Prisoners: Palestinians Detained by the Palestinian Authority
According to the Prisoners' Support Association (Addameer), after the September 9 release of 199 prisoners under the first phase of the Sharm al-Sheikh Memorandum Israel held approximately 1,800 Palestinians prisoners convicted of "security" offenses. A further 151 prisoners, including forty-two from Arab states, were released on October 15. Lawyers reported that Palestinian prisoners in Ashkelon prison were subjected to severe restrictions on family visits, and in June prisoners in the isolation wing went on hunger strike to protest the conditions there. Prisoners held a second hunger strike in August to protest the Israeli restrictions on the categories of prisoners released in September: among those excluded were prisoners from occupied East Jerusalem and Israel itself, members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and prisoners accused of killing or severely wounding Israelis.
The longest-serving administrative detainee held under military orders, Osama Barham, was released on July 18, just prior to the High Court hearing a petition challenging his detention. With the exception of sixteen days in 1994, Barham had been detained since November 1993. He was required to post a NIS 20,000 bond and report regularly to a police station as a condition of his release. As of September 23 Israel held twenty-nine administrative detainees under military orders. The Office of the Military Advocate General refused Human Rights Watch's request to observe military court hearings on appeals against administrative detention orders in May.
In addition to those held under military orders, Israel continued to hold twenty-one Lebanese civilians hostage under Israeli civil law. On January 17 and May 26 an expanded nine judge panel of the High Court reviewed the 1997 ruling that Israel could administratively detain them as "bargaining chips," but had not ruled as of mid-October.
Torture by the General Security Service (GSS) was widespread and systematic. Initial reports suggested that the use of torture declined or stopped in the days immediately after the September 6 High Court ruling that GSS officers were not authorized to use "physical means"-torture-during interrogations. However, the ruling stopped short of the absolute ban on torture and ill-treatment required by international law and left the door open for a torturer to escape punishment by invoking a "necessity" defense under article 34(11) of the Penal Law (1977), or for the Knesset to pass legislation legalizing torture or ill-treatment. On September 14 members of the Knesset submitted a bill authorizing the head of the GSS to order torture in cases where a suspect was believed to have information that could stop an imminent attack.
The High Court also relied on the "necessity" defense when it rejected a petition that sought to revoke the promotion of an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commander and begin prosecution proceedings against him. The commander, identified only as Respondent No. 4, had shot a bound captive and then ordered another soldier to shoot him again during a 1993 commando raid in south Lebanon. The court based its ruling on the Military Attorney General finding that the commander was entitled to a defense of necessity because of his "responsibility for the safety of his soldiers," and the IDF Chief Commander's finding that Respondent No. 4 was "one of the best fighters of the IDF." The court ruled that "as judges we do not replace [the Chief Commander's] reasoning with our own," and ordered the petitioner to pay the respondents' legal expenses.