The Treatment Of Palestinian Detainees During Operation “Cast Lead” (Full Text)

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel & Adalah:
The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

13 July, 2010
Countercurrents.org
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, released, today [July 6, 2010], a special report "Exposed" which discusses violations of detainee rights during "Cast Lead". The report relies on a significant number of testimonies given to PCATI and Adalah attorneys, most of the civilian detainees who were arrested by the Israeli army and interrogated in Israel. The testimonies provide give rise to a series claim that the Israeli Army systematically and deliberately violated their basic rights while disregarding domestic and international law.
Among its primary findings:
1. The State of Israel failed in it its international & domestic legal obligation to provide information regarding place of detention to detainee family members without delay to families of the detainees and to organizations dealing with detainees. Not only were detainee families harmed by this dereliction also the ability to monitor detention conditions and the application of detainee rights was harmed.
2. The detainees were held in wretched conditions. They were held in ditches and in cold and dark cells while be denied minimally appropriate nutrition and sanitary needs. This treatment forms the basis for the torture and ill treatment that many of the detainees experienced at various stages of their detention. These conditions allowed the army to break the spirit and to humiliate the detainees in addition to the violence that they suffered during interrogation.
3. The testimonies revealed that the army systematically used the Gaza residents as human shields in order to protect the soldiers while engaged in military activity, within the strip and for many days and even up to 10 days in some instances. At times the civilians were forced to go into homes ahead of the soldiers, to march next to the soldiers to shield them from gun fire.
4. Israel established a legal category for detainees, "unlawful combatant" which is unrecognized in international law. This special status allowed Israel to deprive the detainees of prisoner of war status and the conditions and rights that go with it while, at the same time, denying them the status and rights of protected civilians.
The report's conclusion a number of recommendations connected to detainee rights are made in order to prevent such a travesty of rights violations in the future. Among the recommendations is a call for the establishment of a governmental investigative committee that abides by international standards in order to investigate the violations of "Cast Lead" and to put on trial those suspected of committing offences. In addition the report recommends the establishment of standards for treatment of detainees, and to establish an efficient monitoring mechanism and to cancel the unlawful combatants law.
Research and Writing: Adv. Majd Badr, Adv. Abeer Baker
Editing: Adv. Irit Ballas, Adv. Bana Shoughry-Badarne
English Translation: Ron Makleff

Exposed-Treatment of Detainees Cast Lead_June 2010

Israeli to UN: Palestinian detainees kept in ditches

Daniel Edelson | YNet News

7 July 2009

A member of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) testified in Geneva on Tuesday before a United Nations investigation team looking into the Israeli offensive in Gaza about half a year ago.

Attorney Majd Bader, an Arab Israeli, told the committee that Palestinians detained by Israel during Operation Cast Lead were held in detention under ‘disgraceful” conditions and were subjected to violent Shin Bet interrogations and constant threats.

Speaking to Ynet, Bader said that during his testimony he spoke of the “acute problems of Gazans who are being held in Israeli prisons.”

“Some of them said the IDF held detainees in ditches that had been prepared in advance; 50 to 70 people were squeezed into ditches two to three meters (6.5-10 feet) deep and some 50 meters (164 feet) wide,” he said.

The PCATI representative said the detainees testified to being held handcuffed and blindfolded with no access to restrooms, food or water.

‘Clear findings needed’

As for the interrogations by the Shin Bet security service, Bader said these included the use of physical and verbal abuse and threats on the detainees and their families.

“Some detainees said they were allowed very little sleep for days on end and claimed they were handcuffed in a painful way,” he said.

Bader further complained that the detainees are prevented from meeting their lawyers and that their families could not visit them due to the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

The attorney expressed his hope that the committee would publish clear findings “that will prevent the recurrence of human rights infringements on the part of both sides.”

Bader said he believed Israel’s decision not to cooperate with the committee was a mistake. “The government should not have boycotted the committee if it was confident in the moral and legal justification of its ways,” he said.

“Israel should have established an independent investigative committee to examine the allegations.”