalem. He was beaten by border police, kicked all over the body and left in a ditch. He sustained injuries including a broken nose and a wound which needed five stitches. Muhammad Salah filed a complaint, but no action was known to have been taken by the end of the year.

At least 18 Palestinians were shot dead, mostly during demonstrations or at check-points, by members of the security services. Most of those killed appeared to have posed no danger to the security services. For instance, Ibrahim Tawfiq Abu Rutayna, aged 14, who was deaf and mute, was shot in June by idf soldiers guarding Morag settlement in the Gaza Strip, apparently when he failed to stop following a shouted warning. He died in July in the Shifa' Hospital in Gaza. In September, two members of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, attempted to extrajudicially execute Khaled Mesh‘al, a Hamas leader, in Amman, by injecting him with poison. Members of the idf who carried out unlawful shootings were allowed virtual impunity. Three members of an undercover unit training in a Palestinian village beat to death Muhammad al-Hilu after shooting him in the leg. An idf inquiry stated that the soldiers' lives were in danger; this did not appear to be the case.

Sa‘id Badarneh, who had been sentenced to death in 1994 on charges including plotting a suicide bombing, was retried in February and sentenced to life and 15 years' imprisonment on the same charges (see Amnesty International Reports 1995 and 1996).

The Israeli army destroyed or sealed eight houses in Surif and al-‘Asira al-Shimaliya belonging to people alleged to have been involved in suicide bombings, or their relatives, as punishment. House owners had the right to appeal to the High Court of Justice but no appeal was successful.

Palestinian groups opposed to the peace process, such as Hamas, carried out deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in March, July and September; 28 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. For instance, in September, three suicide bombers exploded bombs in quick succession in Jerusalem, killing three people, including two schoolgirls, and injuring 150 others.

In April Amnesty International published a report, Israel/Occupied Territories: Administrative detention – despair, uncertainty and lack of due process. In July it published Israel/South Lebanon: Israel's forgotten hostages – Lebanese detainees in Israel and Khiam detention centre. Amnesty International made frequent calls for an end to torture and submitted its concerns on torture in Israel to the UN Committee against Torture. It also called for an end to the demolition or sealing of houses as punishment. The organization urged the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience and the release or fair trial of administrative detainees. Amnesty International expressed concern over the health of Mordechai Vanunu and Avraham Klingberg, a 79-year-old physician with chronic heart problems, held in secret incommunicado detention for 10 years after his arrest in 1983 on charges of spying for the former Soviet Union (see previous Amnesty International Reports).

In an oral statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights in March, Amnesty International stated that the effective legalization of torture by Israel undermined the fabric of international human rights protection.

Amnesty International condemned the deliberate and arbitrary killing of civilians by armed opposition groups and called on such groups to observe fundamental principles of humanitarian law