Israel's political leadership cannot claim ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in Interrogation Centres... The number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic

The U.N. Commission Against Torture

"The U.N. Committee Against Torture reached an unequivocal conclusion:...`The methods of interrogation, used in Israeli prisons, are in the Committee's view breaches of article 16 and also constitute torture as defined in article 1 of the Convention. As a State Party to the Convention Against Torture, Israel is precluded from raising before this Committee exceptional circumstances'... The prohibition on torture is, therefore, absolute, and no 'exceptional' circumstances may justify derogating from it."

The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention's provision that certain violations of humanitarian law are 'grave breaches' meriting criminal punishment for perpetrators, found a number of Israel's practices during the uprising (the Intifada) to constitute 'war crimes'. It included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees and their subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition of collective punishment on towns, villages and camps; the administrative detention of thousands of Palestinians; the expulsion of Palestinian citizens; the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and demolition of Palestinian houses.

B'Tselem,  The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, estimates that the GSS (the General Security Service), annually interrogates between 1000-1500 Palestinians (as of 1998). Some eighty-five percent of them, at least 850 persons a year, are tortured during interrogation.

"Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial, most Palestinian detainees arrested for 'terrorist' offences and tortured by the Shin Bet (General Security Services) have been accused of offences such as membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They have also included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for raising a flag. On a related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted that there wasn't a single recorded case in which the Shin Bet's use of torture was prompted by a 'ticking bomb' scenario: `In every instance of a Palestinian lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified its use in order to extract a confession about something that had already happened, not about something that was about to happen'."  Norman Finkelstein  "The Rise and Fall of Palestine"

Amnesty International reiterated its concerns that over the past year, Israel has, in the name of 'security', flouted its obligations in human rights treaties it has freely ratified and has ignored recommendations made by United Nations treaty bodies. Although the number of Palestinians imprisoned or administratively detained by the Israeli security services has decreased in recent years, more than 1,600 Palestinians are still arrested each year. They have been routinely tortured or ill-treated during interrogation. At least 80 of them are held in administrative detention without charge or trial.

In addition, about 130 Lebanese nationals remain detained without charge or trial for up to 13 years in Khiam Detention Centre in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon(*). The Committee expressed specific concern that Lebanese held in administrative detention 'do not personally threaten state security' but are kept as 'bargaining-chips'. This fact, which constitutes a violation of human rights, has been acknowledged by the Israeli Supreme Court. Nevertheless the Israeli government renewed their administrative detention.

In 1996 the Israeli Supreme Court officially sanctioned the use of force on hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who have been detained in Israeli prisons, often without trial for many months, when interrogating them.

Human Rights Watch report, "Torture and ill-Treatment: Israel's Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories"

Israel's two main interrogation agencies in the occupied territories engage in a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and torture - according to internationally recognized definitions of the terms...

A detainee in the custody of the General Security Service (GSS) may spend weeks during which, except for brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny chair to which he is painfully shackled; to a stifling, tiny cubicle in which he can barely move; to questioning sessions in which he is beaten or violently manhandled; and then back to the chair.

The intensive, sustained and combined use of these methods inflicts the severe mental or physical suffering that is central to internationally accepted definitions of torture. Israel's political leadership cannot claim ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centres. The number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic.

Examining Israel's second periodic report in May 1998, the Committee against Torture again concluded that interrogation methods, such as violent shaking, or hooding and shackling detainees to low chairs with loud music playing, constituted torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and thus contravened Article 1 of the Convention against Torture. Nevertheless, in January this year, Israel's State Attorney stated before Israel's High Court that these methods were legal.

Grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention including extra judicial executions and other unlawful killings, systematic torture and unfair trials are being committed by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians. Amnesty International said: "These grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention are accepted and encouraged at the highest level of the Israeli Government."

The Fourth Geneva Convention

Relates to the protection of the civilian population in time of war. Article 146 of the Convention places an obligation on the High Contracting Parties to enact effective penal sanctions for persons who have committed, or ordered to be committed, 'grave breaches' of the Convention. Article 147 defines 'grave breaches' as 'willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Israel's grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, raised frequently by Amnesty International, include

• Extra judicial executions accepted as a means of eliminating opponents by the Israeli Government; a 1998 official report into an unsuccessful attempt to kill a Palestinian opposition leader in Jordan did not question this policy.
  

• Killings and woundings carried out at checkpoints, during demonstrations or in other circumstances when the lives of Israeli security services were not in danger. Israeli open fire regulations in use in the Occupied Territories breach international standards for the use of firearms.
  

• Torture practised systematically during the interrogation of hundreds of Palestinians every year, is effectively legalized. The use of treatment which constitutes torture is accepted as normal by Israeli courts and it is a ministerial subcommittee, which includes the Prime Minister, which decides what forms this torture should take.
  

• The sentencing of thousands of Palestinians before military courts where frequently the main evidence against the accused are confessions extracted under duress.
  

• Continuing use of administrative detention to detain Palestinians in circumstances where they have no trial and may not be allowed to know the full accusations against them.

In breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention civilians are consistently collectively punished for acts in which they may not have played any part; such collective punishments include the destruction of the houses of families of those who have participated in attacks on Israelis; the sealing of villages and the closures of areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. People have also been prevented from travelling to hospitals, as well as cut off from work and prevented from attending any activity outside the area, during blockades which are frequently imposed on the Palestinian areas during holidays (such as Purim, Passover and Israeli Independence Day) or after attacks on Israelis. The Bedouins are some of those who have been subjected to forcible population transfers.

Amnesty International is concerned that the Israeli Government representative in the UN General Assembly condemned the initiative to convene a conference as a 'political' decision which ignored the fact that 97 per cent of the Palestinians were under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli representative said that the Israeli Government would not attend the conference.