Palestinian Prisoners Day (17 April): Another Year of always-renewed violations

Monday, 16 April 2001

This years Palestinian Prisoners Day comes while the Intifada is going on and the Palestinian prisoners are still kept captive and even more new prisoners are being arrested since the start of the Intifada.

Last year had witnessed a series of events that had had major effects on the prisoners' movement and the eruption of the Intifada at the end of September could not pass without also adding more effects to those ones.

Last year that started with hopes to release Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons as part of the Palestinian-Israeli signed agreements witnessed a series of strikes and moves by the prisoners' movement. Such strikes and moves escalated to reach the open strike and hunger strike among all Palestinian prisoners held in all of the Israeli prisons during May 2000. That strike had it's reflection on the Palestinian street which organized a series of support demonstration, strike and set-ins, some of which were faced by Israeli gun fire that killed and injured many Palestinians some of whom were X-political prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israeli failure to abide with agreements signed with the Palestinian Authority including that part about the release of all Palestinian prisoners arrested before the signing of Oslo agreement was not the only Israeli violation. The Israeli Occupation Authorities also backed off from many of the regulations that had been reached by prisoners and prisons' authorities making the already bad enough living and detention situation even worse. Worth to remember that these regulations that were supposed to make the detention situation one step closer to an accepted human one and were achieved only after years and years of long time struggle of the prisoners' movement and only after it claimed the lives of tens of Palestinian prisoners.

According to the last statistics at Addameer Association the number of Palestinian and Arab prisoners currently held in Israeli prisons and detention and interrogation centers is about 1960 prisoners taking into consideration that numbers of detainees in detention and interrogation centers is constantly changing.

Through regular visits to Israeli prisons and detention and interrogation centers and the following of the detention and imprisonment situation of Palestinian political prisoners there Addameer Association found during the last year the following:

• · The use of different kinds and methods of torture continues: Israeli interrogators continue to use different methods and kinds of torture and physical psychological pressure on Palestinian detainees to get statements and confessions. Some of the most common methods but not limited to that had been documented by Addameer are:
  o Shabeh: The Shabeh, mostly on the chair, that reaches up to 20 continuous hours daily despite the Israeli High Court order on 6 September 1999 preventing Shabeh.
  • o Physical and Psychological Pressure: aimed at breaking down the detainee by subjecting him to heavy pressure, threat, and exhaustion till the detainee reaches a situation of kind of nervous brake down or what is called "Hysteria" a situation where the detainee loses self physical and psychological control. They use several interrogator (2-6) who replace each other during interrogation that go into long continuous intensive interrogation sessions that some times last for two days long and thus they prevent the detainee from sleep for longer periods. Interrogation detention periods are renewed several times that some times reaches two months period and longer while the detainee is continuously subject to such pressure.
  • o Isolation (Confinement): The detainee is isolated from the outside world and from seeing his lawyer during almost all the interrogation period. Lawyers are prevented from seeing their detained clients for periods of 4 to 8 days that are renewed when the interrogators see necessary for a period that reaches 15 to 30 days long. Addameer lawyer following 129 cases at interrogation centers during the year 2000 was prevented from visiting the detainees under interrogation 112 times each time for a period varied from 15 to 30 days.
  • o Collaborators Rooms: Israeli Interrogators had developed this method to become an integral part of the interrogation process and there is no interrogation center these days that does not have a section of collaborators' room or rooms where they are being used in the interrogation process at a certain point with carefully studied plans. In these rooms collaborators and some times interrogators pretend to be other Palestinian prisoners and when the detainee is send there they try to get information by forcing the detainee to give a full report of his activities pretending to be leaders of Palestinian activism. Many times this process involves threat to detainee's life if the detainee does not give in easily and some times it even involves direct physical abuse.
• · Body Search: Israeli Occupation Authorities conduct abusive and humiliating body search - some times strip search - of Palestinian prisoners when moving them between sections of the same prison or detention center or between different prisons. The same kind of this abusive body search is conducted on families visiting detainees although the visits are from behind wired fences only.
• · Family visits: Since the signing of Oslo agreement Israeli Authorities moved Palestinian Prisoners in contradiction to International Law to prisons inside Israel, i.e. outside the occupied territories, which creates a major difficulty for families to visit detainees since they are required to obtain permits to inter Israel. The process of getting these permits is very long and is a humiliating one and the chances of getting these permits are very low and it is quite often that requests to obtain such permits are denied for security reasons.

  Since the eruption of the Intifada by the end of September 2000 when Israeli Occupation Authorities canceled all previously issued permits and stopped issuing new ones families were not able to visit detainees that possessed a public punishment to both detainees and their families. Only Jerusalemites are able to visit detainees since they are not required to obtain such permits. Families are also prevented from bringing in during the visits food stuff or clothes or even cigarettes, stuff that detainees are in much need for and can only get from their families during visits.

  Such practices are added to those regulations that were introduced 21 June 1996 concerning family visits. According to these regulations only relative from the first degree and a certain age can visit detainees. This means that only Parents, Wives or Husbands, Sons and Daughters, and Brothers and Sisters, who are older than 40 or younger than 16 years old can visit. Another regulation was added that requires them to get a special clearance or permit "Allowed to visit prisons" which extremely complicated the issue since getting such a clearance requires families to have security clearance and Israeli Security Apparatus is using all possible means to deny such a clearance in order to put more pressure on detainees and their families. All those regulations are turning family visits into a complete nightmare for both detainees and their families when they happen - if they happen.

• · Punishment Practices; Transfer and Isolation: Israeli Occupation Authorities had been practicing a general policy of regularly transferring (moving) Palestinian prisoners from one prison to another in close intervals as a method to prevent prisoners from coordinating moves or strikes aiming at improving their detention situation or building a prisoners movement. It also creates more difficulties for families visits when they head to visit the detainee in one prison and it turns out that the prisoner had been move to another one so the visit is delayed to another time till they manage to coordinate the clearance to visit the other prison. Also there is the policy of detaining Palestinian prisoners in prisons that are in areas geographically far from where their families are to make families visits even more difficult. On regular bases Israeli authorities put Palestinian prisoners in confinement sections or in Solitary confinement preventing them from seeing other detainees or their lawyers and depriving certain detainees from family visits is also a very common practice.
• · Phone calls: Israeli Occupation Authorities had been always denying Palestinian prisoners the use of or making phone calls. This had been lately one of the most important requests of prisoners considering irregularity of family visits and long periods that reaches months of freezing family visits and in those unpleasant events when some prisoner loses one of his close relatives (a parent, a child, a brother or sister).
• · Discrimination against Palestinian detainees from Israel (Arab Israelis): Being Israeli citizens Palestinian political detainees from Israel are discriminated against when compared to Jewish prisoners or to criminal prisoners. They are denied the rights that are guaranteed to Israeli prisoners by Israeli laws such as phone calls, home visits, and family visits without the wire fences. Israeli authorities had been denying them these rights and they refuse to deal with their case as a general one and insist to consider each case individually. The authorities had also put forward a condition that these political prisoners get mixed with the criminal prisoners in order to be able to get their rights. Such ethnic discriminations are not only practiced when in prison but are also practiced in the judicial process when explaining laws.
• · 'The Last Third Period of the Sentence' (Parole): According to the law in effect and practice a prisoner who had spent two third of his sentence period is eligible to apply for a special legal committee hearing to look into their release. Through out the experience of following such legal cases Addameer Association came to the conclusion that confirms that an ethnical discrimination against Palestinian prisoners is practiced in the Israeli judicial system. Israeli Jewish prisoners whither detained for different criminal charges or for murdering Palestinian citizens get their sentences reduced and get released by a special hearing or by a Parole decision form the Israeli State President. On the other hand Palestinian prisoners and Palestinian-Israeli political prisoners do not get such lawful treatment neither by judges nor by the security apparatus and they are rarely paroled and when paroled it's usually only a couple of weeks before the end of their actual sentence period. The usual claims for such a practice is that these Palestinian prisoners compose a State Security Threat or The General Political Situation does not encourage such a move.
• · General health conditions: While following tens of cases among Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons Addameer lawyers registered a general phenomena that can be safely described as 'Policy in Practice', which is intentional medical neglect and prolong delaying of treatment when needed or use the health condition of a prisoner to put pressure on him. Some of these basic violations practiced by both Prisons Authorities and the medical personnel are:
  • o Not providing specialized medical services: In all of Israeli prisons where Palestinians are held there are only extremely poorly equipped small clinics where a nurse with very limited experience works and a general physician that appears only on certain days during the week.
  • o Failure to provide needed treatment at the right time: The medical personnel deals with prisoners with obvious bias (consider prisoners as enemies) and consequently unprofessionally by intentionally delaying and slowing the process of providing medical care and treatment.
  • o Refusal to provide full treatment: Israeli prisons authorities refuse to provide all needed specialized treatment to Palestinian prisoners and they have very special and restricted regulation on the kind of treatment provided to Palestinian prisoners.
  • o Conditions against providing access for Arab medical personnel to give visits to prisoners: Israeli Authorities put forward extremely difficult and very complicated conditions that are had been preventing Arab physicians and medical personnel from being able to provide certain medical care to Palestinian prisoners.
• · Juvenals: Only during the last events (Intifada) hundreds of Palestinian children (under 18) had been arrested and currently around 130 are still detained in Telmond prison. These Palestinian children are being now held along with criminal prisoners. Israeli Authorities keeps refusing to separate them from criminal prisoners. Addameer Association is extremely concerned about the well being of these children and their detention conditions as being detained along with criminal prisoners. They had been facing many problems in detention the most serious ones being:
  • o They had been being beaten and physically assaulted by criminal prisoners.
  • o Some had been sexually harassed by criminal prisoners and threatened of being beaten if they try to complain. In one case one of the children who complained when he was harassed was beaten and attacked with razors in his legs. Israeli authorities still failed to move him from the section.
  • o Criminal prisoners seize the belongings of these children: food, clothes, shoes, etc.
  • o The lack of newspapers, magazines and other educational or entertaining stuff.
  • o They had been most of the time deprived from family visits what is causing extremely serious psychological problems to these kids.
• · Strikes: In light of all Israeli Authorities violations and practices against Palestinian prisoners and their families alike, the prisoners held a series of moves and strikes demanding to improve their detention conditions as well as their release according to the signed agreements between the Israeli Authorities and the Palestinian Authority. As Israeli Occupation Authorities failed to abide with the agreements that had been signed and the failure to improve the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners, the prisoners announced an open hunger strike during May 2000 in all of the Israeli prisons where Palestinian are being held. This May's strike that was accompanied by a support campaign all over Palestine and in many other countries around the world by organizing series of demonstrations, set-ins, strikes and signing support letters. This last strike ended when an agreement between prisoners and Israeli Authorities was reached under which a list of certain demands were supposed to be fulfilled and others to be negotiated. The Israeli Authorities were again quick to deny the agreement reached and refused to implement any of the promised improvements and even more restrictions were introduced and heavier regulations against prisoners and their families were implemented especially after the Intifada started.

Concerning Israeli Occupation violations against Palestinian people during the ongoing Intifada Addameer Association registers that the Israeli Authorities had been using several methods in their attempt to crush the Intifada. Some of these methods had been practiced for the first time while many had been known to be used by the Israelis before but this time on a larger and more intense scale. Most noticed violations were:

• · The use of heavy weapons (Artillery, Tanks, Attack Helicopters, etc.): Israeli Occupation Authorities used unjustified and unnecessary force targeting Palestinian civilians and Palestinian residential areas during the last clashes killing and injuring scores of Palestinian civilians in their residencies or work sites and damaging some times complete residential blocks.
• · Targeting and intentional killing Palestinian children and targeting schools.
• · The use of snipers and the use of firearms with silencers: From the very beginning of the clashes Israeli Occupation army provided soldiers with automatic guns and rifles that have silencers attached to it.
• · Assassinations: Israeli Occupation launch of a campaign to assassinate Palestinians who they called as 'field leaders' did not form a newly implemented practice. Israelis had used such Extra Judicial Executions or Assassinations in the past against it's political or military opponents whither within the occupied territories or in other countries. They have had a well-trained special trained assassination division since the founding of Israel but this the first time it had been implemented on this scale and in such a very open way.
• · Bulldozing Agricultural Areas: During this last period Israeli Occupation Authorities had launched a campaign to destroy and bulldoze agricultural land on an unprecedented scale. Thousands of acres of Palestinian agricultural land had bulldozed and destroyed. In Gaza complete areas had been leveled to earth including even farmers houses.
• · Military closure: implementing a military closure of Palestinian residential areas turning them into cantons and isolating them not only from each other but from the rest of the world as well causing disastrous damages to the Palestinians in economical, educational, health or psychological aspects.
• · Targeting Press Persons: Israeli Authorities had been targeting the press where more than 40 journalists sustained injuries during the Intifada either from live ammunition or plastic-coated-metal bullets or when being beat by Israeli soldiers or settlers.
• · Settlements and Settlers violence: Settlement activities by Israeli Authorities were escalated since the beginning of the Intifada and a green light had been given to settlers to activate their own settlement plans and to launch attacks on Palestinians. Settlers attacks on Palestinians became more and more frequent and later settlers announced the forming of armed militias that are launching attacks on Palestinians.
• · Arrest Campaigns and House Raids: Israeli Occupation army and authorities escalated and widened their arrest campaigns among Palestinians. Arrests are being conducted on military checkpoints or borders crossings or by night raids on houses. Some common phenomena had been reported during night raids on houses, these include:
  • o Raids are conducted after midnight and before dawn with large numbers of army troops and their special units.
  • o All houses of targeted people within the same neighborhood or village are raided at the same time while surrounding the complete neighborhood.
  • o Forcing all the residents of the house being raided and residents of the neighboring houses to leave the houses during the raid that goes for hours. This includes forcing children, elderly and even ill also outside the houses.
  • o Trained dogs are sent into the houses after residents are forced out and before soldiers go in.
  • o Intentionally causing damage to furniture and house property during the raid and the search.
  • o Abusive body search of arrested persons and some times of their relatives that some times includes forcing them to strip in the open air.
  • o In most of the cases arrested persons are being severely beaten, kicked and punched while being taken away.

The issue of Palestinian prisoners forms an integral part of the general Palestinian question and the struggle of Palestinian people to achieve their rights in freedom, independence, self-determination and return. These rights are guaranteed by International Laws and Conventions and by a series of United Nations Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions. Addameer Association condemns Israeli violations against Palestinian prisoners and their families as part of the continuous violations practices against the whole Palestinian people. ADDAMEER ASSOCIATION

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"ADDAMEER" Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association: Jerusalem, P.O.Box 17338.
Ramallah, Al-Irsal St., Al-Isra' Bldg., 7th floor, Tel: +972-2-2960446, Fax: +972-2-2960447.
e-mail: addameer@planet.edu