Special Committee hears witnesses on Israeli practices in occupied areas.

Special Committee hears witnesses on Israeli practices in occupied areas

The three-member Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population in the Occupied Arab Territories heard testimony from a number of witnesses in both open and closed sessions during a series of meetings held in Switzerland, Jordan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Egypt from 13 to 31 May.

The testimony concerned Israeli measures in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Witnesses spoke of "inhuman conditisons" of daily life in the occupied territories; expropriation of Arab land for Israeli settlements; the "extension of cultural colonization" by a systematic stifling of the development of the arts and other areas of Arab cultural heritage; 'denial of trade union rights; arbitrary laws and military and administrative measures to impede Arab economic activity and education and health services; and creation of what a witness called "a general climate of terrorism" against the Arabs.

The Special Committee has been consistently refused permission to visit the occupied territories, and relies on hearing testimony in cities of neighbouring Arab States with concentrations of Palestine refugees and other persons having direct experience of the human rights situation in those territories. Its members are Nissanka Wijewardane (Sri Lanka), Chairman; Dragan Jovanic (Yugoslavia); and alioune Sene (Senegal).

Torture Charged

Abdul Aziz Ali Shahin, a Palestinian from the Ramla district in the West Bank, told the Special Committee that he was 23 years old when he was first arrested in 1967. He spent the next 15 years at various interrogation centres, detention camps and prisons. He said torture techniques included hanging him upside-down while his arms and legs were tied. Then, he was kicked and punched. He had his head put in a bucket full of dirty water, and was beaten with electric wire. For many days, he was prevented from sleeping, eating or drinking water.

Isolation cell number 139 in Ramla prison, he said was a small cubicle of only 60 by 160 centimetres and 150 centimetres high. Being locked up in that cell was the worst treatment of all, he said. It had no windows and one could not walk. He was kept there for days, except for the early morning when he was let our for four minutes, and for another four minutes in the evening to go to the toilet. There were moments when he realized what it meant to die a slow death in a Nazi concentration camp.

Jawad Boulos, a Palestinian lawyer who lives in Jerusalem, said even the Israeli press recognized the prison conditions in the occupied territories as bad. There had been cases where Arab detainees had been brought to court showing marks of torture, beating with truncheons and burns from cigarettes. In certain cases, the torture had been recognized by the court and the prisoner had been released. Infection among prisoners was being spread either through the detainees sharing their razor blades or from using unwashed blankets. There had been strikes in several prisons over poor conditions.

Abdel-Rahman Namurah, a doctor from Hebron, told of acts of obstruction and intimidation Arabs had to overcome to go to Jordan, and of the "relentless harassment" of himself and his family, such as the imprisonment of a brother, also a doctor, and attempts to confiscate his family land. He said restrictions on travel abroad by Arabs were a daily feature of life in the occupied West Bank.

A Canadian physician, Dr. Crhis Paul Giannou, Director of the Nabativa Hospital of the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Sidon Hospital in Lebanon, said that following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he was taken prisoner by the Israeli forces, together with two Norwegian doctors and some 150 Lebanese, Plaestinians and medical staff of other nationalities.

At Megiddo Prison in Israel, he said, the Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, while handcuffed and blind-folded, were beaten if they asked for water too often. Not all the Israeli guards participated in the beatings. Often the guards argued among themselves. And some would bring extra water and cigarettes for the prisoners. The conditions of detention were very bad, with overcrowding and arbitrary beatings. In Sidon, there had been deaths among detainees from beatings. The lack of food and especially water, in the great heat of summer, was serious. Detainees were humiliated and insulted for asking permission to stand up to relieve themselves.

Mustapha Hussein Nassar, originally from Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Gaza and now a resident of Alexandria, Egypt, said he had been arrested in 1969 and had been tortured in front of his family. A week later, his family had been evicted from their home, and the house had been demolished. He had served most of his prison term in Beersheba, where he was a member of the detainees' committee. As Cultural Director, he was also in chrge of the security of the detainees who had to be helped to resist Israeli attempts to use some of them as agents. Because of his prison activities, the Israeli authorities had told him he had a choice between going into exile or being re-arrested upon his release. He had chosen to leave the country. After his departure, the authorities had harassed his family members.

Colonel Jaber Ali Abdallah Amar, originally from Beit Daras near Ashkelon and now a resident of Cairo, said Israeli applied a policy of collective punishment. If a Palestinian fighter threw a bomb at an Israeli army patrol, the Israelis would demolish most of the houses and shops in the area of the incident. Israeli soldiers would be ordered to kill dozens of Palestinians. They would then try to blame their own killings on the Palestinian fighters, in an attempt to convince the Arab population that the Palestinian fighters were saboteurs who did not respect others' right to life.

Taher Kana'an, Jordan's Minister for Occupied Territories Affairs, said Israeli continued to change the character of the land in the West Bank and Gaza, to deny Palestinians the right to return to their homeland and to force people from their farms and businesses. It continued to evict people from their lands and expel them from their homeland. Some 16,000 citizens had been expelled from the West Bank and Gaza every year. That figure did not include expulsions from Greater Jerusalem. Social and economic development in real terms in the West Bank and Gaza was seriously deteriorating. Israel wanted the people in the West Bank and Gaza to have Arab Mayors, but only if they were candidates of Israel's own choosing.