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Posted in July 2, 2014.
By Olivia Becker
The number of Palestinian children held in solitary confinement, subjected to harsh interrogation and general mistreatment in Israeli prisons is increasing, according to a report released on Monday by an international non-governmental organization.
The report was released by Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), a monitoring organization that focuses on the treatment of children in areas of conflict, and details the treatment of Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 in the occupied West Bank throughout last year.
The report found that solitary confinement was used as a form of interrogation and intimidation in nearly 22 percent of recorded cases — a 2 percent increase since 2012. The average length of solitary confinement was 10 days, with the longest period being 29 days.
In addition to solitary confinement, the report also found that more than 76.5 percent of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons experienced some form of physical violence, 74.5 experienced verbal abuse, and 98 percent were not informed of the reason for the arrest.
Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are detained every year in the Israeli military prison system. Since 2000, approximately 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested and prosecuted in Israeli military courts.
The overwhelming charge brought against Palestinian youths is stone throwing, which can lead to a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
In 85 percent of these cases children are taken from their homes in the middle of the night during raids carried out by Israeli soldiers, according to the report, which states that the children are then blindfolded and forcibly brought to a detention center inside Israel, where they are interrogated by the Israel Security Agency, (or Shin Bet), the Israeli equivalent of the FBI.
Dual System of Laws
Although the systematic use of solitary confinement and physical abuse against minors is arguably an offense in and of itself, it is part of a much broader issue of the system of laws that govern the region.
Since the West Bank is an occupied territory, Israeli military law is the legal system that governs it. But this legal system solely applies to the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank, and not the 600,000 Israeli citizens that live there in illegal settlements.
“There is a dual legal system that exists in the West Bank,” George Bisharat, a professor of criminal procedure and law at University of California Hastings College of Law, told VICE News. “Israel citizens are subject to Israeli civil law, while all Palestinians, both adults and juveniles, are subject to Israeli military law.”
This legal framework is not only discriminatory, but actively in violation of international law. Arresting children in the West Bank and bringing them to Israel for interrogation and detainment violates Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that forbids the transfer of detainees outside the occupied territory. Article 76 even specifies, “proper regard shall be paid to the special treatment due to minors.”
Up until 2009, Palestinian children were charged in the same courts as adults, another violation of international law. It was not until immense international criticism that Israel created separate courts for Palestinian minors.
Last July, Israeli soldiers arrested a five-year old Palestinian boy for stone throwing. The video of the arrest, captured by Israeli human rights group B’tselem, quickly spread and provoked outrage.
Although there are several detention centers inside the West Bank, the vast majority of detainees are usually brought to centers inside Israel to face a military trial. This trial is almost always the first time the detainee sees their family or a lawyer.
Nearly 100 Percent Conviction Rate The overall conviction rate for Palestinians in Israeli military courts is 99.74 percent. Of the 853 youths charged with rock-throwing between 2005 and 2011, only one was acquitted.
More than 650,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 1967, when its occupation of the Palestinian territories began, according to the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR). Therefore, 40 percent of all Palestinian males have at one point been arrested by Israel.
About 20 percent of Palestinians arrested by Israel occurred during the first intifada, or uprising, between 1987 and 1992. During this period 120,000 Palestinians were arrested and detained in Israeli jails, making Palestinians one of the most imprisoned populations in the world.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military told VICE News that the reason for the high number of arrests amongst Palestinians is because the IDF faces extensive violence on a daily basis from Palestinian minors — violence that is encouraged by the surrounding culture and an institutionalized public support system.
“The IDF strongly rejects the claims that Palestinian minors are systematically mistreated in any way after being detained for involvement in violent acts or terror activity,” said the statement from the IDF.
But the reason for the high number of arrests and convictions among Palestinian adults and youths is not necessarily due to a high rate of criminal activity or violence inherent in Palestinian youths or culture, Bisharat pointed out.
“One of the more troubling aspects of the mistreatment of juveniles is the way in which the Israeli legal system has been used as a tool of pressure to recruit collaborators,” he said. “Children are one of the most vulnerable populations to be recruited.”
DCI-P’s report echoes this with regards to the use of solitary confinement.
“The use of solitary confinement by Israeli authorities does not appear to be related to any disciplinary, protective, or medical rationale or justification,” the report states.
International Attention
This is not the first time Israel’s treatment of Palestinian child prisoners has received attention and international condemnation.
In February 2013, UNICEF released a report detailing similar human rights abuses towards Palestinian children detainees. The report found that the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system was “widespread, systematic, and institutionalized” and recommended that Israel implement a “series of practical safeguards that would improve the protection of children under military detention.”
This report follows another vocal denunciation of Israel’s policies toward Palestinian children prisoners.
“Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children flagrantly violates international human rights standards,” said Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, in 2012. “This pattern of abuse by Israel is grave. It is inhumane, cruel, degrading, and unlawful, and, most worryingly, it is likely to adversely affect the mental and physical health of underage detainees.”
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Posted in January 01, 2014.
By
An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the government of torturing children after it emerged some were kept in outdoor cages during winter.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) published a report which claimed children suspected of minor crimes were subjected to “public caging”, threats and acts of sexual violence and military trials without representation.
It came as the government’s Public Petitions Committee held a hearing to discuss the issue, which the PCATI said must be addressed with a change to the law.
The country’s Public Defender’s Office (PDO) recently released details of one particularly shocking visit by its lawyers to a detention facility.
“During our visit, held during a fierce storm that hit the state, attorneys met detainees who described to them a shocking picture: in the middle of the night dozens of detainees were transferred to the external iron cages built outside the IPS transition facility in Ramla,” the PDO wrote on its website.
“It turns out that this procedure, under which prisoners waited outside in cages, lasted for several months, and was verified by other officials.”
Although the practice of keeping children caged was reported to have lasted for months, there is no suggestion that the individuals were so detained for that period.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called for the practice of keeping children in cages to be stopped as soon as she learned of it, and the prison service issued a statement saying the situation had been improved following the “criticism”.
The PCATI said this was not enough, and called for the country’s relatively high threshold for what can be classed “acts of abuse” to be lowered in the case of children.
Their report argued: “Torture is a means of attacking an individual’s fundamental modes of psychological and social functioning” as described in the Istanbul Protocol. Furthermore, “torture can impact a child directly or indirectly. The impact can be due to the child’s having been tortured or detained, the torture of parents or close family members or witnessing torture and violence.”
It said the incident in Ramla was just one example of a broad range of abuses being suffered.
Yesterday the Knesset committee said Israeli law as it currently exists was being violated by the manner of arrest and detention conditions of Palestinian children, the Post reported.
The committee also took issue with the fact that the government appeared not to keep records of the frequency or scope of disputed practices like midnight arrests.
The PCATI quoted figures from the campaign group Defence for Children International’s Palestine section, saying: “The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”
It said Israel was the only country to systematically prosecute children in its military courts, and added that “no Israeli children come into contact with the military court system”.
Update: After original publication of its report, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel released an amended version, acknowledging that the information from the Public Defender’s Office about child prisoners being kept in cages did not refer specifically to Palestinians. We have amended our report accordingly and wish to make the position clear.
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Posted in November 21, 2014.
By UNRWA’s Deputy Commissioner-General Margot Ellis
Twenty-five years ago today world leaders adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most complete
statement in history of humanity’s aspiration to give children universal rights protection to achieve their full potential. This noble document outlined the steps that we should all take to allow the youngest and most vulnerable in our communities to realise the highest levels of human dignity.
A quarter a century on, the abysmal situation on the ground confronting the Palestine refugee children we serve makes a mockery of that convention. We see schools bombed, children killed and maimed, families torn apart and forced to flee their homes and countries.
The vulnerability of Palestinian children and youth is more acute than ever before. Palestine refugee children are exposed to considerable child protection concerns including physical and emotional violence, sexual abuse, child marriage, detention, child labor and the effects of armed conflict.
Poverty, stifled employment opportunities and overcrowded living conditions in refugee camps are just some of the elements that exacerbate child protection concerns for Palestine refugee children. The data are alarming:
- Over 500 Palestinian children were killed in the recent onslaught on Gaza. Another 500 were orphaned. Moreover, the majority of Gaza’s 110,000 homeless are children.
- While less news-worthy, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including children, has spiked, and is now double that of last year.
- The slaughter continues in Syria, with no apparent consideration for the lives of the precious and innocent.
- In the besieged refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, children have died due to lack of medical care, and suffer severe malnutrition and dehydration.
- In Lebanon, Palestine refugee children and their families live on the margins of society, unable to access jobs and services.
- For Palestinian children fleeing Syria, the dangers are many. In some cases entry to safety is simply denied to all Palestinians; other states discriminate in their treatment of Palestinians. Until the end of 2013, of the 74 documented individuals of forcible return from Jordan to Syria of Palestinians, 30 were of Palestine refugee children. Since the beginning of 2014, of the 106 documented individuals of forcible return from Jordan to Syria of Palestinians, 43 were of Palestine refugee children. These are the numbers that have approached UNRWA for assistance and we believe that there are more who have not requested UNRWA to intervene.
- Palestinian Children who are able to reach safe ground are subject to web of complex threats, including lack of legal status including from the denial of birth registration, forcible return, threat from sexual predators, and dire poverty.
- Palestinian mothers, children and youth seeking safe refuge and a better future have chanced a terrifying, perilous journey across the Mediterranean or through ISIL territory, sometimes with disastrous outcomes.
- In addition to the impact of armed conflict, according to our statistics, nearly half of the gender based violence survivors are below the age of 18 years.
Palestinians have a specific and unique vulnerability, and they often speak of feeling trapped, singled out and unwelcome. But in today’s world, these are anxieties shared by many. Palestine refugee children are in a sense the ‘canary in the coal mine’, the first to experience vulnerabilities that others will subsequently face. UNRWA’s mandate for an especially vulnerable community, its experience in serving beneficiaries directly, and its ability to be flexible and innovative, may provide insight to build on when considering the protection of all children and youth.
I would like to share with you five ‘lessons’ from our experience:
Protection through services, and maintaining normalcy. UNRWA’s raison d’etre has always been “investing in the future.” Our services, especially our largest programmes in education and health, provide direct protection to children. Half a million children attend UNRWA schools and more than 260,000 children under the age of five receive health care at UNRWA clinics where we also screen and treat victims of child abuse and gender based violence. As important as our services is the continuity and predictability of these services. Families and communities are sustained when they can count on UNRWA’s support structures even under dire circumstances. Nothing protects children or prepares youth for the future like secure families and communities. We should not just look at addressing specific protection problems, but take a more holistic view and work to create a base of security and support for families.
Our staff are refugees and are embedded in camps, communities. UNRWA has more than 30,000 staff, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian themselves. We are embedded in communities and understand the problems. This is our comparative advantage.
Education and schools as loci for our protection responsibilities and place for stability. With so much of the region in active conflict, and with so many children’s lives in turmoil, we recognize that offering students stable access to education is crucial.
Our first priority is simply keeping schools open where circumstances allow. In Syria and Gaza, UNRWA largely maintained education services. Alternative locations and courageous staff keep schools open even in areas that are hard to reach. Through innovation and partnerships, we reach even children who cannot come to school.
The self-learning materials UNRWA has developed in Syria for English, Mathematics, Arabic and Science have been adopted by UNICEF and will be used in schools throughout Syria. These materials supplement UNRWA’s satellite channel, which broadcasts from Gaza lessons on core subject areas. Viewership data indicate that these lessons are viewed throughout the Middle East, not just in UNRWA’s five fields, and even in Europe and North America.
UNRWA’s long-standing human rights enrichment programme and its newer human rights curriculum bring children into conversation about their rights at an early age.
Organizational advocacy. At UNRWA we advocate for policy makers to address core problems. But that implies that member states must sometimes hear messages that are uncomfortable. Occupation is the root of most protection problems in Gaza and the West Bank. An insidious and persistent erosion of rights affects every child in Palestine. Recurrent and deadly military operations are not incidents; they are a structural feature of occupation. Let’s demonstrate how and where it deprives children and youth of their rights and demand redress. We must use and uphold the international legal system. It’s all we have: protection doesn’t exist without rights.
Youth voice and agency. This is the point I would like to end with, because it is as important as anything we do to protect children and youth. It is in effect promoting self-protection.
We just saw Malala win the Nobel Peace Prize. She recently decided to give 50,000 USD to UNRWA to rebuild schools damaged and partially destroyed by Israel the recent conflict. She is an important inspiration, a courageous girl standing up for her rights. But she is not unique in her wishes to have all the opportunities and protection we assume for our own children.
UNRWA’s tradition of school parliaments gives children voice in the way their schools are run. We are now piloting an innovative project called MyVoiceMySchool. Using Skype, we link conflict-affected youth in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan with peers in the UK to develop advocacy on education and give voice to youth on their futures. Conversations are vibrant and exciting as youth discover shared values, fears and priorities.
Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrines children’s right to have a voice, particularly in matters that concern them. Ensuring that children and youth are not ignored and have the space to define their own lives are incredibly powerful ways to promote protection. And this voice and vision transcend political agendas, silencing the senseless violence and destruction.
Ayat, a 15 year old girl in a collective shelter in Damascus, confidently says she plans to rebuild her country more beautiful than it ever was. “In silence, I am powerless but with my voice, I can do many things”, she says. It is only when our children see they have audience, know they can be heard, and can effect change – that they will.
Background Information
UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.
Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at US$ 56 million.
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www.unrwa.org
Posted 28 June 2012
By Asa Winstanley
A new report funded and supported by the UK government that accuses Israel of violating international law with its treatment of Palestinian child detainees was launched in London by a high-profile group of human rights lawyers on Tuesday.
The report says Israel is in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) on at least six counts and of the Fourth Geneva Convention on at least two counts. It lays bare the system of legal apartheid Israel maintains in Palestine.
But there is pessimism in some quarters that the report’s recommendations will be implemented. The document has been criticized as “toothless” by a prominent Palestinian human rights activist.
“Children in Military Custody” was funded and backed by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and written by an ad hoc group including a former attorney general, a former court of appeal judge and several prominent attorneys known as QCs. The delegation visited Palestine in September and met with Palestinian, Israeli and international nongovernmental organizations, British diplomats and a wide range of Israeli government and military officials.
The report details the military law Israel applies to all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including children, and how it differs from the civilian law applied to Israeli settlers who live in the same territory. It states there it was “uncontested [by Israel] that there are major differentials between the law governing the treatment of Palestinian children and the law governing treatment of Israeli children.”
Unequal treatment of children
At the heart of the report are three core recommendations to the Israeli government: start applying international law to the West Bank (which Israel refuses to do), the best interests of the child should come first and, crucially, that Israel “should deal with Palestinian children on an equal footing with Israeli children.”
Israel currently applies two separate and unequal systems of laws in the West Bank. Palestinians are subject to a harsh military regime in which Israeli army officers and police, arrest, interrogate, judge and sentence, while Israeli settlers colonizing the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law.
These systematic inequalities include: the minimum age for Palestinian children to receive a custodial sentence is 12, but for Israelis it is 14; Palestinian children have no right to have a parent present during interrogation, while Israeli children generally do.
The most stark inequalities are evident in the time it takes for the two systems to work. Palestinian children could have to wait up to eight days before being brought before a judge, while Israeli children have a right to see one within 24 hours; Palestinian children can be detained without charge for 188 days, while for Israelis the limit is 40.
In a press release about the report, Council for Arab-British Understanding director Chris Doyle describes witnessing in Palestine “nothing less than a kangaroo court that does nothing to improve Israel’s security while criminalizing an entire generation of Palestinian children.”
Children kept in solitary confinement
Drawing on their meetings with nongovernmental organizations such as Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, the authors detail the shocking treatment of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
Arrested in nighttime raids, Palestinian children are often physically and verbally abused, brought before adult military courts, shackled, given little choice than taking a plea bargain, and can be sentenced to as many as 20 years for “crimes” as trivial as stone throwing. Some are even kept in solitary confinement, according to DCI.
When Palestinian children file complaints about their abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers, they are almost always ignored. Israeli occupation authorities were able to give to the delegation “only one example of a complaint being upheld.” The authors report that there are “a significant number of allegations of physical and emotional abuse of child detainees by the military which neither the complaints system nor the justice system is addressing satisfactorily.”
The report compiles some shocking statistics. As many as 94 percent of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank are denied bail, according to nongovernmental organizations. Some 97-98 percent of such cases end with a plea bargain, meaning they go to jail without even reaching the trial stage (as flawed as military courts are).
A key conclusion reached by the report’s authors is that Israel is in breach of articles of UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that prohibit: national or ethnic discrimination; ignoring a child’s best interests; the premature resort to detention, imprisonment and trial alongside adult prisoners; preventing prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles.
While the report notes “the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion [on Israel’s wall in the West Bank] which concludes categorically that the UNCRC is applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Israeli officials the delegation met with refused to recognize this.
“Every Palestinian child a ´potential terrorist´ “
“In our meetings with the various Israeli Government agencies, we found the universal stance by contrast was that the Convention has no application beyond Israel’s own [pre-1967] borders,” the authors write, noting their disagreement.
They emphasize: “[t]he population of the West Bank is within the physical power and control of Israel, and Israel has effective control of the territory. Our visit dispelled any doubts we might have had about this.”
In its conclusions, the report notes that this refusal to fulfill its international law obligations with respect to Palestinian children probably “stems from a belief, which was advanced to us by [an Israeli] military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a ‘potential terrorist.’”
Question about report´s future
Renowned Palestinian writer, activist and academic Ghada Karmi was at the report’s launch on Tuesday. She asked the panel if it would be doing a follow-up visit, or monitoring implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The answer was less than conclusive, with co-author Greg Davies saying they would have to “wait and see” what the Israeli government’s response would be. He later spoke to The Electronic Intifada over the phone about the report’s future: “the format in which that follow-up work takes place, I don’t know at this stage, it’s too early to tell … I’m committed to seeing as far as it’s possible these recommendations coming into effect. If that requires further work I’m prepared to organize that.”
Karmi later told The Electronic Intifada that the report is “toothless in the end” because there is no way to compel Israel to comply.
“Palestinians are fed up of being studied,” she said. What they really want to know is “how will I get help to end” the abuses of the military occupation. Karmi did however conclude the report was a good thing and the delegation was a “very interesting mission” because it was backed by the foreign office, who could not be accused of anti-Israel bias in the same way that Israel has managed to taint UN missions with “the usual slanders.”
Uk government approached report´s authors
Lawyer Greg Davies was responsible for putting the ad hoc delegation together. He told The Electronic Intifada that while he was doing so, he was approached by the British Consulate in Jerusalem, who offered government funding. Davies replied in the affirmative, but on condition that the group be independent.
In response to such criticisms as Karmi’s, Davies said: “there have been a number of [such] reports submitted… those reports have largely gone unanswered [by Israel] … it was that lack of response that prompted this.”
“There isn’t an enforceability as such without the political will, and that’s where our remit stops,” he said, pointing to an Early Day Motion on the report tabled in parliament Wednesday. EDM 280 welcomes the report and “asks the Foreign Secretary to make a statement to the House [of Commons] setting out his proposals for persuading Israel to comply in practice with international law relating to the treatment of children.” Davies said of the EDM “we welcome that and are hugely encouraged by that.”
Advancing the debate
The Palestine section of Defence for Children International, through its reports and its meetings with the delegation, is one of the most quoted sources in the report. DCI-PS spokesperson Gerard Horton admitted to The Electronic Intifada that the report’s recommendations “won’t end the abuse,” but argued that some of them “will make it very difficult for the military court system to function effectively” if they were implemented.
He wrote in an email that the report’s list of forty recommendations include those DCI-PS have been demanding for years (parents present during interrogation; prompt access to a lawyer; audio-visual recording of interrogations; and an end to forcible transfer of children to prisons inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention).
Horton also highlighted the high profile of the report’s authors and backers: “the importance of this report is who wrote it … before real change can occur the debate has to become mainstream. People in the center and center-right have to start taking an interest and expressing a concern. To my mind this report goes some way to advancing that by helping to shift the debate to the center.”
“Justice is not a negotiable commodity”
Among the report’s forty specific recommendations are: an end to night arrests, an end to blindfolding and shackling, observing the prohibition on “violent, threatening or coercive” conduct, the presence of a parent during interrogation and “[c]hildren should not be required to sign confessions” in Hebrew, since they do not understand it.
The report notes that since the delegation’s visit, a new military order has upped to 18 the age at which Palestinian children can be tried as adults. Previously, it had been 16 (then another inequality with Israeli children who are treated as children until 18).
But there are concerns this change has been rendered void in practice. While welcoming the change, the report expresses concern “that the change does not appear to apply to sentencing provisions.”
Seemingly deliberate loopholes in the law means that “adult sentencing provisions still apply to 16 [and] 17 year olds” and that children 14-17 years old can be sentenced as adults when the maximum penalty for the offense is five years or more. The maximum penalty for throwing stones (the most common offense) ranges from 10 to 20 years,
Asked by The Electronic Intifada at the Tuesday launch why there were no specific recommendations in the report to end this inequality, Judy Khan QC said it was covered by core recommendation three, which calls for an end to the current inequalities between Israeli and Palestinian child detainees.
In their meetings with the delegation, the Israeli Ministry of Justice “described [such changes] as conditional on there being no significant unrest or ‘third intifada.’” The report objects: “[a] major cause of future unrest may well be the resentment of continuing injustice … justice is not a negotiable commodity but a fundamental human right.”
Sharp rise in child detainees
Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Lord Justice — senior appeal judge — underlined at Tuesday’s launch that there has been a 40 percent rise in child detainees since their visit in September, so the problem has only got worse since they returned to the UK.
While the report seems to have received some media coverage in the UK, it yet remains to be seen what practical impact it will have. More fundamentally, it does not call for an end to the occupation, considering political solutions beyond the authors’ mandate. It does note however that: “We have no reason to differ from the view of Her Majesty’s Government and the international community that these [Israeli] settlements [in the West Bank] are illegal. For the purposes of this report however we treat them, like the occupation, as a fact.”
But the question remains: a fact for how much longer?
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist from London who has lived and reported from occupied Palestine. His website is www.winstanleys.org.
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Posted December 14, 2010
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook reports on the brutality meted out by Israeli police to Palestinian minors, some as young as seven years old, including arrests, interrogation without the presence of a lawyer or parent, and physical violence.
Jonathan Cook reports on the brutality meted out by Israeli police to Palestinian minors, some as young as seven years old, including arrests, interrogation without the presence of a lawyer or parent, and physical violence. Israeli police have been criticized over their treatment of hundreds of Palestinian children, some as young as seven, arrested and interrogated on suspicion of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem. In the past year, criminal investigations have been opened against more than 1,200 Palestinian minors in Jerusalem on stone-throwing charges, according to police statistics gathered by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). That was nearly twice the number of children arrested last year in the much larger Palestinian territory of the West Bank. Most of the arrests have occurred in the Silwan district, close to Jerusalem’s Old City, where 350 extremist Jewish settlers have set up several heavily guarded illegal enclaves among 50,000 Palestinian residents. Late last month, in a sign of growing anger at the arrests, a large crowd in Silwan was reported to have prevented police from arresting Adam Rishek, a seven-year-old accused of stone-throwing. His parents later filed a complaint claiming he had been beaten by the officers.
Tensions between residents and settlers have been rising steadily since the Jerusalem municipality unveiled a plan in February to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in the Bustan neighbourhood to expand a Biblically-themed archeological park run by Elad, a settler organisztion. The plan is currently on hold following US pressure on Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Fakhri Abu Diab, a local community leader, warned that the regular clashes between Silwan’s youths and the settlers, termed a “stone intifada” [uprising] by some, could trigger a full-blown Palestinian uprising. “Our children are being sacrificed for the sake of the settlers’ goal to take over our community,” he said. In a recent report, entitled “Unsafe Space”, ACRI concluded that, in the purge on stone-throwing, the police were riding roughshod over children’s legal rights and leaving many minors with profound emotional traumas.
Testimonies collected by the rights groups reveal a pattern of children being arrested in late-night raids, handcuffed and interrogated for hours without either a parent or lawyer being present. In many cases, the children have reported physical violence or threats. Last month 60 Israeli childcare and legal experts, including Yehudit Karp, a former deputy attorney-general, wrote to Mr Netanyahu condemning the police behaviour. “Particularly troubling,” they wrote, “are testimonies of children under the age of 12, the minimal age set by the law for criminal liability, who were taken in for questioning, and who were not spared rough and abusive interrogation.” Unlike in the West Bank, which is governed by military law, children in East Jerusalem suspected of stone-throwing are supposed to be dealt with according to Israeli criminal law. Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Six-Day war of 1967, in violation of international law, and its 250,000 Palestinian inhabitants are treated as permanent Israeli residents. Minors, defined as anyone under 18, should be questioned by specially trained officers and only during daylight hours. The children must be able to consult with a lawyer and a parent should be present. Ronit Sela, a spokeswoman for ACRI, said her organization had been “shocked” at the large number of children arrested in East Jerusalem in recent months, often by units of undercover policemen.
We have heard many testimonies from children who describe terrifying experiences of violence during both their arrest and their later interrogation.”
“Muslim, aged 10, lives in the Bustan neighbourhood and in a house that Israeli authorities have ordered demolished. His case was included in the ACRI report, and in an interview he said he had been arrested four times this year, even though he was under the age of criminal responsibility. On the last occasion, in October, he was grabbed from the street by three plain-clothes policemen who jumped out of a van.
“One of the men grabbed me from behind and started choking me. The second grabbed my shirt and tore it from the back, and the third twisted my hands behind my back and tied them with plastic cords. ‘Who threw stones?’ one of them asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. He started hitting me on the head and I shouted in pain.” Muslim was taken into custody and released six hours later. A local doctor reported that the boy had bleeding wounds to his knees and swelling on several parts of his body. Muslim’s father, who has two sons in prison, said the boy was waking with nightmares and could no longer concentrate on his school studies. “He has been devastated by this.” Ms Sela said arrests had risen sharply in Silwan since September, when a private security guard at a settler compound shot dead a Palestinian man, Samer Sirhan, and injured two others. Clashes between the settlers and Silwan youths came to prominence in October when David Beeri, director of settler organization Elad, was shown on camera driving into two boys as they threw stones at his car.
One, Amran Mansour, 12, who was thrown over the bonnet of Mr Beeri’s car, was arrested shortly afterwards in a late-night raid on his family’s home. Also in October, nine right-wing Israeli MPs complained after stones were thrown at their minibus as they paid a solidarity visit to Beit Yonatan, a large settler-controlled house in Silwan. Israel’s courts have ordered that the house be demolished, but Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, has refused to enforce the order. In the wake of the attack, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the public security minister, warned: “We will stop the stone-throwing through the use of covert and overt force, and bring back quiet.”
Last month police announced that house arrests would be used against children more regularly and financial penalties of up to 1,400 US dollars would be imposed on parents.
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, reported the case of “A.S.”, a 12-year-old taken for interrogation following an arrest at 3 a.m.
“I sat on my knees facing the wall. Every time I moved, a man in civilian clothes hit me with his hand on my neck… The man asked me to prostrate myself on the floor and ask his forgiveness, but I refused and told him that I do not bow to anyone but Allah. All the while, I felt intense pain in my feet and legs. I felt intense fear and I started shaking.”
In a statement B’Tselem said: “It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly against Jewish minors.” Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, denied that the police had violated the children’s rights. He added: “It is the responsibility of parents to stop this criminal behaviour by their children.” Jawad Siyam, a local community activist in Silwan, said the goal of the arrests and the increased settler activity was to “make life unbearable and push us out of the area”. The 60 experts who wrote to Mr Netanyahu warned that the children’s abuse led to “post-traumatic stress disorders, such as nightmares, insomnia, bed-wetting, and constant fear of policemen and soldiers”. They also noted that children under extended house arrest were being denied the right to schooling. Last year the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors, saying Israel was breaking the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which it has signed. Over the past 12 months, Defence for Children International has provided the UN with details of more than 100 children who claim they were physically or psychologically abused while in military custody.
Source:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net
Posted on: 6 July 2011
Sleep-deprived and suffering from a broken leg, 16-year-old Muhammad Halabiyeh endured days of torture at the hands of
Since Israel began occupying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including East Jerusalem in 1967, it is estimated that approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel.
Israeli soldiers and police officers, who punched him repeatedly in the face and abdomen, shoved needles into his hand and leg and threatened the Palestinian teenager with sexual abuse.
Arrested near his home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis in February 2010, Halabiyeh confessed after days of abuse and torture to the charge that he threw a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli army base. More than one year after his arrest, which was spent in Israeli custody, Halabiyeh was found guilty in an Israeli military court.
His conviction came despite the fact that the Israeli military judge in his case stated that she believed the teenager was tortured. However, the judge argued that there was no evidence that his confession was the direct result of the torture he endured. Halabiyeh’s sentencing hearing has now been postponed until 19 July.
“[The judge] said there’s no direct connection that he confessed later on in the police station because of this torture,” Sahar Francis, the director of Addameer, the Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, told The Electronic Intifada. Addameer represented Halabiyeh in his trial at the Ofer military court.
“She didn’t believe that he was threatened the whole way [to the police station]. He said in the court that he was [afraid of more torture], but she decided not to give much weight [to this],” Francis added.
Since Israel began occupying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including East Jerusalem in 1967, it is estimated that approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This amounts to approximately 20 percent of the total Palestinian population, and 40 percent of the male Palestinian population, in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to Addameer.
Today, more than 5,600 Palestinian prisoners remain in Israeli jails, and more than 1,500 Israeli military orders continue to govern all aspects of life in the West Bank. In fact, the Israeli military courts system controls the trial, sentencing and imprisonment of Palestinian detainees. Notably, the principal court officials including the prosecutor and the judge are Israeli army officers — which means that the Israeli occupation army is both accuser and judge of Palestinians living under its control. Moreover, this system is reserved only for Palestinians; Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civil law and civil courts.
According to a 2007 report issued by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, “of 9,123 cases concluded in the [Israeli] military courts in the year 2006, only in 23 cases – which constitute 0.29 percent of the rulings – was the defendant found to be entirely not guilty.”
While no specific figures are available, Francis explained that the use of torture against Palestinian detainees and prisoners is widespread and that often, Israeli soldiers use torture during an arrest – before the detainees are brought into the interrogation center – as a way to intimidate the detainees and coerce confessions from them later on.
“Especially in the case of juveniles, it’s threatening them before even coming to the interrogation so it will make it easier to collect their confessions. They will be really terrified. They humiliate them. They start to beat them and kick them and abuse them all the way to the detention center. It affects [the detainees’] confidence and the way they will treat the whole process of the interrogation later on,” Francis said.
Sleep deprivation, threats of sexual abuse and physical violence, prolonged periods spent in complete isolation, and the arrests of family members are some of the methods used to coerce confessions from Palestinian detainees, Francis explained. While most of the torture the Israeli authorities use is psychological in nature, she added that physical torture does take place as well.
“In some cases, they use electric shock. In some other cases, they close [their] eyes and tie [them] to the chair. They push back [their] head and then they bring a cup of water and they start to drop water on [their] face, giving a feeling like [they] can’t breathe,” she said. ”[Torture is] very common. It’s very common.”
Israel’s “ticking time bomb” loophole
The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” for purposes that include obtaining information or a confession, punishing the detainee or a third person for something, and for the purpose of intimidation or coercion, among others.
Article 2 of the Convention states that a state must take the necessary measures to ensure that torture does not occur in any territory under its controls, and that the use of torture may not be justified under any circumstances, “whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency.”
Further, Article 12 states that, “each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.”
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, while more than seven hundred complaints alleging abuse of detainees by Israeli General Security Services (GSS) agents have been reported from 2001 to 2009, “the State Attorney’s Office did not order a criminal investigation into any of the complaints” (“Failure to investigate alleged cases of ill-treatment and torture”).
The GSS, also known as the Shin Bet or Shabak, according to its Hebrew acronym, conducts interrogations of Palestinian detainees. In 1987, the Landau Commission — an Israeli governmental commission charged with examining the interrogation methods used by the GSS — found that the continued use of “physical force” in interrogations was acceptable.
Twelve years later, in 1999, the Israeli high court finally prohibited torture of any kind in Israel, and outlawed certain interrogation techniques. In “ticking time bomb” situations, however, the court found that the use of physical force could be justified.
This caveat, otherwise known as “the necessity defense,” has been used to justify the use of physical force and torture by Israeli interrogators since the high court’s ruling. The GSS argues that its agents should be exempt from criminal prosecution during these types of situations due to Article 34K of Israel’s Penal Code, which states that “no person shall bear criminal responsibility for an act that was immediately necessary in order to save his own or another person’s life, freedom, bodily welfare or property from a real danger of severe injury, due to the conditions prevalent when the act was committed, there being no alternative but to commit the act.”
Still, while it should only be employed in extreme cases, human rights groups have criticized the “ticking time bomb” defense for its widespread and inappropriate use.
“In the few cases in which the Complaints Inspector found that [GSS] agents abused an interrogee, the State Attorney’s Office decided to close the file without ordering a criminal investigation, this on the tendentious grounds that the high court established, whereby in ‘ticking bomb’ cases the [GSS] interrogator may escape criminal responsibility under the ‘necessity defense,’” the B’Tselem report found.
According to a 2009 report released by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) titled “Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel,” the State of Israel is not meeting its responsibilities under international law since it fails to hold accountable those responsible for torture or abuse.
“The mechanism for examining complaints does not exist in a vacuum. It is maintained alongside the systemic torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees, and alongside the silence, if not the actual support, of the legal system,” the report states.
“We believe that the State of Israel must meet standards of human dignity, justice, and equality of law and must respect its obligations under international law. A criminal investigation, with the attendant criminal and public ramifications, conveys a strong and clear message that all forms of torture and abuse are absolutely prohibited since they fatally injure human dignity and the human person. This is a message that must not be ambiguous,” the report adds.
Ending Israeli impunity
According to Addameer’s Sahar Francis, Palestinian detainees are hesitant to report instances of torture due to the fact that these claims are rarely investigated and virtually never result in criminal convictions or justice, and because they will be held in Israeli military detention while their claim is investigated.
“It’s very hard to say that you can reach justice in this [Israeli military court] system. And the case of Muhammad Halabiyeh is a very good example to see how the court always believes the soldiers and the police officers who collect the confessions and don’t trust what the detainees have to say,” Francis told The Electronic Intifada.
“Most of the cases, even if you exhaust the whole procedures, wouldn’t end up in favor of the detainees,” she added. “We can say that there’s more than 95 percent of conviction at the end, whether it’s through plea bargains or exhausting the system. Most of the prisoners prefer plea bargains because they don’t trust the system. Why waste the time and put all these efforts?”
Francis said that the issue of torture of Palestinians convicted in Israeli military courts is closely connected to the Israeli occupation, and can therefore only be solved by ending the Israeli occupation altogether.
“The solution for this is ending the occupation, putting an end to the occupation, which means Israel is not allowed to arrest Palestinians and prosecute them in their military courts. And they are then supposed to release all the Palestinian political prisoners from the Israeli prisons, where they are held illegally,” she said.
“What’s very important is to put an end to this impunity when it comes to torture of Palestinian political prisoners. This is a big demand of the Palestinian human rights NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], [and] the international community should find a way to put an end to the Israeli immunity in torture and not just in torture but all of the other violations of international law.”
Source:
http://electronicintifada.net
Posted on: 12/11/2012
By Adri Nieuwhof
Israel has held six Palestinian boys from Nablus in solitary confinement in al-Jalame detention center near Haifa, writes Defence for Children International-Palestine Section in an urgent appeal.
The boys have spent on average 14.5 days in solitary confinement, ranging from four to 29 days. Following their detention in al-Jalame, the boys were transferred to Megiddo prison. The transfer into Israel and subsequent detention of the boys violates the Fourth Geneva Convention Articles 49 and 76.
British-Danish security giant G4S has provided security equipment to both al-Jalame and Megiddo prisons, according to a March 2011 report on the firm by Who Profits.
Solitary confinement cells in al-Jalame
Since 2008, Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI) has documented 59 casesof children who report being held in solitary confinement in detention facilities in Israel, including six boys during the past five months. Interrogators used threats of prolonged solitary confinement to extract confessions.
The six boys were locked up in different cells. Their description of the cell follows below. The full story of the arrest and detention of the boys can be read by clicking on the name of each boy.
Seventeen-year-old Suleiman spent 18 days in solitary confinement, mainly Cell 36: “It is very small and has no windows. The lights were on non-stop.”
Sixteen-year-old Jamal was held for four days in solitary confinement in Cell 19. The cell had no windows and the light was left on 24 hours per day. The interrogator threatened to keep him in solitary confinement for a long time if he did not confess. “I actually believed him when he said this. My body started shaking and I felt really dizzy,” recalled Jamal. “I begged him not to put me back in the cell and I confessed to throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and grenades at military jeeps, even though I never did it.”
Seventeen-year-old Adham was held for 12 days in solitary confinement in Cell 36: “It is very small and only has room for one mattress. The mattress was very dirty. The toilet had a horrible smell and there were two holes in the ceiling that allowed freezing cold air in. The lights were dim yellow and left on the whole time. I spent 12 days in this cell. I could not tell day from night. I could not tell what time it was. I did not even see the prison guard who brought me food and passed it through a gap in the door. I did not sleep at all on the first night because I was so scared.”
Sixteen-year-old Abdullah was held for six days in solitary confinement in Cell 36: “It’s a very small cell with a mattress on the floor. There is a toilet with an awful smell, no windows and a very cold air conditioner. The lights are always on and hurt my eyes.”
Sixteen-year-old Mujahed said he was held for 29 days in solitary confinement during the 52 days detention period in al-Jalame. He was held in a number of different cells, but “all the cells looked the same but some were bigger than others. They all lacked windows. The lights were turned on the whole time. Also the toilets had a horrible smell.”
Seventeen-year-old Murad was held for 19 days in solitary confinement in three different cells. Detention Cell 1 “is miserable. It has no windows. There is a yellow dim light that is kept on all the time and hurts the eyes. I confessed on day one because I was very scared they might keep me in the cell for a long time. Cell 36 is similar to Cell 1, but is smaller and barely large enough for one person. I never saw anyone except the interrogator. The prison guard who took me to the interrogation room and back made me wear blacked-out glasses so I could not see anything. I could not tell day from night. I was in really bad shape.”
Solitary confinement inflicts mental damage
Solitary confinement inflicts severe mental damage upon prisoners, rights organizationsAddameer and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) wrote in a 2008 report. The report looked into the effect of solitary confinement on adults.
“Sleep disturbances, through depression and anxiety, to psychotic reactions, such as visual and auditory hallucinations, paranoid states, disorientation with regards to time and space, states of acute confusion, and thought disorders,” are mentioned as effects.
The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) confirmed the negative impact of solitary confinement in a 16 April 1996 report. The following quote from the IPS report is mentioned in Addameer and PHR’s report:
Research findings on the issue are unequivocal and show that imprisonment in isolation causes deep psychotic reactions. Clearly the duration of time a prisoner is held in solitary confinement has direct implications on its side effects, as holding an individual alone in a cell for one day is not the same as isolating him, as stated, for a period of three weeks, months, or years. There is no doubt that there exists a certain time limit after which most people will feel that solitary confinement is intolerable and will suffer, as a result, from long-term effects.
Addameer and PHR stress that there is no fixed time period after which mental problems will arise, because it will differ from one individual to another.
Solitary confinement is harmful for children
The potential damage to young people held in solitary confinement is much greater than to adults. In the report Growing Up Locked Down of 4 October, Human Rights Watch researched the practice of solitary confinement of youth in the US. The practice harms young people in ways that are different, and more profound, than if they were adults, says the report.
Experts assert that young people are psychologically unable to handle solitary confinement with the resilience of an adult. And, because they are still developing, traumatic experiences like solitary confinement may have a profound effect on their chance to rehabilitate and grow. Solitary confinement can exacerbate, or make more likely, short and long-term mental health problems. The most common deprivation that accompanies solitary confinement, denial of physical exercise, is physically harmful to adolescents’ health and well-being.
Children should not be held in solitary confinement
Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, condemned Israel’s use of solitary confinement against Palestinian children in a 20 July 2012 press statement.
“Prison conditions are often deplorable, requiring children to sleep on the floor or on a concrete bed in a windowless cell,” said Falk. Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children “is inhumane, cruel, degrading, and unlawful, and, most worryingly, it is likely to adversely affect the mental and physical health of underage detainees.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez shares Falk’s view.
Solitary confinement should be banned as a punishment or extortion technique, Méndez told the UN General Assembly on 18 October 2011. The Israeli solitary confinement cells are “often lit with fluorescent bulbs as their only source of light, and they have no source of fresh air,” wrote Méndez in aninterim report.
He recommended solitary confinements for children be abolished: “it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”
Update
On 12 January 2013, Defence for Children International-Palestine section has submitted complaints to the Israeli authorities on behalf of five children who were ill- treated and tortured when they were held in G4S equipped al-Jalame interrogation center. The complaints request that an investigation be opened into allegations that the children were mistreated by the Israeli Prison Service and the Israeli Security Agency during their detention in the al-Jalame interrogation center. Click here to read more.
Source:
http://electronicintifada.net
Posted on: 12 June 2005
By Defence for Children International-Palestine Section
In the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), a collaborator is understood as any Palestinian who cooperates with the Israeli security forces in the OPT or in Israel. Recruiting Palestinians as collaborators is perceived in the OPT as part of Israel’s policy to maintain control over the territory and the Palestinian people.
The Israeli intelligence services (Shabak) continually seek to recruit children as informants.
Most cases of collaboration are found in interrogation centers and prisons where detainees are put under extreme physical and mental pressure to collaborate. Palestinian children often find themselves under such pressure.1
The Israeli intelligence services (Shabak) continually seek to recruit children as informants. A field survey with former child detainees conducted in 2003 by DCI–PS, estimated that 60 per cent of the children interviewed, some of them are as young as 12, were reported to have been tortured or subjected to other forms of coercion or inducement in an attempt to make them cooperate. By late 2003 in Gaza alone there were on average 40 attempts to recruit minors every month.2
Children accused of being recruited as informants by the Israeli authorities are at risk of stigmatization, exclusion, and on occasion, retaliation. On 5 February 2002, shortly after death sentences were passed on two 17 year olds, Khaled Kamiel and Jihad Kamiel, by the Palestinian State Security Court in Jenin for the killing of a member of the Palestinian Authority security services, armed men entered the court and shot dead both boys. They had been accused of collaborating with the Israeli authorities.3
There is a growing need to prevent the use of Palestinian children as collaborators and to protect children who have allegedly been used as collaborators by the Israeli forces. Palestinian Authorities and community and religious leaders, schools, families and Palestinian and international non governmental organizations (NGOs) all have a key role to play in this prevention and protection task.
Approximately 2,800 children were arrested by the Israeli authorities between September 2000 and July 2004. At various moments, Palestinian children constituted 10 per cent of all Palestinian detainees. In 2002, one-fifth of child prisoner cases handled by DCI–PS involved children aged 13 and 14; the rest were between 15 and 17 years old.
n an interview with DCI–PS, a legal counselor of the PSF said: “The Israeli Shabak is targeting young children because they are easy preys. This month we arrested six collaborators, three of whom were under the age of 18. It is estimated that out of every ten (alleged) collaborators that we arrest and investigate, four are children. The youngest we encountered was 12.”
The exact number of collaborators, adults and children, is unknown, but in a DCI–PS field survey on 40 former child prisoners, 25 children reported that they were asked or pressured to collaborate with the Israeli occupying force. According to the alleged victims, a variety of methods were used, including beatings, threatening with long sentences, repercussions against the family, sexual assault, and public shaming. Rewards offered for cooperation included early release, money, work- or other permits, and sexual services. Most of the children interviewed by DCI–PSwere “approached” by the Shabak. The Israeli police attempted to recruit two children, two other children were pressured by Palestinian collaborators inside the prison, and, in an isolated case, an Israeli soldier attempted to recruit a child.
DCI–PS has collected testimonies of children who regretted that they gave in to the pressure to become informers. It is extremely difficult for Palestinian children to denounce attempts to make them collaborate since they are expected to report to their Israeli “superiors” or otherwise face serious consequences. The Palestinian society also has little mercy with collaborators, especially when they are connected to serious incidents leading to the death of other Palestinians or damage to the national cause.
Source:
http://electronicintifada.net
Emily Jacir, Abandoned Property
“ex libris commemorates the approximately thirty thousand books from Palestinian homes, libraries, and institutions that were looted by Israeli authorities in 1948. Six thousand of these books are kept and catalogued at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem under the designation “A.P.” (Abandoned Property).” (x)
I was in NYC for a few days in June and went to Chelsea to check out Chelsea Market and High Line Park. The park was great and I wish I took more photos, but the two above are the best two out of the ten or twelve mediocre photos I took whiel I was there. And I absolutely recommend going to Giovanni Rana at Chelsea Market because they have the best pasta I’ve ever had. It’s actually al dente, which surprised me at first because I’m so used to eating the overcooked stuff where I live (Incidentally, an amazing Italian restaurant just opened here with actual al dente pasta but Giovanni Rana has officially ruined me), but it was really good and pretty filling as well despite the seemingly small portions.
Source: artandcetera
Posted on:
By Steven Erlanger
AL ZAYYEM, West Bank — They buried Rabi al-Essawy 14 months ago on land his family owns not far from this village, between East Jerusalem and the large Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. Mr. Essawy, 65, was a member of an important clan, and thousands attended his funeral.
Khaled al-Saidi, right, said his family bought land in E1, between East Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, in the 1990s. The Israelis have told him to leave. Credit Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
But Mr. Essawy’s grave is in a parcel of land known as E1, a largely empty patch of the West Bank that is among the most sensitive pieces of real estate in an intractable conflict that is fundamentally about the land. The Israelis mean to annex E1 — short for East 1 — and they do not want Muslim graves to complicate future plans to build more settlements here.
Israeli authorities have ordered the family to remove Mr. Essawy’s remains and bury him in the village cemetery, just outside E1.
The fight over Mr. Essawy’s grave is a tiny skirmish in the long, intensifying battle over this parcel of land, a fight that speaks to the seemingly insurmountable differences, hostility and distrust between the Israelis and thePalestinians. It also stands as a symbol of the failure of negotiations as each side tries to outmaneuver the other with unilateral actions, and the international community is left on the sidelines to do little more than express discontent.
“It’s a big deal because for both sides, it looks like it’s in the heart of their dreams,” the columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “Nobody’s innocent here. Everybody’s trying to force his will on the other side.”
Israel sees E1, only 4.6 square miles and largely rocky desert, as the stone in the arch that connects East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed, to Maale Adumim, one of the biggest of the so-called settlement blocs, with a population of 40,000. Israel says it intends to keep Maale Adumim in any peace settlement, hoping to swap land with any future Palestinian state. In fact, it was Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party who in 1994 attached E1 to the municipality of Maale Adumim.
For the Palestinians, E1 is seen as essential if they are ever to achieve a viable independent state with East Jerusalem as their capital. Palestinians say they need the land to preserve a workable, practical connection between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to build housing for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. As important, the Palestinians contend, E1 is central to a crucial north-south route through the West Bank from Ramallah to Bethlehem.
Israeli officials argue that a system of protected roads and tunnels through E1 could allow Palestinians passage. Palestinians say that Israelis could instead use such roads to travel between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, where many of the settlers work. Israeli officials also argue that the West Bank is not obstructed farther to the east, and that Palestinians can drive north-south closer to the Jordan River; Palestinians say that the Jordan Valley is too far out of their way and that Israel has said it will demand a security presence there in any case.
E1 has been contentious for years, with Washington warning various Israeli governments not to start building there. But E1 burst back into the forefront recently after Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, won United Nations General Assembly approval to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state. Mr. Abbas pressed ahead despite warnings from the United States and Israel that such an action would be a unilateral step in violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords that set up the supposedly interim Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Abbas won handily in the General Assembly on Nov. 29, in a 138 to 9 vote. Even Germany, a strong Israeli ally, abstained. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded with a three-part riposte. He withheld taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinians to pay down their electricity debt to Israel. He announced final approval for the construction of 3,000 more housing units in East Jerusalem and existing settlement blocs — beyond the 1967 borders, but within current settlement lines. And finally, he accelerated planning for the construction of up to 3,400 housing units inside E1.
The decision set off a critical reaction, especially in Washington and Europe. Many countries called in Israeli ambassadors to complain. But there was confusion, too, with some critics presuming that construction would go ahead in E1.
Israeli officials explained later that any construction in E1, if it happened at all, was many years away, and that the move on E1 was “symbolism against symbolism” — a symbolic response to a symbolic recognition of statehood. But the new planning for E1 is also “a warning to the Palestinians that E1 is now in play if they do further outrageous acts,” one senior official said. “We don’t exclude the possibility that E1 moves from symbolism to something real — the prime minister has raised the stakes and put E1 back on the table.”
Mr. Netanyahu himself told the German newspaper Die Welt that “as far as our future action is concerned, it depends on the Palestinians.” He added: “In any case what we’ve advanced so far is only planning, and we will have to see. We shall act further based on what the Palestinians do. If they don’t act unilaterally, then we won’t have any purpose to do so either.”
But he has also argued that there is a political consensus in Israel that E1 should be used for more Israeli settlement, that previous governments agreed with him, and that the Labor Party, under Mr. Rabin, authorized E1.
For now, the only significant Israeli construction in E1, which is largely state land, is a regional police station. Built in 2008 high on a hill, it overlooks the village cemetery where Yusra al-Qaisi, believed to be 75, was buried last week.
Khaled al-Saidi, 33, was among the mourners. He is a Bedouin whose family has lived on this land, he said, for more than 80 years; more important, and unlike most of the Bedouins here, his family bought the land in the 1990s. Still, he has been told by the Israelis to move; the house of his brother, Ali, has already been destroyed, because it was supposedly in the path of a future security zone.
“Here I’m on the edge of the security zone and there I’m also in the way of your settlement,” he said. “Where do I go? I just want a place for my sheep to go.”
On the opposite hill, near the police station, the authorities of Maale Adumim set up a Hanukkahmenorah, their efforts to light a candle defeated by the wind. But the mayor of the settlement, Benny Kashriel, said that he believes that after 18 years of delay and hesitation, the Israeli government might finally be ready to authorize construction in E1.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com
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