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MER 201 Table of Contents

Palestinian Political Prisoners

Yifat Susskind

Since the Oslo Accords came into effect in May, 1994, Israel's treatment of Palestinian political prisoners has been a litmus test for a viable, just end to the Israeli occupation. Today the prisoners' crisis continues to reflect an agreement that entrenches Israel's remote-control over Palestinians and commissions Yasir Arafat to deliver local compliance with the new order.

Of the nearly 6,000 Palestinians now imprisoned by Israel, more than half were arrested after the signing of the 1993 Declaration of Principles. Sweeping "security arrangements" in Oslo II distinctly preserve Israeli prerogatives to arrest, try and imprison Palestinians in Areas B and C of the West Bank. Loopholes in the text also allow Israel to continue to administratively detain Palestinians, even those from areas now under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).[1] Conditions of detention and interrogation have deteriorated since Oslo II, with setbacks in standards for hygiene and food and severe limitations on family visits--rights which were won through a series of hunger strikes in the '80s and early '90s. Moreover, the current Israeli Knesset is set to debate a bill that would make Israel the only country in the world to legislate torture. Ostensibly criminalizing torture, the bill, in purely Orwellian terms, defines the policy as "pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, except for pain or suffering inherent in the interrogation procedures or punishments according to the law" (emphasis added).[2]

This summer's events have made painfully clear that Israel is no longer the only authority in Palestine to systematically abuse prisoners. Indeed, as Palestinian legislative and executive powers are incrementally swallowed up by Arafat's one-man rule, human rights violations have become routine. In their two-year tenure, PA forces have tortured seven detainees to death and an estimated 70 percent of prisoners are now systematically subjected to torture.[3] By June, the number of people arrested by the PA was already more than double the figure for all of 1995.[4] Today the PA holds 1,200 prisoners suspected of membership in opposition groups, two-thirds of whom have been imprisoned for more than six months without charges, trial or legal counsel.

The chaotic functioning of the PA's nine armed security forces is one source of abuse. Employing over 40,000 people (one of the highest police-population ratios in the world), the security forces are characterized by wide-scale corruption and a lack of regulation. In the Gaza Strip alone, there are 24 separate detention centers, the locations of which were kept secret until this April. Often prisoners in one detention center are held under the authority of a security service not responsible for that facility. Family members are usually not informed of arrests. Prison officials routinely refuse information to families searching for imprisoned relatives. People have even been jailed under a false name. Often people are detained by more than one security body; in such cases they may be released by one force only to be transferred to the custody of another. Lawyers are routinely and arbitrarily denied access to imprisoned clients. Search and arrest warrants are the exception rather than the norm. Mistreatment is endemic, with whipping, electrocution, stretching and controlled strangulation used to elicit confessions and mete out punishment.[5]

The PA's suppression of any opposition or criticism stems in part from Israeli demands encoded in the "peace process." Oslo II, for example, charges the PA with quelling any threat to Israeli security, from armed attacks to "anticipated incitement," (Art. II; 2). Pressure to meet such demands has led to an unofficial quota system for arrests. As one PA prison guard commented, "We have to maintain a certain number of detainees for the Israeli press." Also operative, however, is the PA's own agenda, which like other young "post-revolutionary" governments is consolidating its still tenuous rule with an iron hand. In this climate, the lack of even a pretense of due process sends a clear warning to all would-be dissenters: inside jails, there are no rules of conduct, no recourse and no one to be held accountable.

The recent spotlight on PA arrests has eclipsed the crisis of Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners. Three years into the Oslo process, these prisoners have been cast as remnants of an obsolete struggle. "While I sat in jail for carrying out Arafat's orders he travelled the world shaking bloodstained hands and grinning for cameras," said a Bethlehem man who recently completed an eight-year sentence in Israel. "Now I'm waiting to be arrested by Arafat, for I still believe in what he once taught."

 

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MERIP OP-EDS

Western Sahara Poser for UN
 Reuters (Africa Blog)
 April 28, 2009
Jacob Mundy

Morocco serves as the backdrop for such Hollywood blockbusters as Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies. The country’s breathtaking landscapes and gritty urban neighbourhoods are the perfect setting for Hollywood’s imagination.

Unbeknown to most filmgoers, however, is that Morocco is embroiled in one of Africa’s oldest conflicts - the dispute over Western Sahara. This month the UN Security Council is expected to take up the dispute once more, providing US President Barack Obama with an opportunity to assert genuine leadership in resolving this conflict. But there’s no sign that the new administration is paying adequate attention. Full Story>>

Letters, He Gets Letters
 Bitter Lemons International
March 26, 2009
Chris Toensing

Shortly before assuming office, President Barack Obama was handed a missive signed by such Washington luminaries as ex-national security advisers Zbigniew Brezezinski and Brent Scowcroft, urging him to “explore the possibility” of direct contact with Hamas. One month after he entered the White House, Obama received an epistle from Ahmad Yousef, a Gaza-based spokesman for the Islamist movement, making the same recommendation. “There can be no peace without Hamas,” Yousef told the New York Times when asked about the letter's contents. “We congratulated Mr. Obama on his presidency and reminded him that he should live up to his promise to bring real change to the region.”

There is no word, as yet, on how the foreign policy doyens' message was received, but Yousef's occasioned a huffy US rebuke of the UN Relief Works Agency, whose top official in Gaza, Karen Abu Zayd, passed the letter to Sen. John Kerry while he was visiting the devastated territory in mid-February. Even a single sealed envelope, it seems, creates the appearance that the Obama administration is breaking with the US vow, enunciated first under President George W. Bush, not to speak with Hamas until it agrees to renounce violence, abide by previous Palestinian agreements with Israel and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Full Story>>

Elections Are Key to Darfur Crisis
 The Montreal Gazette
March 7, 2009
Khalid Medani

It has been quite a week. For the first time, the international community indicted a sitting president of a sovereign state. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan stands accused by the International Criminal Court in The Hague of "crimes against humanity and war crimes" committed in the course of the Khartoum regime's brutal suppression of the revolt in the country's far western province of Darfur. Having indicted two other figures associated with the regime in 2007, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo began building a case against the man at the top, and on Wednesday, the court issued a warrant for Bashir's arrest. Full Story>>

Out of the Rubble
The National
January 23, 2009
Mouin Rabbani

Speaking to his people on January 18, hours after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral suspension of hostilities with a conditional ceasefire of its own, the deposed Palestinian Authority prime minister Ismail Haniyeh devoted several passages of his prepared text to the subject of Palestinian national reconciliation. For perhaps the first time since Hamas’s June 2007 seizure of power in the Gaza Strip, an Islamist leader broached the topic of healing the Palestinian divide without mentioning Mahmoud Abbas by name.

At a press conference the following day convened by Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of the Martyr Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing, the movement went one step further. “The Resistance”, Abu Ubaida intoned, “is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. Full Story>>

The Horrors of Israel's Peace
Al Ahram Weekly
January 22-28, 2009
Samera Esmeir

Three weeks after the war on Gaza, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire but refused to terminate its so-called defensive operations. In response, Hamas declared a ceasefire for one week, until the withdrawal of Israeli troops has been completed. For many in the West, the ceasefire might seem like an occasion to celebrate, for the cessation of military hostilities on both sides will perhaps renew the peace process. But there are reasons to be critical of this ceasefire, since it continues the situation in which Israel acts unilaterally. What we are actually witnessing is a new phase of the catastrophe in Gaza. While the characteristics of this phase are not yet known, Israel's violence has become ever more evident. And perhaps this is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not mention the word "peace" once in the speech he gave to announce the ceasefire. The "peace process" might soon be revealed as the other side of the coin to war -- its continuation by other means -- that simultaneously feeds it. Full Story>>

A Battleground for the Foreseeable Future
Bitter Lemons International
September 11, 2008
Chris Toensing

Bob Woodward’s four books chronicling the wars of President George W. Bush are sensitive barometers of conventional wisdom in Washington. Whereas the first volume, published in 2002 at the height of the self-righteous nationalism gripping the capital after the September 11, 2001 attacks, hailed Bush’s self-confidence in acting to protect the homeland, the 2008 installment depicts the same man as cocksure and incurious. This much is not news. More educational are Woodward’s hints about the worldviews that will outlast this unpopular administration, embedded in the organs of the national security state. Full Story>>

Egypt Stifles Debate in the United States
 Northwest Arkansas Times
 August 27, 2008
Bayann Hamid

The Egyptian regime has once again succeeded in stifling freedom of speech, this time not in Egypt, but in the US. Earlier this month, an Egyptian court convicted a prominent Egyptian-American activist for his outspoken criticism of the regime’s poor human rights record in American public fora. The court accused Saad Eddin Ibrahim, of "tarnishing Egypt's image" abroad. The conviction referred primarily to writings he published in the foreign press; most notably among them an August 2007 op-ed in the Washington Post in which he criticized Egypt's human rights record and questioned the reasons behind US aid to Egypt. Full Story>>

Want to Fight Terrorism? Think Globally, Act Locally
 Globe and Mail (Toronto),
 August 4, 2008
Khalid Mustafa Medani

Militant Islam is under global scrutiny for clues to conditions that foster its rise, and to strategies for reversing that growth. But the key is not in Islamic doctrine, US foreign policy or formal ties to various nations, as many analysts have asserted. It lies at the community level, with clan and local leaders. Full Story>>

Iraq’s Kurds Have to Choose
 Globe and Mail (Toronto)
 July 30, 2008
Joost Hiltermann

Kurdish parties have become kingmakers in Baghdad , and they know it. As no federal government can work without them, they are pulling every available political lever to expand the territory and resources they control, trying to build the foundation of an independent Kurdish state. But even more than territory, they need security. If everyone acts quickly and wisely, that understanding could help resolve one of the Iraq war’s thorniest issues. Full Story>>

Exiting Iraq Is Easier Than They Say
 The Nation (web-only)
 July 16, 2008
Chris Toensing

The debate over the war in Iraq follows a yellowing script: The minute someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters cry “Havoc!” True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable, adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he, like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain that withdrawal is simply “cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full Story>>
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