Adalah Demands Israel Prison Service to Resume Broadcasting of Arabic Language Television Channels for Arab Prisoners

On 6 July 2006, Adalah sent a letter to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), demanding that it resume broadcasts of Arabic language television channels for Arab prisoners incarcerated in Israeli prison facilities. Adalah sent the intervention after receiving numerous complaints from prisoners that the IPS had ceased broadcasting Arabic channels immediately after the capture of an Israeli soldier by armed Palestinian groups in an attack on an Israeli border post close to the Gaza Strip. Hebrew language channels continued to be shown as usual.

Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker argued in the letter that the decision to stop broadcasts of Arabic language channels is illegal as it was made in an arbitrary and sweeping manner, and violates the constitutional rights of Arab prisoners to freedom of expression, dignity and equality. Adalah further argued that the decision violates Arab prisoners' rights to access the media, which forms part of the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. Further, preventing prisoners from watching television channels broadcast in Arabic constitues a grave breach of the prisoners' right to language, which is derived from the rights to dignity, equality and personal autonomy, Adalah emphasized.

Significantly, the number of Arab prisoners held in Israeli prisons exceeds the number of Jewish prisoners. Allowing Jewish prisoners to exercise their right to freedom of expression while simultaneously preventing Arab prisoners from doing the same constitutes collective punishment of Arab prisoners on the basis of national belonging. Therefore, as Adalah argued, the IPS is failing in its basic duty to treat prisoners incarcerated in its facilities in a equal and fair manner, without making distinctions on the basis of religion, sex, ethnicity or nationality.

Adalah further stressed that the IPS's decision to cease broadcasting Arabic language television channels adds to a number of incidents of collective punishment inflicted on Palestinian prisoners since the capture of the Israeli soldier. These incude the prevention of family visits and the imposition of several restrictions on visits by lawyers to their clients in prison. Adalah contends that what lies behind these restrictions is the intention to isolate Palestinian prisoners from the outside world, which is a form of collective punishment.