Israel's 'arbitrary' detention of Palestinians condemned

Israel uses military justice to drive the policy. In the past, Military Order 378, written in 1970, has been used to detain Palestinians. But new military orders have been added that allow Palestinians to be held without any evidence against them and without charge for up to six weeks "for the purposes of investigation."

A'azem Bishara, an Israeli-Arab lawyer who represents detainees for The Palestin- ian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment calls the policy "mass detention without any grounds."

"Being Palestinian and male is enough to make you suspicious," Mr. Bishara says. "We are talking about almost an entire generation that has been arrested and humiliated."

Mohammed Yousef, 18, says he was ambushed in his home one night after refusing to attend the local mosque for questioning. "It was raining, and we were left outside without anything to protect us," he says. "We didn't even have any blankets or enough to eat. We were given one apple and one tub of yogurt to share between 10 of us." He was subsequently released but admits he has thrown stones at Israeli soldiers in the past.

Bishara says most detainees are held in makeshift quarters – usually large tents, with 22 prisoners per tent. Mattresses, described as thin, are issued. Sometimes two or three prisoners share one mattress.

Up to 10 percent are children under 18, according to Defense for Children International (Palestine Section), an aid group that provides free legal advice to minors.

To cope with the increased number of detainees, Israel has reopened an isolated prison in the Negev Desert.

Yoni Fighel, a retired IDF colonel and analyst at the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism in Herzliya, says the detention policy is an essential part of fighting terror activity. "If you want to intercept terrorism before it occurs, you must detain people, whether it is based on intelligence, inquiries, or interrogation."

Yet Mr. Fighel agrees that "an in-built tension exists between civil rights and combating terrorism.

"Of course, it would be better [that detainees] are those where we have 100 percent evidence of a connection to terrorism, whether passive or active," Fighel says. "The possibility of excessive detention can't be excluded, but some of these detentions are necessary to increase [Israel's] intelligence capability."

After the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 and Israel withdrew from the main population centers in the West Bank and Gaza, a decrease in intelligence-gathering capacity followed. "We were out of the business," says Fighel. "Now we face a situation where ... we have to build again our intelligence capabilities. This can be done during interrogation of detainees."

Fighel says Palestinians are offered "opportunities" to collaborate with Israel during interrogation.

"It's not Club Med, that's true," he says of the conditions facing detainees. "But I would be very critical of any evidence of torture. It's not in the [guidelines governing detention policy]."

Amnesty International has requested an independent inquiry to investigate arbitrary detentions and reports of abuse.

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