Annual Report - Palestinian Center for Human Rights

Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees
By the end of 2005, at least 9,000 Palestinians, including about 300 children and 200
women, were still in Israeli custody in detention facilities throughout Israel and in
settlements and other military bases in the OPT. Most arrests have taken place during
house raids, especially in the West Bank, and Israeli incursions into Palestinian towns,
villages and refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hundreds of
Palestinians were also arrested at Israeli military checkpoints and roadblocks erected
on roads and at entrances to Palestinian communities; at border crossings with Egypt
and Jordan; and at crossings into Israel or inside Israel. In the last quarter of 2005,
IOF carried out massive arrest campaigns in the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinian
civilians, especially supporters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were arrested. The largest
of these arrest campaigns took place at the end of September, when IOF arrested at
least 300 Palestinian civilians, including religious, political, academic, media figures;
members of university student councils, and candidates for the third stage of the local
council elections, which were held on 29 September 2005.
IOF have transferred most of these prisoners out of the OPT to jails and detention
centers inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 76 of the
Convention provides that “protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in
the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”
Detention conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custody continue to violate the
fundamental rights of detainees. Palestinian prisoners have reported poor ventilation,
overcrowding, lack of adequate sanitation facilities, poor food and water supplies and
denial of appropriate medical care. IOF forces have also continued to deny or delay
access to legal counsel and relatives, in violation of the minimum standard rules for
the treatment of prisoners.
The detention conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custody are expected to further
deteriorate in light of the serious developments that took place in 2005, especially
with regard to 600 Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip. In September 2005, IOF
started to file bills of indictment against a number of Palestinian detainees from the
Gaza Strip, who had been arrested in the previous two months, before Ber al-Saba
(Beer Sheva) Court, inside Israel after they had closed the military court at the Beit
Hanoun Checkpoint (Erez). This new measure coincides with the implementation of
the unilateral Israeli "Disengagement Plan," and strongly indicates that IOF will
continue to arrest Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and bring them to Israeli courts. 31
In another attempt to overcome international legal standards in order to justify
continued detention of Palestinian prisoners, Israel invented the concept of the "illegal
combatant" to describe Palestinian prisoners who are in fact civilians, entitled to
protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and consequently justify their
detention in accordance with a special law called "Illegal Combatants" issued in
2002. According to this law, the IOF Chief of Staff has the authority to issue an arrest
warrant against a person if there is a basis to assume that such person is "an illegal
combatant".
31 See PCHR's press release on 11 September 2005.
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