Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) have arrested nearly 470 Palestinians since 18 October 2011 , when 477 Palestinian political prisoners were released in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit as part of the first phase of the prisoner exchange deal concluded by the Israeli government and Hamas authorities. This wave of arrests reveals that the exchange deal has not deterred Israel's policy of detention of Palestinians; rather, Israeli prisons are being refilled with almost the exact number of Palestinians that were released in October. Even the released prisoners were not safe from harassment, as the IOF has regularly raided their homes, issued summons to meet with Israeli intelligence and re-arrested one individual.

The 470 Palestinians who were arrested between 18 October and 12 December include about 70 children and 11 women. The IOF continued to employ brutal methods of arrest, including the use of undercover Israeli forces, commonly known as musta'arabeen, who dress as Palestinian civilians in order to carry out ambushes and arrests of Palestinians from their homes and places of work. In many cases, joint army and intelligence raids occurred after midnight, where soldiers deliberately destroyed contents of the houses they were searching. Of the 70 children arrested during this period, the majority are from Shuafat camp in Jerusalem and Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem. In the past two weeks alone, 11 children were arrested in Shuafat and 10 in Dheisheh. Two of the 11 women arrested in during the past two months remain in detention. One of the released women is Irsa Salhab, a journalist who spent more than 20 days in Moskobiyyeh interrogation center. Six of the women were arrested during a demonstration outside Hasharon prison, where they were calling for the release of female prisoners not included in the first phase of the prisoner exchange. Three of these women were released shortly after their arrest, and three were sentenced to house arrest.

Political activists were especially targeted for arrest during this period. Approximately 150 arrests of alleged party members occurred, particularly including those whom the IOF claims are active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), some of whom received indictments issued against them, while others received administrative detention orders. The IOF has continued to arrest and renew administrative detention orders of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Two PLC members were arrested since 18 October, the administrative detention orders of 6 PLC members were renewed and one PLC member received a 30-year sentence. Furthermore, on 27 October, following a mass hunger strike protesting punitive measures against prisoners including the use of isolation, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) renewed the isolation order for Ahmad Sa'adat for another year. At the beginning of December, Ahmad entered his 34th consecutive month in isolation.

The IOF also continued to carry out arrests against human rights defenders in order to further repress the popular resistance movement. During the past two months, arrests of protestors participating in peaceful demonstrations occurred in almost all of the villages with an active weekly demonstration. These arrests include at least 2 from Bil'in, 3 from Nabi Saleh, 17 from Beit Ummar, 3 from Al-Ma'asara, 1 from Kufr Qaddum and 2 from Al-Walajeh, with arrests in East Jerusalem and the South Hebron Hills as well. In addition to these arrests, the IOF used extreme violence to disperse demonstrations, resulting in the death of protestor Mustafa Tamimi, 28, on 10 December. Mustafa was fatally injured when hit by a teargas canister in the head fired at close range by an Israeli soldier on 9 December, during the weekly demonstration against the Israeli settlements and Annexation Wall in Nabi Saleh. The arrests of human rights defenders, use of violence against peaceful protestors and threats to family members of activists are in clear violation of Palestinians' right to freedom of expression and assembly.

In light of this heightened wave of arrests, Addameer is concerned about what will happen after the conclusion of the second phase of the prisoner exchange deal. The IPS has announced that 550 prisoners will be released on Sunday 18 December. Addameer calls for the implementation of the rights of released prisoners and urges the international community, including the United Nations and European Union, to intervene rapidly to prevent Israel from its continued practice of brutal and arbitrary detention.

Soource: Addameer

Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid, a festival that brings families together.

However, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails find it very difficult to receive visits from their families and relatives.

Human rights organizations say that while Israeli convicts are allowed family and home visits, Palestinians are denied even a phone call .

Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh reports from the West Bank in the Palestinian Territories.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bH105wyONA

Illustration by Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Whistleblower Or "Kapo Queen," American Censorship In High Gear

"I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead."....Eden Abergil

A "Kapo" was a Jew who served the Nazis, sometimes as administrators, but more often as thuggish camp police, even more brutal than the Nazi's themselves. Though over a million living in Israel claim to be "holocaust survivors," in reality only a few thousand survived the camps, many of them "Kapos." To help understand the absurdity of these "survivor" claims, we can examine another group from that era, American war veterans.

16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. 292,000 were killed in the war. About one million survive today. The total Jewish population of countries controlled by Nazi Germany, prior to the holocaust according to the Jewish Virtual Library was 5, 811, 900. About one million survive today, we are told.

With so many Nobel Prize winners, mathematics is no longer Israel's strong suit. Neither is truth.

Whether discussing how many Palestinians were expelled, "liquidated" or imprisoned or how many tens of thousands of rockets Hamas has rained on Tel Aviv, with so few casualties, Israeli credibility is at an all time low. Eden Abergil has done as much as any Israeli citizen to bring that fact before the world, a young girl assigned to work as a Kapo in the Israeli "camp system." Is Abergil a victim, a humanitarian whistle-blower or a sociopathic Kapo torturer?

Oliver Lustig writes, in his Dictionary of the Camps:

"The Häftling (inmate) who was wearing on the left arm a black band on which it was written -KAPO- in Gothic letters of immaculate whiteness, was a chief...he could strike, beat, kill any Häftling who did not belong to the inner hierarchy of the camp...

Kapos were recruited from among sadists, from among the unscrupulous ones, who forgot they belonged to the human species, from among those who, faced with the alternative die or kill, preferred to kill. In order to prove their servility and to maintain their position as chiefs, they tried to surpass the SS-men in ferocity. The Kapos kit, beat, killed out of sadism or envy, out of the desire to assert themselves as chiefs or out fear of losing their function, out of hate of man or out of the mere pleasure to trample underfoot and torment the fellow men."

When CNN's Paula Hancocks reported the story, as is so often the case, both sides of the story were Israel. Hancock never asked why prisoners were blindfolded or about their fate. Hancock never asked what the job of camp "Kapo," how Eden Abergil and tens of thousands of other Israeli youths spend their national service, was like, the beatings, the humiliation and its obvious dehumanizing effect as was made clear by Abergil.

Was Eden Abergil a whistle-blower?

Was Abergil attempting to focus world attention on the 300,000 Palestinians who have "disappeared" over the past 60 years? Was she exposing the Israeli "gulag" system that may be holding up to 100,000 Palestinians prisoner? If this was her goal, CNN wasn't having any part of it. Not one question was asked about what her job was in the camps, how she felt about non-Jewish Israeli citizens. That came out later.

Eden Abergil, a 24 year old Israeli who recently finished her national service in the IDF, posted photographs on Facebook of herself with Palestinian torture victims. We have seen things like this before, of course, but last time it was Americans. We don't know how many photos we have or what acts they portray as CNN chose to show us only one, a depiction of Abergil mugging for the camera before a backdrop of blindfolded and "tie-wrapped" elderly Palestinian civilians.

When questioned by the Haaretz News Service in Israel, Abergail said:

I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead.

Abergil told CNN that she has received numerous death threats, many from her neighbors in Israel and has requested police protection. The question is, did Eden Abergil go on worldwide media proclaiming to be a murderous sociopath out of bad judgement or is this a clever attempt at depicting the IDF as torturers and war criminals? Now we have hundreds of similar photos going up from dozens of former IDF "kapos."

Abergil's photos are the first to come out of the camp system in Israel, known for its torture, summary executions, starvation and daily brutality. Little is known or has been reported in the west about the 60 year program of ethnic cleansing or the nature of Israel's apartheid state and system of racial and religious laws that openly discriminate against Christians and Muslims.

Comments by fellow Israeli's made on Abergil's Facebook page referred to photographs of the "chunky" former IDF "Kapo Queen" taken with torture victims as "sexy."

Abergil has raised, not only the ire of fellow Israeli's but military officials in Israel as well. With Israel's role in pushing America into a war with Iran coming under increasing attack and their role in falsifying intelligence leading to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain, the legitimacy of the "Jewish only" Zionist state in Israel has never been under wider pressure around the world.

With Israeli terrorist and serial killer, Elias Abuelazam being pulled off a flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv and the recent failure by Israel to address the killing of between 9 and 16 unarmed civilians on the Mavi Marmara, the theft of millions in personal items and the illegal detention of up to two dozen peace activists seized in international waters, Israel's credibility, even while exercising "veto power" over unfavorable stories in the British and American press, is at an all time low.

In Britain, a website has been established, British Propaganda Corporation, not only spoofing the BBC, but highly critical of what is said to be virtual total Israeli control of all media outlets in Britain, including and especially the state run news service, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Current population estimates put the number of displaced Palestinians at 6 million with those in temporary camps estimated by Israel at 400,000 and by other sources at between 700,000 and 980,000. Each year, new Israeli condominium projects displace thousands more, adding to the figures given. To this mix, we add nearly 1 million "guest workers" who, with their families, are also virtual refugees, "stateless persons" subject to expulsion at any time as with Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Managing this process, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, a vast camp system, surveillance of not only Muslims in Palestine but the entire Jewish population as well, is a vast bureaucracy largely financed by the United States. Young Jews, many of them Americans, serve in the IDF, some of them as part of this system. Some of the daily tasks performed are not only inhumane and demeaning but, technically, criminal acts subject to punishment according to international convention.

Perhaps what we are told is right, all Muslims are extremists and must be cleansed from Israel in order to maintain the purity of the Jewish race, as touted in recent scientific studies quoted in the New York Times.

"The surveys provide rich data about genetic ancestry that is of great interest to historians. "I'm constantly impressed by the manner in which the geneticists keep moving ahead with new projects and illuminating what we know of history," said Lawrence H. Schiffman, a professor of Judaic studies at New York University.

One of the surveys was conducted by Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harry Ostrer of New York University and appears in the current American Journal of Human Genetics. The other, led by Doron M. Behar of the Rambam Health Care Campusin Haifa and Richard Villems of the University of Tartu in Estonia, is published in Thursday's edition of Nature."

The studies along with extensive and continual mathematical documentary proof of 6 million Jewish deaths during the holocaust are used as justification for Israel's "junkyard dog" foreign policy, arms dealings with rogue states like Libya, South Africa and North Korea and their policies of ethnic cleansing. Much of the impetus for "revisionist" history, those advocating a reassessment of the holocaust after declassified documents have brought some traditionally accepted dogma into doubt, has been the desire to "disarm" Israels dependence on the holocaust to justify policies against the Palestinians that parallel many aspects of Germany's persecution of the Jews under Hitler.

Thus, we may have Eden Abergil, not as a Zionist "nutcase" but exposing, perhaps unsuccessfully, what no media organization will speak of. Those men on the bench, those prisoners, so many thousands arrested, detained, questioned, worse, and none ever released.

Where do they go?

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

"Breaking the Silence" posts more photos of Israeli soldiers posing with prisoners and massacred Palestinians:

Photographs uploaded by Israeli soldier, Eden Abergil (meet her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1036677802 ) and labeled "IDF - the best time of my life" show her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.

"That looks really sexy for you," says a comment posted by one of Abergil's friends on the social networking site, alongside a picture or the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men.

Abergil's repose, posted below, reads: "I wonder if he is on Facebook too - I'll have to tag him in the photo."

Adi Tal: "You're the sexiest like that..."

Eden Abergil: "Yeah I know lol mummy what a day it was look how he completes my picture, I wonder if he's got Facebook! I have to tag him in the picture! lol"

Shani Cohen: "LOL you psycho... I wonder who's the photographerrrrr"

Shani Cohen: "Eden... he's got a hard-on for you... lol for sure!!!"

Eden Abergil: Lol no honey he's got a hard-on for youuu this is why you took that picture lol you took my picture!!!!"

This is not a satire. All the included pictures are screen capture of the original album, which have since been removed from her Facebook profile album (Abergil, changed her privacy settings, blocking her album to "non-friends").

All of these pictures really speak for themselves and what to expect from Israel Army, and worse. ‬Pictures of this kind reflect the norms accepted among Israeli soldiers at checkpoint, and the treatment meted out to innocent Palestinians. This sick girl is no better than all Israeli soldiers serving the occupation of Palestine. In fact these "best times of my life" pictures are only humble memories when compared to the bloody memories that other Israeli terrorist soldiers carry with them -maybe on their digital mobile phones- that including massacring innocent Palestinian kids, women and elders.

But we should always remember that this is only a small uncovered fact of the real face of Israel occupation of Palestine.

By Khalid Amayreh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The cruel Israeli regime is organizing a fresh campaign to demand the release of one of its occupation soldiers, detained in a secret Gaza location.

The new campaign, publicized by the Jewish-controlled media in Europe and North America, is assuming many expressions, including protests led by the soldier’s family, a propaganda ship organized by the American Jewish followers of the Nazi-minded rabbi Meir Kahana, and a call by happy-go-lucky French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldier.

This is the same Sarkozy who kept silent during the murderous Israeli onslaught against the defenseless people of Gaza eighteen months ago. He is now invoking humanitarianism and charity as if the thousands of Gaza children, men and women, annihilated or maimed by the Israeli army were non-humans.

It is true that Gilad Shalit is not being accorded a five-star treatment. But this is not due to any presumed sadistic urges on Hamas’s part to torment the young soldier who is likely to have the blood of many children on his hands.

In Israel, it is difficult to find an adult Israeli male whose hands have not been stained with Palestinian blood. After all, Israel is a society of murderers and child-killers. It is a society whose members Zionism has transformed into racists, cannibals and Nazi-minded murderers and child killers.

Indeed, were it not for the fact that Israel has been making constant and meticulous efforts to discover his whereabouts and liberate him by force, there is no doubt that Hamas would allow the International Commission of the Red Cross, even his family, to visit him.

But Israel, a country that murders peace activists on high seas and then calls the cold-blooded murder “armed confrontations with terrorists,” can’t be trusted.

Palestinians have had a long and bitter experience with Israeli treachery. This is why Hamas can’t allow itself to make the slightest risk in this regard. Yes, one might sympathize with Shalit at a certain human level. However, Shalit is only one person while the entire Palestinian people are held hostage by an evil regime that can only be compared with history’s worst.

There are, of course, other aspects to this sensitive issue. Israel detains thousands of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners in its dungeons. And as the recently-freed Palestinian Islamic leader Sheikh Nayef Rajoub revealed, many of these prisoners are being subjected to Medieval savagery at the hands of those claiming to be “a light upon the nations.”

For those who have forgotten, Shalit was taken prisoner in battlefield. Moreover, had Israel succeeded in carrying out a rescue operation, he would have most likely got killed.

This is probably the endgame that Israel wishes for its imprisoned soldier. A dead Shalit would be a Hasbara bonanza for the Zionist propaganda machine. On the one hand, it would allow Israel to torture and kill more Palestinian political prisoners (several Palestinian prisoners died recently due to torture, medical negligence and other causes). It would also absolve Israel from freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as demanded by Hamas and insisted by the vast bulk of the Palestinian masses, irrespective of their political orientation.

To be sure, Hamas had been negotiating in good faith with Israel, hoping to reach a dignified breakthrough that would see the repatriation of Shalit to his family in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees to their families. That would be a win-win formula for everyone.

However, the Israeli government consistently and arrogantly rejected this logical proposal, making racist arguments which even the leaders and ideologues of the Third Reich didn’t dare to make.

For example, Israeli leaders routinely invoke the mendacious canard that the Judeo-Nazi state cannot free prisoners who have Jewish blood on their hands. Well, what about the thousands or tens thousands of Israelis who have Palestinian, Lebanese and now Turkish blood on their hands? Is non-Jewish blood less red than Jewish blood?

Israel doesn’t dare indulge in a genuine argument in this regard. The reason is simple. Israel views the blood and lives of non-Jews as insignificant, at least in comparison to Jewish blood and Jewish lives. Just try to have a brief conversation with a rabbi and you will be more than shocked hearing what he will be saying in this regard.

In any case, Hamas must not show the slightest sign of fatigue vis-à-vis Israel because the lives and freedom of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are at stake. Hamas has been successfully managing this Shalit affair for over three years. Israel committed untold massacres and has been imposing a manifestly criminal siege on 1.7 million human beings, in the hope of creating a crack in Hamas’s wall of steadfastness. But neither Israeli pressure, nor western conspiracy, nor Arab collusion and Palestinian Authority treachery, have succeeded in pressurizing Hamas to give in or give up.

In the final analysis, Hamas has a huge moral responsibility toward thousands of Palestinian families whose children are languishing in Israeli concentration camps and dungeons.

Needless to say, these people have spent the prime of their lives in Israeli prisons so that their people will be able to live in dignity and in order to maintain the hope for freedom and liberation from evil Zionism.

Hence, we must not hesitate to proclaim and reassert the Palestinian position in this regard, namely that Shalit must stay behind bars as long as Israel insists on keeping our men, and women and children behind bars.

This position may not be popular in New York and Paris. But why show the slightest concern about what Paris and New York think in the first place. They have always been and continue to be our direct or indirect tormentors. Our responsibility is first and foremost toward these tortured Palestinian prisoners and their suffering families who have kept our national just cause alive.

In a nutshell, our prisoners are not children of a lesser God.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

A superbly-made futuristic animated cartoon broadcast by Hamas movement on Sunday is creating waves in Israel. It is thought to be the first of its kind from the military wing of Hamas that does not depend on the traditional images of brave Hamas warriors fighting against Israel.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHVR63sDY7c

The film wants to send the message that unless there is a real change in thinking on the part of the Israeli government, captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit will be returned to his family in a coffin rather than standing on his own feet.

The Israeli government reacted angrily to the film, describing it as "deplorable" and blamed Hamas for the failure to agree a deal for the release of Shalit, who was captured in June 2006. He is alive and believed to be held somewhere in Gaza.

The Hebrew animation is broadcast on various popular video websites, predominantly with English subtitles. On the website of Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas armed wing, the item also appears in Arabic, giving rise to guess that the intended target audiences are both Israelis and Palestinians.

If Hamas was looking for a reaction in Israel with the video, it certainly has achieved that on Sunday and Monday as news outlets gave substantial time and space to the animation.

Israeli politicians and pundits alike felt the need to talk about the movie. "It is best if Hamas leaders would focus less on videos and presentations and more concerned about the interests of their prisoners and the public in Gaza," Noam Shalit, father of Gilad Shalit, told the Israeli news website Ynet.

The film focuses on Noam Shalit. Through a series of vignettes, Noam is portrayed trudging through the streets of Israel and being confronted by huge advertising boardings each with a different Israeli leader pledging to free his son and then finds a newspaper discarded in a rubbish bin showing on its front page a $50m reward for information on his son's case.

Towards the end of the clip, Noam is an old man when he arrives at the Gaza border to greet Gilad at his long-awaited homecoming. He lets out an anguished cry as he sees his son is no longer alive.

Hamas and Israel have been in on-off negotiations for Gilad Shalit's release since the soldier was captured by Hamas-led Gaza militants on the Gaza frontier in June 2006.

A deal between Israel and Hamas, negotiated by German intelligence officials, appeared close at the end of last year but fell through at the last minute when Israel stepped back. Hamas was to release Shalit and in return Israel would free 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. About 11,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, most of which without charge.

Sabbah sits on a concrete block at the Erez crossing. MaanImages/Wissam Nassar

Israel deported a prisoner from Tulkarem to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, in a move that followed the approval of the new military order No. 1,650 to expel Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Ahmad Sabbah's family was waiting at the Al-Thahriyah crossing to receive their son after 10 years behind bars, but were surprised when Israeli authorities delivered the news that he had already been deported to Gaza.

Sabbah said the "discriminatory and harsh" decision was intended to further punish detainees and their parents. "There is a real war against detainees," the former prisoner said.

Deported to Gaza on Wednesday after his release from Israeli prison, Tulkarem native Ahmad Sabbah announced a sit-in strike at the Strip's northern Erez crossing in protest.

"I consider myself the first detainee deported to Gaza, and I will stay in this sit-in tent at the Erez terminal until I am allowed to return to my wife and family in Tulkarem," Sabbah said Thursday.

source: Ma'an News

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association - 8 March 2010

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association marks International Women's Day 2010 by honoring, commemorating and saluting Palestinian women political prisoners and detainees in their steadfast resistance against Israeli colonial occupation and struggle towards securing the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

An estimated 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained since 1967 under Israeli military orders, which govern nearly every aspect of life in the occupied Palestinian territory today, including more than 750 Palestinian women arrested by Israel between the years 2000-2009. While the call to end violence and arbitrary detention against women around the world should take place 365 days a year, Addameer would like to take a moment today to reflect upon and recognize the plight of Palestinian women and their unique experiences of colonial violence within Israel's prison system and unlawful regime of colonial occupation.

As of March 2010, there remain 34 Palestinian women held in Israel's prisons and detention centers, including three women held under administrative detention, eight women held pending trial and 23 women serving a sentence of imprisonment, of whom five are serving life (including multiple life) sentences. Both of the prisons that hold the majority of Palestinian female detainees, HaSharon and Damon Prisons, are located outside the 1967 occupied territory, in direct contravention of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that, as an Occupying Power, Israel must detain residents of the occupied territory in prisons inside the occupied territory. The practical consequence of this unlawful transfer is that many prisoners have difficulty meeting with their Palestinian defense counsel and do not receive family visits as their attorneys and relatives are most often denied permits on "security grounds" not disclosed to them.

In addition, both HaSharon and Damon Prisons lack a gender-sensitive approach and, as such, female prisoners detained there suffer from harsh imprisonment conditions and interlocking systems of oppression which are enacted through medical negligence, denial of education, denial of family visits, solitary confinement, and overcrowded cells. A majority of these cells are infested with insects, dirty, and lack adequate ventilation and natural light. Personal health and hygiene needs are rarely addressed by the Israeli Prison Service, even in cases involving the detention of pregnant female detainees.

Other forms of abuse perpetrated against Palestinian women detainees and prisoners include numerous forms of sexual harassment, namely: threats of rape (in some cases threats of rape are made towards the detainee's family members), sexually degrading insults, and invasive body/strip searches used as a method of punishment. These occurrences are a fundamental part of Palestinian women's prison experiences and should be understood as a common and systematic form of racial and gendered State violence.

Moreover, research has shown that Israel's prison authorities use these forms of sexual harassment to deliberately exploit Palestinian women's fears by playing on patriarchal norms as well as gender stereotypes within particular customs of Palestinian society. Accordingly, occurrences of sexual harassment are a sensitive issue for Palestinian women and their families; this vulnerability makes these measures especially effective tools for interrogators, and is compounded by the lack of available post-assault resources.

Addameer submits that Israel's routine practice of strip searching female prisoners and detainees as a method of punishment violates both international human rights and humanitarian law, including the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which stipulates in Article 7 that: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment...". Similarly, Article 3(1)(c) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) forbids"outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association condemns the use of all measures of abuse Israeli actors use against female prisoners and detainees, and calls for the immediate release of all Palestinian political prisoners held unlawfully outside the occupied Palestinian territory. Addameer further calls for an immediate stop to Israel's practices of sexual violence, including strip searches and invasive body searches, shackling of pregnant women during labor, and use of threats and/or other forms of sexual assault. In addition, Israeli authorities, in particular the Prison Service, must meet their obligations under the UN Minimum Standard Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and ensure that all subjects under Israeli jurisdiction are granted their full rights to formal education for girls under the age of 18, (including access to books and study materials inside the prisons), nutritional diet programs, especially for pregnant detainees, health care including specialized gynecological services, hospital/doctor visits when required, dental care, and open family visits (especially for mothers of minors). Of particular importance, Addameer demands that female prisoners and detainees be provided unhindered access to religious, cultural and gender sensitive social services, including trained Arabic-speaking women specialist in the field of social work, psychology and counseling. It is important to note that these rights and services must be administered only by Palestinians; as such, the Israeli authorities and the Israel Prison Service must grant full, unhindered access to Palestinian programs and service providers in this regard.

On International Women's Day 2010, Addameer stands in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners and detainees who remain strong in their resistance against Israel's colonial occupation regime, and asks the international community for its continued support and solidarity all year round.

For more information on female prisoners, please visit: www.addameer.info or contact:

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
PO Box 17338, Jerusalem
Tel: +972 (0)2 296 0446
Fax: +972 (0)2 296 0447

Email: info@addameer.ps

Marwan Barghouti with former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat

Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Occupied Jerusalem, Nov 30 - The fate of one prisoner locked in an Israeli jail could release the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process from its own jail - provided the timing is right.

The political timing is definitely ripe.

This week a major residual source of tension between Israelis and Palestinians may just be about to be resolved - if German mediation finally overcomes last-minute hitches to the long-awaited exchange - a thousand Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

It's not yet certain that the prisoner exchange will go through. Nor is it clear who among the 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails will be part of the deal.

And, it's certainly not definite that that Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Fatah military forces who was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Israeli court five years ago at the height of the Palestinian Intifadah, will be among them.

If the swap goes through without Barghouti, it's unlikely to have much impact on furthering peace between the two peoples; the political impact would be restricted to domestic Palestinian affairs, the bolstering of Hamas at the expense of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.

In contrast, the releasing of Barghouti could be a defining moment in Palestinian-Israeli relations, a real test of the real intention behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement last week of a limited and temporary settlement freeze in the West Bank.

So far the Palestinian leadership has scoffed off the partial settlement moratorium as a Netanyahu ruse designed to ease U.S. pressure on Israel. With due cause: the announced freeze is not total, it excludes East Jerusalem, and previously approved settlement construction will go on. And, there's doubt, even within Israel, whether the Netanyahu government has the technical means to enforce the freeze at all.

Back in July 2000, just weeks before the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifadah, Barghouti, speaking in his modest Ramallah office, laid out his alternative strategy for ending the Occupation: "We will take our people onto the '67 lines and proclaim from there that we're simply defending our borders against the Israeli occupation - no arms, no stones even, just our bodies," he told us.

Barghouti is seen by many Palestinians as the optimal leader to take them towards their future state should Mahmoud Abbas indeed decide to step down, as he has threatened to do.

Barghouti, 50, is considered the true heir of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, precisely perhaps because he too courts ambiguity.

His assertive approach has regularly elevated him to the top of polls of whom Palestinians would like to lead them against Israel - both in negotiations to end the occupation and in resisting the continuing occupation.

From his prison cell, Barghouti recently answered questions from an Arabic newspaper in which he laid out his old new strategy: "Relying on negotiations alone was never our choice. I've always called for a constructive mix of negotiations, resistance and political, diplomatic and popular action."

That precisely may be the source of Israeli misgivings that he would be a more amenable pattern for peace.

But now, with the prospect that Abbas may take himself out the picture, Israel has another concern to confront - a power vacuum within the PA. The future of the flagging PA would be all the more precarious since Hamas would gain enormous credibility from the prisoner exchange.

There is some opposition, but the remarkable fact is that it's muted and, overwhelmingly, Israelis are ready to accept the prisoner deal, even to the extent of 'giving up' Palestinians who took part in some of the bloodiest attacks against civilians.

Alon Liel, a political science lecturer at Hebrew University and a former top Israeli diplomat, takes that mood further: "The astonishing public and political willingness to pay an unprecedented price could become the leverage necessary to give the deal a historic dimension," he asserts, adding, "You don't have to be a brilliant politician to realise that the line connecting a technical prisoner exchange with a move toward a peace process runs through Marwan Barghouti."

'When', is thus the key question - not if, but when, to release Barghouti - provided, of course, Netanyahu has a real peace agenda in mind.

If he is serious about engaging peace, Netanyahu could use the present public momentum among the Israeli people for the prisoner exchange to create a new diplomatic momentum.

That, however, would require him to disassociate the deal from freeing Barghouti.

Had Netanyahu decided to release Barghouti in advance of a broad prisoner deal, Hamas would probably have torpedoed it since it would have risked having the political reward stolen from them - to their detriment in the ongoing power struggle with the PA.

Also, Netanyahu's right flank might well have been able to scuttle Barghouti's release.

Now, however, many in Israel are calling for Barghouti's release. Netanyahu has now the opportunity to steal the thunder from Hamas - to the mutual benefit of both Israel and the PA.

Such a trumping of Hamas could only work once the exchange deal with Hamas has already been secured and implemented.

Barghouti's release after the deal-in-the-making with Hamas, and separate from it, would bring Netanyahu and the PA multiple benefits: for Israel, applause from Washington for a bold confidence-building measure; for the PA, a way out of a potentially perilous political vacuum.

Moreover, for the sceptical Palestinian leadership, the release of Barghouti would provide the acid test to the genuineness of Netanyahu's professed peace feelers.

And, for the U.S., a free Barghouti bolstering Abbas would provide the best start for future peace-making that Washington could hope for, especially given the past nine months of failed peace-making. (END/2009)

Source: IPS

Illustration By Carlos Latuff

By, Bianca Zammit* and Fadi Skaik** | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

There are currently approximately 11,000 Palestinian prisoners being held captive in Israeli jails across Israel. Whilst their imprisonment is of itself in direct contravention of international law, the whole arrest, judiciary and imprisonment process compromises their basic human rights. In Gaza, the families of prisoners in Israeli jails meet every Monday at the premises of the International Committee of the Red Cross to hold a weekly vigil asking for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The demonstration also takes place at the ICRC building in order to send out a message to the international community, asking it to uphold international law and put pressure on Israel for the release of all prisoners.

Palestinians taken captive are held in one of the 24 prisons across Israel. The Fourth Geneva Convention through Article 76 prohibits an occupying power, in this case Israel, from imprisoning prisoners outside the territory it occupies and Article 47 of the same Convention clearly outlines that convicted prisoners should serve their sentence within the occupied territory.

Since September 2000 Palestinian citizens living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip require special permits to travel within the 1967 borders of Israel, yet these permits are very hard to come by. For these last three years all permits have stopped being issued and Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza are prohibited from entering 1948 land[1].

The use of telephone is controlled and only in rare exceptions are Palestinian prisoners allowed to call their families. Without family visits and telephone calls the only ways of communicating is through letters and greetings families send through radio stations. Letters are received sparingly by both sides, months after they were written and sent[2].

Hazem Shubair was imprisoned in an Israeli jail in 1993. His brother Tayseer has been denied the permit to visit his brother for the past 15 years. Hazem' parents were allowed to visit him until 2002 and for the last 7 years they were forbidden access. All forms of communication between Hazem and his family have been severed. Hazem was sentenced to life imprisonment and the prospects of him being released in the near future are bleak. "I just want to see him, to have the opportunity of talking with him once more and to know how he is doing. These 17 years have been horrible" Tayseer states. Hazem has another 6 siblings anxiously awaiting his news and to be able of seeing him.

In terms of the judiciary system, Palestinians are tried within Israeli military courts located within Israeli military centers. These military tribunals are conducted by a panel of three judges appointed by the military, two of whom often do not have any legal training or background. This juxtaposes the impartiality and reliability of the legal apparatus since the judges are also soldiers who work on orders they receive from their supervisors and are dependent on the latter for promotion.[3] These tribunals rarely fall within the required international standards of a fair trial.

Many Palestinian prisoners are either wounded or ill. Many prisoners were taken captive after having been shot at with live ammunition. According to Addameer Centre for Human Rights based in Gaza, "prison clinics tend to offer aspirin as a remedy for all health treatments and physicians within the clinics are all soldiers. Health examinations are conducted through a fence, and any necessary surgery or transfer to hospital for additional medical treatment is usually postponed for long periods of time".

In 1999 the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that it does not forbid the use of torture but rather allows interrogation methods deemed as torture to be used in situations of national defense. The victim of torture can only submit a complaint in that case that torture can be clearly proven. Israel interrogators are able to use methods of torture without impunity. Legalized torture includes sleep deprivation, denial of food and water, denial of access to toilets and shackling[4]. A Palestinian detainee can be interrogated for up to 180 days, during which access to a lawyer may be denied for 60 days.

Many prisoners receive administrative detention where charges are based on secret evidence. In this case both the lawyer and the detainee are not aware of the reason for arrest and cannot practice their right of defense. The detainee and lawyer are also not informed about the date of release. In administrative detention the army hands over the detainee to the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) who interrogates the prisoner. After interrogation, ISA can either file for indictment or release detainee. If none of these two paths are chosen the military commander can choose administrative detention. Administrative detention can be extended indefinitely. This usage of administrative detention as a tool to imprison civilians violates International Law and Human Rights Charters but is legal according to Israeli legislation[5].

Nayef Abu Azra, a 23 year old from Beit Hannoun, was arrested in 2007. Since then he has never been brought before a court. To Nayef' mother there is no consolation. Asia Abu Azra stated "A group of Israeli infantry soldiers invaded our home and took Nayef. We do not know why he was arrested or when he shall be released. Nobody is giving us any information. Nayef was hard working and well respected in the community. My only hope is to see him again".

Nowhere can the discriminatory laws within Israeli judiciary be clearer than in terms of Palestinian imprisonment which is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa. A Palestinian can be held in custody for 18 days before being brought before a judge. An Israeli citizen, however, can be held in custody for only a maximum of 48 hours before being brought before a judge. A Palestinian can be held without charge, by order of a judge for a period from one to 6 months. An Israeli citizen can be held without indictment for 15 days and can only be extended to 15 days. Lawyer visits can be prohibited for up to 3 months for a Palestinian detainee. The meeting between an Israeli detainee and his attorney can be delayed for 15 days[6]. In addition, when Palestinian detainees are arrested, the army is not obliged to inform the detainee's family of their arrest or the location of their detention.

38 year old Ashraf Al-Balouji from Al-Sahaba area in Gaza was detained in Ramallah on December 14, 1990. He was ordained in the Israel military court and sentenced to 320 years imprisonment. His father Hassan Al-Balouji states "there is a different policy for Palestinians and Israelis in Israel. If my son were Israeli then his sentence would be very different. We all know that. Three years ago my wife passed away and Ashraf was not allowed to visit her or attend her funeral. His 7 children are also prohibited from visiting him."

These discriminatory laws also affect children. There are now 337 Palestinian children in Israeli jails.[7] Like the majority of other Palestinian prisoners, Palestinian child prisoners routinely face violations of their human rights during arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. They are exposed to physical and psychological abuse, amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and sometimes torture. They are denied prompt access to a lawyer and often denied contact with their families and the outside world. This is a clear breach of international law, which makes special provisions for the prisoners, specifically forbidding the use of physical and psychological torture[8].

Nedal Mohammed Al-Soufi was just 17 years old when he was arrested. In 2007 during an army incursion, Israeli soldiers entered their home in Rafah and took him. Jana Al-Soufi, Nedal' mother does not know the reason for his arrest. Nedal was sentenced to 9 years. The lack of communication sources between Nedal and his family concerns his mother. "I worry for his health and mental state. I have not received his news for many months".

The imprisonment of Palestinians has been used routinely by Israeli authorities as one of the main tools to enforce the apartheid regime and ensure the ongoing success of the occupation. Israel has violated and is still violating a number of basic human rights in the way it kidnaps Palestinians, holds them captive without access to a lawyer and eventually tries them in a mock court which itself falls short of internationally agreed upon minimum standards. The injustices being perpetuated upon the 11,000 Palestinians prisoners must not be overlooked.

* Bianca Zammit is a human rights activist and a member of the International Solidarity Movement "ISM" in Gaza.

** Fadi N. Skaik is a BDS activist and an independent author based in Gaza.

[2] http://www.addameer.org/index_eng.html - Addameer

[3] UN Human Rights Committee (2007) Article 14: Right to equality before courts and tribunals and to a fair trial, UN Doc: CCPR/C/GC/32, 23 August 2007, page 6, paragraph 22.

[4] Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (2008) No Defense: Soldier Violence against Palestinian Detainees, page 3 - http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en/node/1136

[5] Hamoked and B'Tselem (2009) Without Trial -Administrative detention of Palestinians by Israel and the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law, page 9.

[6] http://www.addameer.org/index_eng.html - Addameer

[7] Save the Children (2009) Fact Sheet – Palestinian Child Detainees at http://sca.savethechildren.se/Documents/Resources/Fact%20sheet_oPt_detainees.pdf

[8] Defense for Children International (2009) Palestinian Child Prisoners- The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities, DCI Palestine: Jerusalem.

The UN has sent an official request to Israel to admit the existence of secret prison camp 1391, dubbed in the press "Israel's Guantanamo Bay," according to the Palestinian Authority minister of prisoners affairs.

Photo: Ma'an Images

Minister Issa Qaraqe told a news conference in Ramallah on Saturday that the UN had asked the Israeli government in a letter to officially acknowledge that the facility exists.

Human rights experts with the United Nations Committee Against Torture questioned Israeli officials about the facility in may when the country came up for a regular review under a treaty obligation, Reuters reported.

Although Israel declined the UN's request to discuss 1391 earlier this year, Israeli officials have indirectly confirmed the facility's existence. Former Israeli Justice Minister Dan Merridor told the Haaretz newspaper that he was aware of the site but never visited it.

News reports say that Israel has held Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arabs at the site. The detention of Palestinians there reportedly increased during the second intifada. Former inmates told the Guardian newspaper that they were held in black, windowless cells with little light.

After being detained and transported to the prison wearing hoods, prisoners said they were told they were "in Honolulu," "outside the borders of Israel," or "on the moon," the newspaper said. The government has even airbrushed ariel photographs and altered maps to conceal the facility's existence, according to the report.

In interviews with the Israeli and foreign press, former prisoners have also reported cases of rape, prolonged nudity, and tactics regarded as torture. Unlike other Israeli prisons, the Red Cross is not allowed to visit the facility.

Prisoner release?

Asked about Israeli news reports that the country could release Palestinian prisoners ahead of the Muslim Eid Al-Adha holiday next week, Qaraqe said that the PA has not received any official information on the subject. He added that Israel has decided to release prisoners in the past without informing the PA, and that it's possible that some could be freed.

Qaraqe also spoke about the Palestinian Authority-sponsored conference on the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails which will be held in Jericho on Tuesday. He said forty people and thirteen institutions will participate in the summit, which will address subjects such as the torture of women and children, prisoners' rights, and efforts to seek international designation of the Palestinian detainees as prisoners of war, not terrorists.

Qaraqe was also asked about the health condition of a detainee named Nahed Al-Aqra, who was accused of blowing up an Israeli tank in Gaza. Qaraqe responded, "The ministry is following up the difficult health condition of Al-Aqra. The ministry also entered a petition with the High Court of Justice demanding his release along with that of other sick prisoners including Akram Mansour." He also said that the Red Cross is working for the release of ill prisoners.

Source: Ma'an News

Map of Disappearing Palestine

By Terrell E. Arnold *

09-21-09 - For nearly a century the Palestinian people have felt the pressures of outsiders scheming to take over their homeland. For the past sixty years the invaders have systematically undertaken the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make way for new Israelis. For this purpose the invaders have constructed a narrative the central theme of which is "God gave this land to us five or six thousand years ago, and the fact that we have seldom lived here in that period is immaterial. No matter who has lived on the land for the past several thousand years, it is ours and we intend to take it. We do not intend to pay for the land or the property on it that we may destroy, and we do not intend to tolerate the future presence of any historic owner on this land. We, the ringleaders of this scheme, the Ashkenazim, do not have ancestors who were ever a part of this land, but we will take this land anyway and found a Jewish state."

In line with this story, since 1947-48 the true believers in this Ashkenazim scheme have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their farms, homes and businesses; they have killed and imprisoned thousands more; and they currently keep 3.5 million survivors and their offspring in two open air prisons--the Gaza Strip and shrinking portions of the region known as the West Bank of the Jordan River. The followers of this Ashkenazim scheme barely tolerate the presence of 1.25 million descendents of the original Palestinian inhabitants of the land in Israel. Meanwhile, the subscribers to a scheme called *Eretz Yisrael, *or Greater Israel, work toward the eventual expulsion of all non-Jews from the territory that the Old Testament of Christendom, also known as the Torah of Judaism, says God promised to Abraham and his descendants.

Meanwhile, in a seemingly perverse treatment of the Zionist scheme that the Ashkenazim and their followers pursue, God and nature take care of their own. The reality is that the nominally Jewish (at least by religious affiliation) and the nominally Arab (meaning non-Jewish) peoples of the region are about equal in number. In the nature of things, however, the Arabs, threatened on all sides by poverty, confinement, expulsion or extinction, have a relatively high birthrate. The Ashkenazim and their followers, nominally including the indigenous Palestinian Jews, are more comfortable, less threatened and less fertile. In fairly short order, barring a catastrophe, the Palestinians will outnumber the Jews. That is the nearby reality facing the Zionists. A Jewish state with a majority of Palestinians is simply not thinkable.

But a Jewish state that ignores the rights of the Palestinians should also be unthinkable. The Goldstone Report just released by the UN Commission on Human Rights rightly and clearly condemns Israeli excesses in the war on Gaza. However, in a strained effort to be even-handed, the Commission also condemns Palestinian lobbing of rockets into Israeli territory while it was being bombed daily by Israeli aircraft. The report does not question Israel's right to attack Gaza, only its excesses in doing so, but it does not concede any Hamas right to attack adjacent areas of Israel. The report also bemoans the continued imprisonment of one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, while failing to mention the 11,000 or so Palestinians in Israeli prisons. A fair weighting of Israeli actions in Gaza would put Israel's cast lead on one side and a few Palestinian pebbles on the other, but Goldstone himself, a highly respected South African Jew, would know better than most how difficult it is to achieve real balance in this situation. Meanwhile, the President of the United States, in a message to world Jews on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, has rededicated himself to the security of Israel without ever mentioning Palestine.

All of that is by way of answering a question: Just what do Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his hard right collaborators have in mind? They are proceeding rapidly on two fronts. No matter what they say, one is to expand both the number of settlements and the Jewish population of the West Bank as rapidly as possible. In the face of US pressure to cease and desist, the goal is as rapidly as possible to create new facts on the ground that will be difficult to ignore. The other is to erase or, at the very least, enlittle the Arab presence in old Jerusalem. As they have done in many other areas of ancient Palestine, the Israeli scheme is to obliterate the signs of Palestinian history, including some truly historic sites in old Jerusalem, and create on the landscape whatever will serve a Jewish history.

The underlying tragedy of it all is that ancient communities, the physical evidences of their past, and their traditional populations are all being erased in a Zionist effort to create the narrative of a Jewish state. These are not mere acts of ethnic cleansing-a war crime anywhere else on earth; they are systematic efforts to erase a culture and the evidence of its history-which is a crime against all of human society.

Is the rest of the world truly asleep to this travesty? International media seem locked on providing an Israel-centered and trivial display of these events. One that is only slightly less trivial than the apparent efforts of the Obama team to achieve some visible political success by stopping settlement expansion, even for a few months. The problem is not really about interrupting the spread of Israelis into Palestinian territory. That would be simple if the Israeli extremists were prepared to accept defined boundaries for Israel and leave the rest of the land to its rightful owners. Settlements are the most visible manifest of the Greater Israel dream. They have been its mode of achievement since the first day, and they proceed on the clear appreciation of Israelis on the move that there are no intervening boundaries. Israel simply has not agreed to any permanent boundary around its already illegally acquired part of Palestine, because that would bring the whole show to a defined halt. A temporary halt in building or expanding settlements is simply no substitute for Israeli acceptance that their state is bounded like any other and they must get used to living on the land within those bounds. That alone would be a major legal concession by the Palestinians, because the Israelis stole the land in the first place.

The rest of the world for decades has remained largely silent on this situation. To be sure, the situation is freakish. The lands in question have belonged to Palestinian families for centuries. However, in a meeting with George W. Bush in 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received a letter from Bush that says the Israelis can keep the Palestinian lands they have expanded into illegally. Treatment of that letter in comments of politicians and media stories have suggested that with its creation the ownership of lands in Palestine was simply unhooked from traditional rules of land title. Nobody, so far, has raised the obvious fact that George W. Bush had no legal right to convey a single square inch of Palestinian land to an Israeli, unless, of course, he was acting, by consent, as the agent of a Palestinian landowner and the owner received appropriate compensation. The tragedy of this situation is that nobody seems prepared to stand up for the rights of the Palestinians. Virtually any place on earth other than Palestine, taking a piece of land in the Israeli manner would be cause for immediate and clear-cut legal rebuttal, if not a gunfight.

It has become easy, it seems, to deal with the Palestinians as non-people. Bush and Sharon didn't consult the Palestinians about transferring their lands to Israelis; they just did it. Netanyahu and his team don't ask the Palestinians in East Jerusalem about whether they want to leave their ancestral homes; they just shove them out. The rest of the world, where land ownership is bounded by rigorous rules, does not object or raise issues of law and fairness. This means basically that the world will tolerate Zionist empire building and will allow deliberate violation of the rights of the Palestinian people to achieve it.

There is an ironic side to this scenario. Virtually all of the Palestinians being mistreated by these processes are Semites. They are the sons of Shem just as the Jews who are referred to as the "people of the book". The leading Jews who are pressing the case are the Ashkenazim, who are not Semites. There are about ten million people in the ancient Palestine territory, and they are about equally divided between Israelis and Palestinians. In simple human terms, are the rights of the Jewish side of this population greater and more important than the rights of the Palestinian side of it? Israeli words and actions often say so, but should the rest of the world agree? These are issues that cannot be resolved by tinkering with settlement building, expansion or maintenance. The real questions are: Do the Palestinian people have equal rights in this situation? Do the Palestinians whose ancestors were born and bred on this land have true rights in it? Any answer other than yes would violate basic human rights and the principles of international law. One cannot in good conscience fail to recognize this reality and respond to it without being anti-Semitic.

Meanwhile, how can the situation be fixed? The first rule has to be that in any discussion that seeks to fix the terms of their future, their rights, or the disposition of their property, responsible Palestinian representatives will always be present and will speak for the Palestinian people. The Bush-Sharon type of letter-writing agreement is a travesty of international law and procedure. The second rule is that Bush-Sharon type agreements that did not include the willing participation of Palestinian representatives are scrubbed herewith and cease to be treated as if they have legal standing. The third rule is that any disputes between the Palestinians and the Israelis over property ownership should be mediated by detached third parties, preferably from the UN or the International Court of Justice. The fourth rule, of course, is that Israel actually undertakes to control its people, to curb their long established habit of taking what does not belong to them. That means, even at some risk, that invasive settlements of all kinds must stop. The fifth rule is that if Israel refuses to abide by such conditions it should be treated internationally as a rogue state and sanctioned as rigorously as any other state that refuses to behave. None of that would be simple, but it would be about time.

* Terrell E. Arnold is the author of the recently published work, A World Less Safe: Essays on Conflict in the 21st Century. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State whose overseas service included tours in Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Brazil. His immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counter Terrorism and Emergency Planning. He will welcome comment at wecanstopit@charter.net

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The tyrannical nature of administrative detention and its complete violation of human rights are based on confidential materials kept from the detainee and the lawyer. The confidential materials determine the period of detention and its extension thereafter. The administrative detainee is allowed an appeal before a court martial but the confidentiality of the materials on which the detention is based makes the trial nominal or false. Experience has shown that the real decision-maker in the appeal is the intelligence services.

The possibility of becoming an administrative detainee is an ever-present threat in the daily life of all Palestinians and severely impacts the lives of Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Similar to previous years, whenever the conflict enters a new stage, the Israeli authorities use administrative detention to arrest a large number of Palestinians. The use of administrative detention was reduced significantly prior to the current Intifada, but was dramatically increased shortly afterwards. Until September 2000, the number of administrative detainees was 4. By the end of 2000, this number became 17. Towards the end of 2001, there were 45 administrative detainees, and by the end of 2004 there were over 850.

Source: Addameer

Administrative detention orders have been issued based on British Mandate Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945. In 1970, Israeli occupying powers issued Military Order (MO) 378, authorizing the military commander of the region to issue administrative detention orders. Additionally, in 1988, as an amendment to MO 378, MO 1229 was issued in the West Bank and MO 941 for the Gaza Strip (military orders are issued separately for the West Bank and Gaza Strip) to apply the policy of administrative detention. These orders authorized the issuing of administrative detention orders without designating a maximum period of time for the detention. The first paragraph of MO 1229 states that

"If a Military Commander deems the detention of a person necessary for security reasons he may do so for a period not in excess of 6 months, after which he has the right to extend the detention period for a further six months according to the original order. The detention order can be passed without the presence of the detainee..."

The authority of the military commander was not only limited to this. Authorization was also given to the military commander through military orders to hold an administrative detainee for an unlimited period of time if the commander has reason to believe, based on reports submitted by the General Security Services, that the release of the administrative detainee poses a danger to the security of the state. As such, the military commander may extend the period of administrative detention indefinitely.

According to Addameer’s experience with administrative detention, detainees have been held under administrative detention orders from periods ranging from 6 months to 6 years. The issuing of administrative detention orders appears to be directly linked to the political situation, with its use increasing when there is an increase in protest against occupation in the Palestinian territories that were occupied by Israel in 1967. Administrative detention is used as a form of punishment and a political act representing the policy of the Israeli government, conducted without sufficient legal monitoring and in contravention of international and human rights law, in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In June 1999, modifications were made to the orders governing administrative detention in MO 1466 - Temporary Orders, Modification 13. This order states that a detainee must be brought before a military judge within 10 days of his arrest. These new procedures began to apply on 6 July 1999, also authorizing the military judge to approve, cancel or decrease the time of the administrative detention order.

In practice, the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) often take the law into their own hands, and the military judges ruling on administrative detention orders are used to offer a semblance of legal legitimacy to the policy and actions of the GSS. The military judicial system, as such, is not independent, and is affected by security policies and interference by the GSS in its rulings under the justification that it is in the greater interest of the security of Israel. Administrative detention is practiced widely by Israel, despite the fact that the method in which it is used is in contravention of international law.

Administrative detainees are held in Ketziot, Ofer, Beituniya and Kfar Yuna Military Prison camps. Although the situation of Palestinian administrative detainees has improved slightly in Ofer and Ketziot, the overall situation is still grave because of the fact that detainees are held in tents and subject to extreme weather conditions without appropriate protection.

In 2003, the Israeli authorities released 159 administrative detainees. However, the detainees were slated for release within a few days of their actual release, and the majority had already served out their sentences with 1 day to 1 month remaining.

At the end of 2003, 21 administrative detainees were deported to the Gaza Strip, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The deportations were called ‘assigned residence’ and were implemented through Israeli military regulations.

Source: Addameer

According to the indictment, the soldiers were responsible for transferring 13 Palestinian detainees from the Tulkarm Regional Brigade to an IDF military court in northern Israel in April 2006.

During the journey, the soldiers grabbed the prisoners by their hair, struck their chests and necks and demanded they repeat the number soldiers had previously assigned them with. When a prisoner would say the correct number, the soldiers would fall upon him in a beating frenzy.

The indictment also charges the soldiers with forced the prisoners to eat Bamba, an Israel snack food made of peanut butter. The soldiers reportedly ridiculed the prisoners while they ate. The soldiers also stopped along the way to buy French fries and force-fed them to the Palestinians.

When they arrived at the court, the soldiers had the blindfolded men walk in circles while warning them there were steps in front of them. The troops are also accused of cursing the men and their wives.

A military official involved in the handling of the case told Ynet that the army has ordered the accused soldiers be dealt with to the full extent of the law, even though much time has passed since the incident and some of the indicted troops no longer serve in the IDF...Read on!