Amnesty International accuses Israel of grave human rights abuses

28May08

Amnesty International’s 2008 annual human rights report has just been published. I haven’t the time to do a proper post on it at the moment, but it is viewable online here. For now, here is a summary of the section on Israel/Palestine.

The report describes the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories as “dire”, noting that:

‘Israeli forces killed more than 370 Palestinians, destroyed more than 100 Palestinian homes and imposed ever more stringent restrictions on the movement of Palestinians. In June, the Israeli government imposed an unprecedented blockade on the Gaza Strip, virtually imprisoning its entire 1.5 million population, subjecting them to collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to date. Some 40 Palestinians died after being refused passage out of Gaza for urgent medical treatment not available in local hospitals [other estimates put the figure much higher]. Most Gazans were left dependent on international aid for survival but UN aid agencies complained that the Israeli blockade made it difficult for them to provide the much needed assistance. In the West Bank, the Israeli authorities continued to expand illegal settlements and build a 700-km fence/wall in violation of international law. Impunity remained the norm for Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers who committed serious abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, physical assaults and attacks on property. Thousands of Palestinians were arrested, most of whom were released without charge. Those charged with security-related offences often received unfair trials before military courts. Some 9,000 Palestinian adults and children remained in Israeli jails, some of whom had been held without charge or trial for years.’

While Israeli air strikes and other attacks killed 370 Palestinians, including some 50 children, and injured thousands more, only 13 Israelis, including six soldiers, were killed by Palestinians last year, “the lowest annual fatality figure since the outbreak of the intifada”.

Amnesty reports that some 9,000 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, remain imprisoned in Israel, most of whom are being held “in violation of international humanitarian law”, which prohibits “the removal of detainees to the territory of the occupying power.” Those detained include dozens of former Hamas ministers and parliamentarians who were abducted by Israel in 2006. Military trials of Palestinians “often did not meet international standards of fairness”, and “[t]here were frequent reports of torture and other ill-treatment.”

“Methods reported included beating, tying in painful positions for prolonged periods, denial of access to toilets and threats to harm the detainees’ relatives. In some cases, detainees’ parents, wives or siblings were summoned and forced to appear before detainees while dressed in prison uniform to make the detainees believe that they too were being held and ill-treated.”

This last tactic caused one detainee to go on hunger strike and attempt to commit suicide. A report published earlier this year by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) demonstrates that this use of family members as an instrument of psychological torture is hardly an isolated incident. It describes how, in some cases, “family members were … arrested and sometimes tortured, although they were not suspected of any offence whatsoever, all for the purpose of applying pressure on a relative undergoing interrogation.” Another PCATI report (.doc) from early 2007 documented Israel’s use of “sadistic torture”, describing the “exceedingly bureaucratic way in which torture is carried out, in an organized, almost blasé manner”, while an investigation into the torture of Palestinian children by Defence for Children International concluded,

“A Palestinian child under arrest and during interrogation does not have the right to silence; the right to immediate and liberal access to a lawyer; the right to be advised of his or her rights while under arrest and interrogation; the right not to be assaulted, abused or tortured; the right to have contact with a family member or support person and; the right to be presumed innocent.”

These human rights abuses occurred within a culture of impunity, in which, returning to the Amnesty report, “Israeli soldiers and other members of the security forces as well as Israeli settlers continued to enjoy impunity for human rights abuses committed against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, physical assaults and attacks on their property.”

Amnesty describes how Israel “seized or rendered inaccessible to Palestinians” large areas of Palestinian land in order to build the illegal wall in the West Bank, “depriving them of their source of livelihood and restricting their access to their workplaces, education and health facilities and other necessary services.” For a detailed examination of the humanitarian impact of the wall, see here (.pdf) and here (.pdf). As illegal construction in Israeli settlements continued, so did the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes. According to Amnesty International,

“Israeli forces demolished more than 100 Palestinian homes throughout the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, because of lack of building permits – which were systematically denied to Palestinian residents of these areas of the OPT. The demolitions left hundreds of Palestinians homeless.”

In one case, 200 residents of Khirbet Qassa, a small village populated principally by refugees, were forced from their homes by Israeli soldiers and had their houses demolished. According to B’Tselem, “[m]ost of the residents are now homeless and have had to find temporary housing in the nearby town of Idhna.”

The siege of Gaza, which is ongoing, “caused a sharp deterioration in the already dire humanitarian situation.” The Gazan economy collapsed (.pdf), with 3,500 out of 3,900 factories closing within a period of six months, while border closures led to “shortages of meat, dairy products and other basic foodstuffs, and of most other goods, including paper, pencils, clothes, spare parts for hospital equipment and medicine.” 80% of the population was forced to rely on international food aid for survival, and “[e]xtreme poverty, malnutrition and other health problems increased”. According to the latest ILO annual report (.pdf), the plight of the Palestinians “deteriorated alarmingly” in a number of respects last year. The closure of the Gaza Strip caused mass unemployment, with only “[o]ne in three persons of working age” employed. “Private sector employment and activity … ceased almost entirely” and the “incidence of extreme poverty” rose to 40% of the population (compared to 19% in the West Bank). In short, to borrow the words of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, Gazans have been “systematically deprived of the enjoyment of almost all their human rights and basic needs.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu today described the scene in Gaza as “bigger than the ability of human beings to conceive.” “The blockade”, he continued, is a “gross violation of human rights.” It “is illegal and should stop.” President Jimmy Carter has similarly condemned the siege as “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth,” amounting to the “imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees”. This destruction of Gazan society has been perpetrated with the full cooperation and complicity of the U.S. and the EU. When Gordon Brown and George Bush next splutter with righteous outrage about the ‘inhumanity’ of the Burmese regime, you would do well to recall their own involvement in the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the West Bank, which, unlike the destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis, is entirely man-made.

Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, News and politics, Torture   |  10 Comments
Tags: Amnesty International, Gaza, Human Rights, occupation