To the embassies, consulates, and international, Arab, and Islamic representative offices;
To domestic and international humanitarian and human rights organizations;
To all domestic and international media outlets that have visited the steadfast village of Aqaba, and to those that have not visited;
To Israeli humanitarian and human rights organizations;
Al-Salam (Peace) Street remains closed before your eyes,
And to the residents of Al-Aqaba village since 18 April 2012…
The destruction of Al-Salam street in Al-Aqaba
The people of Al-Aqaba village call upon you to intervene to open Al-Salam Street, which was destroyed and then closed by the Israeli military on 18 April 2012. Israel knows that the people of this small village call for peace despite the injuries and the harassment inflicted upon them and despite the fact that they are deprived of vital services, particularly drinking water; they are denied the right to build; are isolated and blockaded; and they are frequently served with demolition orders for their homes, their roads, their agricultural land, and the entrances to their village.
The destruction of Al-Salam street in Al-Aqaba
We place this sacred trust in each and every one of your hands, without exception, to immediately intervene to open Al-Salam Street in Al-Aqaba, in order to help the isolated residents, particularly the farmers, the students, and the sick.
We reiterate our call for a resolution to the problem of Al-Salam Street.
Jawaher Abu Rahmah from the West Bank village of Bil’in village, died of cardiac arrest caused by inhalation of excessive amounts of tear gas. The Israeli High Court laid the onus of collecting evidence to justify an investigation on the family, instead of police.
Israeli High Court judges ruled today that the family of the late Jawaher Abu Rahmah and the Bil’in Popular Committee should submit documents and testimonies indicating that Abu Rahmah’s death was caused by tear-gas inhalation to the Israeli Judge Advocate General (JAG) until September 1st. The Justices ordered to reconsider his decision to not launch an investigation of the incident
By doing so, the court unjustly laid the burden of collecting evidence with the victims to justify the opening of an investigation, while it should clearly lay with the authorities and, in fact, be the result of such an investigation. During the hearing, Jusitce Miriam Naor told the State Attorney that once the evidence is submitted by the appellants, “[The State] must consider whether to launch an investigation with an open mind. After all, demonstrations do not normally end in death.”
The ruling was given at the conclusion of the first hearing in an appeal launched by Abu Rahmah’s mother, Subhiyah, and the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, with the assistance of the Israeli human rights organization, Yesh Din. The appellants petitioned that the court instruct the JAG to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, who collapsed during a demonstration in Bil’in, after breathing tear gas shot by Israeli forces in massive quantities to disperse the protesters.
Mohamad Khatib of the Bil’in Popular Committee said, “Israeli forces regularly use excessive force to try and crush Palestinian demonstrations. With more than 270 unarmed demonstrators killed since the year 2000, no lip service comment by the judiciary on the informality of how our people are slain is going to cut it. Israeli soldiers are sheltered by a wall of unaccountability, supported by today’s ruling that it is the victims who should produce evidence, and not a criminal investigation by the authorities.”
Background
Jawaher Abu Rahmah, 36, resident of the Palestinian village of Bil’in, was hurt on December 31, 2010 during the weekly demonstration against the route of the separation barrier on her village’s land. According to demonstrators’ testimonies, Israeli security forces used widespread and perhaps unprecedented quantities of tear gas that day, to disperse the demonstration. At some point Jawaher, who was standing next to her house inside the village, some distance from site the demonstration, was caught in a cloud of tear gas. As a result of inhaling the gas, Abu Rahmah began to suffer from respiratory distress and collapsed shortly thereafter. She was evacuated to a hospital in Ramallah, where she died less than 24 hours later. In the days following the incident, anonymous Israeli Army sources released varied and unlikely claims about the circumstances of Abu Rahmah’s death – including the untruthful claim that she was a leukemia patient – and all so as to persuade the public, with no investigation, that the Israeli Army is not responsible for her unnecessary death, and even that the Palestinians had invented the details of the incident.
Instead of immediately ordering an investigation into the circumstances of her death, the Israeli Army held only an operational debriefing. According to the petitioners, the operational debriefing is a tool to derive operational lessons, but is not a tool meant to collect evidence or establish personal responsibility, and therefore cannot substitute a criminal investigation. The findings of the debriefing are confidential, and it is not known what investigative activity was carried out, who was interviewed or which documents were made available to the investigators. However, we do know that not a single civilian eyewitness was questioned, not one medical professional was interviewed, and apparently no medical documents were made available to the investigators.
In the JAG’s response to the petitioners’ inquiry shortly after the incident, he rejected the demand to open an investigation, claiming that the operational debriefing and other inquiries made after the event found that “there was no causal link between the event and the death of the deceased.” This contradicts the recent change in Israeli Army investigation policy which was declared just days before the Turkel Commission, according to which a criminal investigation would be launched into every Palestinian civilian death which occurs during an Israeli Army operation in circumstances that is not “actual combat.” The JAG admitted that had Jawaher been killed today he would have ordered an investigation. Thus, the JAG Corps is evading launching an investigation, hiding behind the “technical” argument that the policy was changed a few weeks after the incident.
The petition argues that the decision not to order a criminal investigation of the event is unreasonable in the extreme, because “the circumstances and reasons for the death of Jawaher, an unarmed civilian who was hurt while in the middle of her village, are unclear to this day, and in view of the fact that her death was not a ‘natural death,’ the respondent is obligated by both Israeli law and international law to investigate her death.
The persistence of Palestinian hunger strikes shocks me for two reasons: that these extreme expressions of moral freedom alert all who choose to expose their consciousness to such realities of the severely abusive arrest, detention, and interrogation procedures that many Palestinians living under Israeli occupation must endure; that the world’s media, foreign governments, the UN, the Arab League barely acknowledge such events, which if they occurred in other countries would generate outpourings of outrage and sympathy, and depending on the geopolitical calculus, hypocritical calls for the application of the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm.
I post below a joint press release by respected NGOs of Palestine and Israel that summarize the desperate medical condition of Akram Rikhawi, who has continued his hunger strike for more than 85 days, an extraordinary display of discipline and resolve, the exemplary Palestinian virtue of samud (steadfastness). Mr. Rikhawi, whose home is in Gaza, has been held in prison since 2004 after being convicted to a nine-year term by an Israeli military court. He has been denied mercy by the Israeli authorities despite a present political atmosphere in which the Palestinian resistance has not been posing violent challenges to Israeli security behind the green line, and his condition would in any event make political activism an impossibility.
As a result of the ‘Shalit Law,’ a vindictive violation of international humanitarian law that retaliates against Palestinian prisoners because of the capture of Gilad Shalit an Israeli soldier who was released a year ago, Rikhawi has been denied family visits since 2006 despite being the father of eight children plus the five young children of his recently deceased brother. Yasmine, daughter of his brother, summed up Akram Rikhawi’s tragic situation: “My uncle made a decision and we support him because we live life once; we either live it with dignity or we die fighting for it.” No human being should be forced to face such a dilemma, and those that do deserve our compassion and support. Jasmine describes Akram Rikhawi as the main source of financial and emotional support of the entire family, which was the center of his life. She describes him as an avid reader who was constantly challenging the family to engage in serious discussions, including issues arising from his intense opposition to the occupation.
He suffers from multiple life-threatening ailments, including serious asthma and diabetes, and has been targeted for abuse since initiating this hunger strike as the following report makes clear.
Putting all the pieces together, including the realization that many hunger strikes have been in process since Khader Adnan had recourse to a hunger strike on December 17, 2010 in protest against his arrest and confinement as a result of an administrative detention decree, we can reach some tentative conclusions:
these brave acts of nonviolence have inspired Palestinians and some others, sustaining their dignity under the most difficult and inhumane of circumstances;
Western countries and Western NGOs, claiming to be champions of humanitarian diplomacy, have spurned the moral and political challenges posed by these hunger strikes;
despite such malign neglect, the hunger strikes have shined a bright light on the unlawfulness and cruelty of Israeli arrest and interrogation procedures and prison conditions that has increased awareness of this dimension of prolonged Israeli occupation of Palestine;
with such an awareness comes responsibility, including acting on the request of Addammeer and Phsicians for Human Rights-Israel that letters demanding Akram Rikhawi’s release be sent to listed Israeli officials.
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Concern mounts for the life of Akram Rikhawi on his 85th day of hunger strike
An independent doctor from PHR-IL visited Akram Rikhawi yesterday and an Addameer lawyer visited him today, along with Samer Al-Barq and Hassan Safadi. Samer and Hassan are still denied access to independent doctors.
Ramallah-Jaffa, 5 July 2012—Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL) and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association are gravely concerned for the life of Akram Rikhawi, who is now on his 85th day of hunger strike. An independent doctor from PHR-IL visited Akram in Ramleh prison medical center yesterday, 4 July, which was made possible only after an appeal to the Israeli District Court, where the judge eventually ordered the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to allow the entry of the independent doctor no later than 3 July.
Following the visit to Akram, the PHR-IL doctor reported the alarming deterioration of Akram’s asthma, which continues to be unstable. The doctor believes Akram has been given very high doses of steroids as treatment, which can cause severe long-term and irreversible damage. The doctor reiterated recommendation for immediate examination by a lung specialist, which was not performed as recommended after the last visit by an independent doctor on 6 June.
Akram also reported that he is experiencing severe dizziness, can no longer walk and is having difficulty standing. Even more troubling, Akram has not been given any assistance in these matters, leaving him vulnerable to the danger of falling, which could result in fatal injury due to his osteoperosis. The doctor further noted that Akram is experiencing tingling and numbness in his left thigh, which could indicate peripheral nerve damage, and recommended immediate examination in a public hospital, for fear of permanent neurological damage.
The IPS has continued to punish Akram for his hunger strike by confiscating his books and reading materials, isolating him from other prisoners and cancelling his daily break. He is also being held in a cell with no fan or air conditioning, despite the high humidity and how badly it affects his asthma.
Akram pointed out to the independent doctor and to Addameer lawyer Mona Neddaf in her visit today that he was recently hospitalized at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, but was shackled at all times to the hospital bed and felt his needs were mostly ignored by the medical staff. He emphasized to Ms. Neddaf his desire to have unrestricted access to the independent doctors from PHR-IL.
Ms. Neddaf also visited Samer Al-Barq, who is on his 45th day of renewed hunger strike in protest against the extension of his administrative detention. Ms. Neddaf noted that he seems significantly weaker than during her last visit on 25 June. He is consuming only water with glucose.
Samer’s family has reported that he suffers from kidney problems and high blood pressure and has lost more than 25% of his original weight. On 21 June, PHR-IL submitted a request to allow access for independent physicians. On 25 June the IPS denied this request without providing any reasons.
Hassan Safadi is on his 15th day of renewed hunger strike, after previously spending 71 days on prolonged hunger strike. His last administrative detention order was due to expire on 29 June and, according to the agreement ending Palestinian prisoners’ mass hunger strike, he was supposed to be released on that date. However, his lawyer was informed on 21 June of the renewal of his administrative detention order for a further six months, in violation of the agreement.
According to Ms. Neddaf after her visit with him today, Hassan’s lawyer submitted a request to the military judge that he review the agreement and consider his immediate release. The judge responded that he would give a decision on this matter in two weeks. Hassan stressed that he will not break his hunger strike until he is released to his home in Nablus.
Hassan was transferred to Ramleh prison medical center last week and is currently being held in an isolated cell. He is drinking water with salt and taking vitamins due to a low potassium level in his blood. He has lost approximately 8 kilos in weight since the beginning of his renewed strike. PHR-IL submitted a request to allow access for an independent doctor on 26 June and have not yet received a response from the IPS.
In light of the deterioration of the conditions of the remaining Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, PHR-IL and Addameer urge the international community to immediately intervene on their behalf and demand:
unrestricted access for independent physicians to all hunger strikers;
the immediate transfer of Akram Rikhawi and Samer Al-Barq to a public hospital, and the transfer of all prisoners on hunger strike for more than 40 days to public hospitals;
that no hunger striker be shackled while hospitalized;
that all hunger strikers—especially those in advanced stages of hunger strike—be allowed family visits, while they are still lucid;
that all information be given to families as to the medical condition of their loved ones, which is the responsibility of hospitals and medical staff in accordance with standards of medical ethics;
that Akram Rikhawi be granted release on humanitarian grounds;
that Hassan Safadi and Samer Al-Barq, along with all other administrative detainees, be immediately and unconditionally released.
*Write to the Israeli government, military and legal authorities and demand that Akram Rikhawi be released immediately and receive adequate medical care.
Brigadier General Danny Efroni Military Judge Advocate General 6 David Elazar Street Harkiya, Tel Aviv Israel Fax: +972 3 608 0366; +972 3 569 4526 Email: arbel@mail.idf.il; avimn@idf.gov.il
Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon OC Central Command Nehemia Base, Central Command Neveh Yaacov, Jerusalam Fax: +972 2 530 5741
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak Ministry of Defense 37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya Tel Aviv 61909, Israel Fax: +972 3 691 6940 / 696 2757
Col. Eli Bar On Legal Advisor of Judea and Samaria PO Box 5 Beth El 90631 Fax: +972 2 9977326
*Write to your own elected representatives urging them to pressure Israel to release Akram Rikhawi.
Seven years after the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was launched, the global BDS campaign has become stronger, more widespread, more effective and certainly more diverse than ever—a true cause for celebration by all those groups and conscientious citizens of the world who contributed to this success. However, Israel’s intensifying violations of international law and basic Palestinian rights, the direct threat Israel poses to the freedom of peoples across the region, and the impunity that Israel still enjoys are cause for reflection and the continuous fine-tuning of our strategies to further spread BDS and further isolate Israel as a world pariah, just as South Africa was under apartheid.
Thanks to the BDS movement, the struggle for the basic rights of the entire Palestinian people has taken a major leap during these last seven years, reaching wide audiences and achieving concrete achievements in major European countries, South Africa, Latin America, India, the Arab world, Australia, New Zealand and even North America. Following on from a similar round up published to mark five years of BDS, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broad Palestinian civil society coalition, has put together the following selection of highlights gives a taste of the spectacular growth of BDS over the last two years.
The global reach of the BDS movement is maybe best highlighted by this year’s edition of the BDS Global Day of Action which took place in 23 countries and the fact that the 8th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) was organized this year on campuses in 202 cities across the world, causing near panic in the Israeli public diplomacy ministry, which scrambled 100 envoys to counter IAW around the world.
Popular consumer boycotts of Israeli products and campaigns against companies that export and sell Israeli products, particularly those implicated in Israel’s illegal colonies in the occupied Palestinian territory, have not only raised awareness among ordinary citizens in countless cities across the world but led to significant damage to complicit Israeli companies:
– Agrexco, Israel’s former largest exporter of agricultural produce, entered liquidation towards the end of 2011, following a campaign of blockades, demonstrations, lobbying of supermarkets and governments, popular boycotts and legal action in more than 13 countries across Europe. The campaign against the company was a major factor behind the lack of investors’ interest to salvage it.
– The largest Co-operative in Europe, the Co-Operative Group in the UK, introduced a policy to end trade with companies that source products from Israel’s illegal settlements, following a determined campaign by Co-Op members. Campaigners are working to pressure other supermarkets to adopt a similarly comprehensive position. Many supermarkets across Europe already claim not to sell produce from illegal settlements.
– A sustained campaign against Ahava, the Israeli cosmetics company situated in an illegal Israeli colony, forced the company to close its flagship London store and retailers in the UK, Norway, Japan and Canada to announce boycotts of the company.
Inspired by the integral role that Israeli academic institutions play in developing the knowledge and technology behind Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid, and planning and justifying Israel’s worst crimes, academic boycott campaigns have spread to campuses across the world:
– Campaigns against EU-funded collaboration with private Israeli companies and Israeli universities have sprung up at campuses across Europe in response to a call from Palestinian academics and civil society.
– Academic unions in the UK and Canada have voted to support various academic boycott campaign initiatives. There are also active academic boycott campaigns in India, the US, South Africa, Ireland, Chile, Brazil, Pakistan, and in many European countries.
Rapidly losing support around the world and recently again voted one of the most negatively viewed countries in the world, Israel’s attempts to whitewash its system of colonization, occupation and apartheid using culture is increasingly thwarted by a highly visible cultural boycott:
– Scores of artists — especially musicians and filmmakers — and writers have refused to perform in Israel or cancelled scheduled performances following pressure from the BDS movement including Bono, Snoop Dogg, Jean Luc Godard, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron, Carlos Santana, Devendra Banhart, Faithless, the Pixies, Cassandra Wilson, Cat Power, Zakir Hussain.
– Many artists and other cultural figures now speak publicly of their support for BDS: Roger Waters, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, John Berger, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, Ken Loach, Arundhati Roy, Angela Davis, Sarah Schulman, among others.
– Israeli artists who accept funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are required to sign a contract committing them to be part of Israel’s cultural public relations offensive. Protests and campaigns against state-backed performances — such as those by the Batsheva dance company, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Habima theater, and the Jerusalem Quartet — are now common place in Europe and North America, forcing some cultural venues to defend or retract their decision to host representatives of Israel and persuading others not to invite state-backed Israeli artists at all.
– US basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar cancelled a scheduled public visit to Israel.
Corporations, both Israeli and international, play a key role in facilitating Israeli apartheid. Divestment campaigns are raising the price of corporate complicity with Israeli violations of international law and changing corporate attitudes towards doing business with Israel:
– French multinational Veolia has been targeted since November 2008 due its provision of infrastructure services to illegal settlements, including the Jerusalem Light Rail. Local municipalities across Europe and Australia have decided not to award Veolia contracts worth at least $14 billion following BDS campaigns. An increasing number of municipal authorities have implemented policies excluding Veolia from bidding on local contracts. Several European banks have divested from the company as well. Veolia has been forced to admit the damage the BDS campaign has caused it and subsequently announced plans to withdraw from some illegal Israeli projects.
– Several European banks have also divested from Alstom, one of Veolia’s partners in the Jerusalem Light Rail. Alstom lost a $10 billion contract to build the second phase of the Saudi Haramain Railway project following a concerted campaign of pressure.
– The European Parliament elected not to renew a contract with G4S following action by Palestine solidarity groups. G4S is a private security company that Palestinian civil society has called for action against over its contract with the Israeli Prison Service and its resulting complicity with the detention of Palestinian political prisoners.
– The Norwegian government pension fund and 12 other European finance institutions have excluded Elbit Systems from their portfolios. Elbit is an Israeli military company involved in constructing Israel’s illegal wall.
Responding to ever-increasing public anger with Israel’s occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, a number of governments have started to introduce sanctions against Israel:
– Turkey and Norway have both announced decisions to suspend military relations with Israel and Turkey is pursuing legal action against Israel over its killing of 9 Turkish citizens on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010. Bolivia, Venezuela, Qatar, Mauritania and several other countries also took action in response to the attack.
– A call from Palestinian civil society for a comprehensive military embargo on Israel last July was supported by Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and civil society groups around the world representing millions of people.
In the trade union movement, labor-led sanctions and BDS initiatives have become the leading form of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle:
– BDS principles and tactics have been formally endorsed by national trade union federations in South Africa, UK, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Basque Country, Brazil and other countries across Latin America, in addition to scores of national and local unions. Africa’s largest trade union federation, ITUC-Africa – representing 15 million workers from 56 African trade union federations has endorsed BDS and the European Trade Union Congress is currently taking action against produce from illegal Israeli settlements.
– Some major trade unions, particularly in Europe, are taking steps to sever links with the Histadrut, the colonial Israeli trade union entity that has always played a key role in Israel’s system of oppression over the Palestinian people. Most recently, Unison, the UK’s second largest trade union with 1.3 million members, voted to reaffirm its position of suspended relations with the Histadrut.
Following a call for concrete solidarity from Palestinian Christians entitled Kairos Palestine, churches around the world have adopted BDS-related actions:
– In the US, the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation (FFC) divested $900,000 in shares of Caterpillar, targeted over its sale of bulldozers to Israel that are used to violate Palestinian rights. The worldwide United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church in the US have both called on their members to boycott produce from illegal Israeli settlements.
– In the UK, the Methodist Church and the Quakers in Britain recently called on the UK government to ban trade in products from illegal Israeli settlements.
At university campuses across the world, the student movement in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle continues to rapidly emerge:
– In North America, students are developing sophisticated and widely supported campus divestment initiatives, with student unions in Regina and Carleton in Canada and National Movímíento Estudíantíl Chícan@ de Aztlán (M.E.Ch.A), the largest association of Latin@ youth in the US, and the student government at University of Massachusetts-Boston voting to support divestment and other BDS initiatives. The first student-led BDS U.S. national conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania earlier this year following a successful national student conference at Columbia University last year.
– BDS student groups are growing across Europe. In the UK the National Union of Students has endorsed student campaigns that have succeeded in ending relationships between universities and Ahava and Eden Springs. Edinburgh University Student Association voted to end its contract with G4S.
With the eruption of peoples’ upheavals across the Arab world, or what came to be known as the Arab Spring, massive solidarity with Palestinian rights in Arab countries is increasingly being channeled in effective BDS campaigns, especially in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and Kuwait.
Against the backdrop of continued success and the reactions from Israel, we look forward to working with trade unions, NGOs, faith groups, solidarity organizations, people’s movements and people of conscience all over the world to continue to spread BDS as an effective and morally compelling tool in support of the Palestinian struggle for comprehensive rights. Israel realizes it and so do we: BDS is spreading and having a significant impact on Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid; it is time to push even further into the mainstream to entrench Israel’s pariah status. Only thus can Palestinians regain their rights and exercise self-determination, and without that there can never be a just and sustainable peace in the entire region.
The number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention has increased 40 percent since last September. (Ryan Rodrick Beiler)
A new report funded and supported by the UK government that accuses Israel of violating international law with its treatment of Palestinian child detainees was launched in London by a high-profile group of human rights lawyers on Tuesday.
But there is pessimism in some quarters that the report’s recommendations will be implemented. The document has been criticized as “toothless” by a prominent Palestinian human rights activist.
“Children in Military Custody” was funded and backed by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and written by an ad hoc group including a former attorney general, a former court of appeal judge and several prominent attorneys known as QCs. The delegation visited Palestine in September and met with Palestinian, Israeli and international nongovernmental organizations, British diplomats and a wide range of Israeli government and military officials.
The report details the military law Israel applies to all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including children, and how it differs from the civilian law applied to Israeli settlers who live in the same territory. It states there it was “uncontested [by Israel] that there are major differentials between the law governing the treatment of Palestinian children and the law governing treatment of Israeli children.”
Unequal treatment of children
At the heart of the report are three core recommendations to the Israeli government: start applying international law to the West Bank (which Israel refuses to do), the best interests of the child should come first and, crucially, that Israel “should deal with Palestinian children on an equal footing with Israeli children.”
Israel currently applies two separate and unequal systems of laws in the West Bank. Palestinians are subject to a harsh military regime in which Israeli army officers and police, arrest, interrogate, judge and sentence, while Israeli settlers colonizing the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law.
These systematic inequalities include: the minimum age for Palestinian children to receive a custodial sentence is 12, but for Israelis it is 14; Palestinian children have no right to have a parent present during interrogation, while Israeli children generally do.
The most stark inequalities are evident in the time it takes for the two systems to work. Palestinian children could have to wait up to eight days before being brought before a judge, while Israeli children have a right to see one within 24 hours; Palestinian children can be detained without charge for 188 days, while for Israelis the limit is 40.
In a press release about the report, Council for Arab-British Understanding director Chris Doyle describes witnessing in Palestine “nothing less than a kangaroo court that does nothing to improve Israel’s security while criminalizing an entire generation of Palestinian children.”
Children kept in solitary confinement
Drawing on their meetings with nongovernmental organizations such as Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, the authors detail the shocking treatment of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
Arrested in nighttime raids, Palestinian children are often physically and verbally abused, brought before adult military courts, shackled, given little choice than taking a plea bargain, and can be sentenced to as many as 20 years for “crimes” as trivial as stone throwing. Some are even kept in solitary confinement, according to DCI.
When Palestinian children file complaints about their abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers, they are almost always ignored. Israeli occupation authorities were able to give to the delegation “only one example of a complaint being upheld.” The authors report that there are “a significant number of allegations of physical and emotional abuse of child detainees by the military which neither the complaints system nor the justice system is addressing satisfactorily.”
The report compiles some shocking statistics. As many as 94 percent of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank are denied bail, according to nongovernmental organizations. Some 97-98 percent of such cases end with a plea bargain, meaning they go to jail without even reaching the trial stage (as flawed as military courts are).
A key conclusion reached by the report’s authors is that Israel is in breach of articles of UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that prohibit: national or ethnic discrimination; ignoring a child’s best interests; the premature resort to detention, imprisonment and trial alongside adult prisoners; preventing prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles.
While the report notes “the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion [on Israel’s wall in the West Bank] which concludes categorically that the UNCRC is applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Israeli officials the delegation met with refused to recognize this.
“Every Palestinian child a ‘potential terrorist’”
“In our meetings with the various Israeli Government agencies, we found the universal stance by contrast was that the Convention has no application beyond Israel’s own [pre-1967] borders,” the authors write, noting their disagreement.
They emphasize: “[t]he population of the West Bank is within the physical power and control of Israel, and Israel has effective control of the territory. Our visit dispelled any doubts we might have had about this.”
In its conclusions, the report notes that this refusal to fulfill its international law obligations with respect to Palestinian children probably “stems from a belief, which was advanced to us by [an Israeli] military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a ‘potential terrorist.’”
Questions about report’s future
Renowned Palestinian writer, activist and academic Ghada Karmi was at the report’s launch on Tuesday. She asked the panel if it would be doing a follow-up visit, or monitoring implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The answer was less than conclusive, with co-author Greg Davies saying they would have to “wait and see” what the Israeli government’s response would be. He later spoke to The Electronic Intifada over the phone about the report’s future: “the format in which that follow-up work takes place, I don’t know at this stage, it’s too early to tell … I’m committed to seeing as far as it’s possible these recommendations coming into effect. If that requires further work I’m prepared to organize that.”
Karmi later told The Electronic Intifada that the report is “toothless in the end” because there is no way to compel Israel to comply.
“Palestinians are fed up of being studied,” she said. What they really want to know is “how will I get help to end” the abuses of the military occupation. Karmi did however conclude the report was a good thing and the delegation was a “very interesting mission” because it was backed by the foreign office, who could not be accused of anti-Israel bias in the same way that Israel has managed to taint UN missions with “the usual slanders.”
UK government approached report’s authors
Lawyer Greg Davies was responsible for putting the ad hoc delegation together. He told The Electronic Intifada that while he was doing so, he was approached by the British Consulate in Jerusalem, who offered government funding. Davies replied in the affirmative, but on condition that the group be independent.
In response to such criticisms as Karmi’s, Davies said: “there have been a number of [such] reports submitted… those reports have largely gone unanswered [by Israel] … it was that lack of response that prompted this.”
“There isn’t an enforceability as such without the political will, and that’s where our remit stops,” he said, pointing to an Early Day Motion on the report tabled in parliament Wednesday. EDM 280 welcomes the report and “asks the Foreign Secretary to make a statement to the House [of Commons] setting out his proposals for persuading Israel to comply in practice with international law relating to the treatment of children.” Davies said of the EDM “we welcome that and are hugely encouraged by that.”
Advancing the debate
The Palestine section of Defence for Children International, through its reports and its meetings with the delegation, is one of the most quoted sources in the report. DCI-PS spokesperson Gerard Horton admitted to The Electronic Intifada that the report’s recommendations “won’t end the abuse,” but argued that some of them “will make it very difficult for the military court system to function effectively” if they were implemented.
He wrote in an email that the report’s list of forty recommendations include those DCI-PS have been demanding for years (parents present during interrogation; prompt access to a lawyer; audio-visual recording of interrogations; and an end to forcible transfer of children to prisons inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention).
Horton also highlighted the high profile of the report’s authors and backers: “the importance of this report is who wrote it … before real change can occur the debate has to become mainstream. People in the center and center-right have to start taking an interest and expressing a concern. To my mind this report goes some way to advancing that by helping to shift the debate to the center.”
“Justice is not a negotiable commodity”
Among the report’s forty specific recommendations are: an end to night arrests, an end to blindfolding and shackling, observing the prohibition on “violent, threatening or coercive” conduct, the presence of a parent during interrogation and “[c]hildren should not be required to sign confessions” in Hebrew, since they do not understand it.
The report notes that since the delegation’s visit, a new military order has upped to 18 the age at which Palestinian children can be tried as adults. Previously, it had been 16 (then another inequality with Israeli children who are treated as children until 18).
But there are concerns this change has been rendered void in practice. While welcoming the change, the report expresses concern “that the change does not appear to apply to sentencing provisions.”
Seemingly deliberate loopholes in the law means that “adult sentencing provisions still apply to 16 [and] 17 year olds” and that children 14-17 years old can be sentenced as adults when the maximum penalty for the offense is five years or more. The maximum penalty for throwing stones (the most common offense) ranges from 10 to 20 years,
Asked by The Electronic Intifada at the Tuesday launch why there were no specific recommendations in the report to end this inequality, Judy Khan QC said it was covered by core recommendation three, which calls for an end to the current inequalities between Israeli and Palestinian child detainees.
In their meetings with the delegation, the Israeli Ministry of Justice “described [such changes] as conditional on there being no significant unrest or ‘third intifada.’” The report objects: “[a] major cause of future unrest may well be the resentment of continuing injustice … justice is not a negotiable commodity but a fundamental human right.”
Sharp rise in child detainees
Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Lord Justice — senior appeal judge — underlined at Tuesday’s launch that there has been a 40 percent rise in child detainees since their visit in September, so the problem has only got worse since they returned to the UK.
While the report seems to have received some media coverage in the UK, it yet remains to be seen what practical impact it will have. More fundamentally, it does not call for an end to the occupation, considering political solutions beyond the authors’ mandate. It does note however that: “We have no reason to differ from the view of Her Majesty’s Government and the international community that these [Israeli] settlements [in the West Bank] are illegal. For the purposes of this report however we treat them, like the occupation, as a fact.”
But the question remains: a fact for how much longer?
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist from London who has lived and reported from occupied Palestine. His website is www.winstanleys.org.
