Israel and torture in the occupied territories

Israel and torture in the Occupied Palestinian territories refers to the use of torture and systematic degrading practices on Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The practice, routine for decades, was eventually reviewed in the Supreme Court of Israel (1999) which found that "coercive interrogation" of Palestinians had been widespread, and deemed it unlawful, though permissible in certain cases.[1] Torture is also practiced by the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[2]

History

According to Lisa Hajjar (2005) and Dr. Rachel Stroumsa, the director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, torture has been an abiding characteristic of Israeli methods of interrogation of Palestinians.[3][4] Though formally banned by the High Court in 1999, legalized exceptions, authorized by the Attorney General of Israel, persist:[lower-alpha 1]

Reports of torture as a means of extracting confessions arguably began early in the occupation, on evidence for the first decade.[6] In June 1977 the Sunday Times claimed torture was used against the Arab population of the occupied territories.[7] In early 1978 an employee of the US Consulate in East Jerusalem, Alexandra Johnson,[lower-alpha 2] sent two cables detailing evidence Israeli authorities were systematically using torture on West Bank suspects in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and the Russian compound of Jerusalem. Early reports indicated detainees were stripped naked and subject for long periods to cold showers or cold air ventilation.[9] People were hung from meat hooks in Hebron and Ramallah.[10] She concluded torture was applied at three rising levels of maltreatment, (a) level one: daily beatings with fists and sticks; (b) level two: alternate immersions of the victim in hot and cold water, beating of genitals and interrogation about twice daily over several hours; (c) level three: rotating teams of interrogators working on a nude person under detention by applying electrical devices, high frequency sonic noise, refrigeration, prolonged hanging by the hands or feet, and inserting objects into their penises or rectums. This last level was used on those who refused at earlier levels to denounce other Palestinians.[11] 78-80% of a sample of detainees in 1985 said they had been sexually molested, and 67% stated they had been humiliated on religious grounds.[12] Former inmates of the secret detention centre Camp 1391, whose existence is not even officially acknowledged, claim sexual harassment, even rape, forms part of the interrogation techniques.[13] The first important study was conducted by the first Palestinian NGO, al-Haq, in 1986,[14] which focused on practices at the Al Fara'a Detention Centre.

Other techniques include shabeh, a practice 76% of the Israel public (1998) thought a form of torture, but only 27% opposed its use against Palestinians.[15] This consists of being forced to sit on a very small chair, with a filthy hood over one's head, as blaring music is drummed into one's ears. It could, as with one woman, last up to 10 days, night and day;[16] also included among torture techniques was the beating of the bare soles of detainees' feet (falaqa), or subjecting them, while deprived of sleep, to endless lectures on themes like: "All Arabs are Bedouin, and Bedouin are Saudis, so Palestinians should go back to Saudi Arabia, where they came from. You don't belong here."[17][lower-alpha 3] Blindfolding is used so that the suspect can never anticipate when he is to be struck.[5] In the First Intifada, other than prolonged beatings, people, including children, could be smeared with vomit or urine, be confined in a "coffin", be suspended by the wrists; be denied food and water or access to toilets, or be threatened to have their sisters, wives or mothers raped.[19] Methods, including torture, practiced also on Palestinian children were reported to persist with Amnesty International stating in 2018 that though over 1,000 complaints have been filed regarding these practices since 2001, "no criminal investigations were opened."[20][lower-alpha 4]

One major case, in which 20 men from Beita and Huwara were taken from their homes, gagged and bound hand and foot and then had their limbs broken with clubs, eventually reached the Israeli Supreme Court.[lower-alpha 5][23] In 2017, the alleged torture of Fawzi al-Junaidi, a 16 year old Palestinian boy, in Israeli detention drew media spotlight.[24] A roadside bomb in 2019 leading to the death of an Israeli girl triggered a manhunt by the Shin Bet where up to 50 Palestinians were rounded up and reportedly subjected to some form of torture.[25] 3 of the alleged suspects were hospitalised, one of them with kidney failure and 11 broken ribs while another was "nearly unrecognisable to his wife when he was wheeled into a courtroom".[26]

Such torture is not thought to be very effective. A West Bank member of Hamas gave evidence under torture implicating himself and that organization in the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers. The extorted confession turned out to be false.[5] Recourse to Israeli courts to obtain recompense and rehabilitation for the psychological damage caused by being tortured are rarely conceded and are exceptional. Financial settlements were given for cases in the 1980s and 1990s, but only if the victim underwrote a clause which absolved the state of Israeli of declaring that the plaintiff had been a victim of torture.[27]

Notes
  1. "subsequent regulations issued by the then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said interrogators who nevertheless used torture would not stand trial if they could demonstrate that it was 'immediately necessary to save his own or another person's life, freedom, person or property from a concrete danger of serious harm', and that 'there was no other way to do so.' The regulations stipulated, however, that only very senior officials could permit the use of these methods, and that any interrogator who used them must keep a detailed record of the number of blows, the painful positions and all other so-called special means used. In addition, the attorney general must be informed after every use of such methods."[5]
  2. She was dismissed from her position shortly afterwards, despite recognition of the excellence of her work as an analyst, on the ostensible grounds she did not get on well with her colleagues.[8]
  3. Speaking of completing course work for becoming an intelligence officer, one former member of Unit 8100 said it ended with a full dress performance of pretending to be Palestinians, with the students shouting: "Enough with Palestine, we want to relocate to Australia!"[18]
  4. One case, where a Palestinian woman was forced to undergo two successive vaginal and anal probes during a single night raid conducted by the IDF under Shin Bet instructions, may prove an exception. Her protest was ignored, she spent two years in prison for minor offenses, and was then re-imprisoned for "nationalist" activities, and finally fled abroad due to trauma and shame. Only the persistence of an Israeli woman attorney Jana Mudzgurishvilly, in the Mivtan unit that closed all the other 1,000 cases, brought her complaint to the attention of the Justice Department, which has yet to decide what steps to take.[21]
  5. The description is that of the Supreme Court judge Moshe Bejski, who had survived the Holocaust as one of those on Oskar Schindler's list.[22]

Citations
  1. Clarke 2013, pp. 100, 102–103.
  2. HRW 2018.
  3. Aharony 2018.
  4. Hajjar 2005, p. 195.
  5. Levinson 2017.
  6. Bishara 1979, p. 22.
  7. Bishara 1979, pp. 7–8.
  8. Bishara 1979, p. 11.
  9. Punamäki 1988, p. 82.
  10. Bishara 1979, pp. 21–22.
  11. Bishara 1979, p. 20.
  12. Punamäki 1988, pp. 86–87.
  13. Peak & Everett 2015, p. 306.
  14. Allen 2013, p. 46.
  15. Montell 2000, p. 108.
  16. Montell 2000, p. 106.
  17. Hajjar 2005, p. 197.
  18. The Guardian 12 Sep 2014.
  19. Graff 2015, p. 174.
  20. AI 2018b, p. 209.
  21. Breiner & Berger 2018.
  22. Conroy 2001, pp. 48ff.,59.
  23. Graff 2015, pp. 173–174.
  24. "'Bruised and denied care': Fawzi al-Junaidi out on bail". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
  25. "Israel Accused of Torturing Palestinians After Fatal Bombing". VOA. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
  26. "Bitten at genitals by security dog, 11 broken ribs and unrecognisable face: The cruel face of Israeli torture". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
  27. Weishut 2015, p. 72.

Sources
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