For Your Information

Plight of Palestinian Prisoners

The Palestinian people have the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967, an estimated 650,000 Palestinians - or 20 per cent of the Palestinian population - have been imprisoned in Israeli jails or detention centres. One Palestinian writer has noted that in 1989, during the first intifada, Israel detained 50,000 Palestinian men between the ages of 14 and 55, that is over 15 percent of the entire male Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories at the time. By contrast, during that same year, under the apartheid regime, South African police and security forces detained around 5,000 Africans, or around 0.2 percent of the South African population.

In addition, Palestinian children are also detained and imprisoned, often in the same facilities as adults. There are currently 370 Palestinian children and youth imprisoned in Israel; during the first three years of the second intifada, a total of 2,000 Palestinian children and youth have been detained.

Every report by independent observers reveals that while incarcerated, Palestinian prisoners face treatment that violates their human rights and the rights accorded to prisoners held by an occupying power under the Geneva Convention. Estimates of the percentage of Palestinian prisoners who are tortured or treated poorly in Israeli jails and detention centres range from 50 to 80 percent. Approved methods of torture used by the State of Israel against prisoners include beatings, choking, pulling hair off the body, prolonged solitary confinement, prolonged sleep deprivation, blindfolding, shackling, threats against family members, constant screaming and deprivation of showers and toilets. Israel has also used deprivation of medication and necessary medical treatments as an interrogation tactic.

Photos published in mainstream Israeli newspapers such as Ha’aretz have also depicted Palestinian prisoners hooded and handcuffed, being beaten with truncheons and sexually humiliated – images very similar to those released a few months ago depicting the torture of Iraqis by Americans in the Abu Ghraib jail.

More than half of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are currently being detained without any charges. According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, the majority of those being held without charges are political prisoners who have been detained for “security” reasons. They have been accused, but never tried or convicted, of inciting violence or encouraging terrorist attacks. “If these same standards were applied inside Israel, half of the Likud party would be in administrative detention,” B’tselem stated in a recent report. Close to 500 Palestinian prisoners being held without charge have been detained under Military Order 1500, which dates back to British colonial rule of Palestine and allows authorities to detain any individual (including children) for up to six months without bringing charges against them. However, this time limit is routinely extended for periods of up to four years.

Back to Modern Communism