Adalah Participates in Meeting with Ms. Mary
Robinson,
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
NGO Meeting in
Jerusalem, 9 November, 2000
Statement of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights in Israel
Presented
before Ms. Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, NGO Meeting
in Jerusalem, 9 November, 2000
We
would like to thank the UN High Commissioner, Ms. Mary Robinson, for holding
this meeting today with Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. We know that this meeting
was difficult to arrange, as the Israeli government excluded the NGO community
from your scheduled appointments. We appreciate the efforts you took,
through different channels, to meet with us.
We
understand that you are visiting Israel pursuant to the UN Human Rights
Commission Resolution of 19 October to establish an International Inquiry
Committee to investigate human rights abuses by the Israeli government against
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. We welcome you in this capacity;
however, we deeply regret the fact that the mandate of the international inquiry
commission excludes an investigation of human rights abuses against the
Palestinian minority within Israel. As you know, 13 Palestinian citizens
of Israel were shot and killed by Israeli police during clashes, and hundreds
more were injured. A representative of Adalah, Mr. Muhammed Dahleh,
presented a well-documented report of Adalah’s findings of human rights abuses
to the UN Human Rights Commission Emergency Session on Israel/Palestine on 17-18
October 2000. However, an investigation of human rights abuses against
Palestinian citizens of Israel was exluded from the International Inqury
Committee’s mandate.
For the
past few weeks, Adalah, the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian community
in Israel as a whole, has struggled with the Israeli government to form a
legally sanctioned Commission of Inquiry to investigate human rights abuses on a
national scale. These efforts have proved successful, thus far, as yesterday,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak rescinded plans to form a Committee of Examination,
which would have had limited powers, and instead announced the establishment of
a Commission of Inquiry in accordance with the 1968 law of Commissions of
Inquiry. This Commission will have a greater ability to collect
information and hold those responsible accountable for their crimes.
Adalah welcomes this decision of the Israeli government; however, we regret that
it took the government so long to reach this decision, and we express concern
that this decision alone is not enough to ensure that justice will be
served.
The
President of the Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak, will appoint the members
of the Commission. Adalah hopes that Justice Barak will appoint members whose
commitment to human rights is not in question. The composition of the
Commission is vital; as otherwise, serious questions will arise as to whether
the Commission is being used as a tool to legitimize police brutality against
Palestinian citizens of Israel. Adalah is also concerned about the mandate
of the Commission. Adalah urges the Commission of Inquiry to adopt a
strong mandate to investigate the circumstances under which 13 Palestinian
citizens were shot to death and hundreds more were wounded, and to examine the
policy under which the police and security forces acted, rather than focusing on
the “inciters” of the clashes, as is emphasized in the appointing document of
the Commission.
The
main issue we wish to bring before you today is the issue of Palestinian
detainees. According to official statistics, between September 28
and October 30, about 1000 Israeli citizens were arrested, 660 of who are
Palestinian, and 203 Palestinian citizens of Israel are held without bond until
the end of their trials. (Please see attached: Statistics on the Arrested and
Detained, 9/28-10/30/00, obtained by Adalah from the Ministry of Justice and the
Police.)
Since
October 30, the Israeli police have massively arrested more Palestinians
including tens of minors. Of extreme concern is the detention of
Palestinian minors, and the discriminatory treatment of Palestinian detainees by
the Israel’s courts.
Police
have entered Arab villages in the early hours of the morning and arrested tens
of Palestinian citizens each night in their homes. Furthermore, police
cars have waited at village entrances to check IDs. At these internal
checkpoints, tens of arrests have also been made.
Two
days ago, 17 Palestinian citizens of Israel from Nazareth, ten of whom are
minors, were arrested at 3am from their homes by 25 armed police officers.
This also occurred three days ago in the Arab village of Jatt in the Triangle,
when 12 Palestinians were arrested, seven of who are minors.
In
every case involving Palestinian citizens, the Attorney General and State
Prosecutor’s policy is to request detention without bond until the end of their
trials and maximum punishment for all of those already indicted. The State
Prosecutor’s office also appeals every decision of release involving Palestinian
detainees obtained in the Magistrate and District courts. The State
Prosecutor’s office does not follow this policy for Israeli Jewish detainees and
thus discriminates between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. The purpose of
these policies is deterrence. This is illegal according to Israeli
law. The Supreme Court of Israel has also accepted these policies as legal
and legitimate.
In
October, the Supreme Court heard seven appeals of people detained without bond
until the end of their trials. In each case, the Supreme Court decided to keep
people including minors under detention on the grounds that calm has not yet
been restored. The Court held that only when the country returns to calm,
would it consider the release of the detainees. This is also a clear
violation of Israeli law on detention. The Court refused to consider the
legally mandated factors of detention including dangerousness and alternatives
to incarceration.
We hope that the High Commissioner will consider our
statement and all the written materials that we have provided to you
today. And we hope that the High Commissioner will investigate the rights
abuses against Palestinian citizens of Israel under her mandate as the chief UN
human rights enforcer.
Remarks to the UN HCHR Visit Report – Palestinian
Citizens of Israel
12/18/00
18 December 2000
Ms.
Mary Robinson
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UNOG-OHCHR
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Via Fax: 014-41-22-917-9003 (3 pages)
Via Post
Re:
Remarks to the UN HCHR Visit Report – Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Dear
Ms. Robinson,
On
behalf of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, I want to
thank you for meeting with representatives of the organization, as well as with
other Palestinian and Israeli NGOs in Jerusalem last month. It is very important
to us that you afforded time, despite all political obstacles and the exclusion
of the Palestinian minority from the UN Human Rights Commission’s 19 October
Resolution, to listen to the concerns of Palestinian NGOs regarding Israel’s
gross violation of human rights against Palestinian citizens during the current
intifada.
We
recently received and reviewed your visit report of 29 November 2000 entitled
“Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Follow-up
to the World Conference on Human Rights; Question of the Violation of Human
Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine.” We wish to convey
our remarks concerning the report, both positive and critical. It is our hope
that by doing so, our position will become clearer and our future cooperation
will be enhanced.
It is
extremely important that Israel’s violations of human rights against Palestinian
citizens be addressed in international forums, such as the United Nations, with
the mandate to hold governments responsible for upholding international human
rights standards and norms. Thus, we welcome your report, and its description of
the situation of Palestinian citizens in Israel. However, we regret that the
High Commissioner for Human Rights used language far more descriptive than
normative. According to the report, the mandate of your visit, among other
things, “…requires [you] to promote and protect the effective enjoyment by all
of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.” This is a strong
mandate, and we believe that the report does not fulfill this requirement.
We were
disappointed to see that the report dedicated 6 paragraphs (about 1 page of 20)
to the situation of Palestinians in Israel, generally, and specific human rights
abuses during the intifada. While we welcome the report’s mention of the
historical and continuing discrimination; the Israeli police’s use of brutal and
excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators, which led to the death of 13
Palestinian citizens and the wounding of hundreds more; the illegal arrest and
detention policy of the Attorney General; the detention of Palestinian minors;
and Palestinian NGO skepticism over the newly-appointed Commission of Inquiry,
we regret that these issues were afforded nearly the same amount of attention as
Israel’s possible establishment of a national, independent human rights
commission and a meeting with Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak and the
Court’s recent decision (parenthetically, which has not been implemented). The
very urgent, pressing and emergency human rights concerns of a vulnerable,
minority community – politically, economically and socially – with more
than 700 Palestinian citizens arrested and about 250 detained without bond until
the end of their trials, certainly warrants more attention from the UN Office of
the High Commissioner. See also Amnesty International Report, “Israel and the
Occupied Territories: Mass Arrests and Police Brutality,” November 2000.
Most
troubling however is the report’s lack of a specific call to the Israeli
government to halt its continuing human rights violations against Palestinian
citizens of the state. Not one of the report’s “conclusions and recommendations”
specifically addresses the illegal police actions, the excessive use of lethal
force, and the denial of due process rights of Palestinian citizen detainees
brought before the Israeli courts. While the report briefly describes these
abuses, it does not condemn the Israeli government’s gross violation of human
rights against Palestinian citizens, nor does it demand that Israeli human
rights violators be held accountable for and brought to justice.
Lastly,
we wish to point out that the term “Arab Israelis,” as used in the report, is a
term coined by the Israeli government, and does not represent the identity of
the Palestinian minority in Israel. The community self-identifies as Arab and
Palestinian citizens of Israel. We hope that international organizations, such
as the United Nations, will begin to use our terms of self-identification,
rather than supporting the government’s classification, which undermines the
perception of the group as a national minority.
Regarding the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, we welcome your support for the
widespread call for an international monitoring presence and international
protection, and for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention
to begin to assume their responsibilities under the Convention. Your conclusions
and recommendations on these points are very important to the Palestinian
community everywhere. We take issue, nonetheless, with the report’s attempt to
unfairly balance the situation. The report states that the history of this
region is extremely complex, and that each side has its own narrative. However,
international human rights standards and UN Resolutions are clear, as are their
violation on a day-to-day basis. We believe that the report, by using a
terminology of balance, places the concerns of the occupying force, Israel, on
the same level as the occupied, the Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza
and Jerusalem. By juxtapositioning the “daily reality of life under occupation”
with Israel’s security concerns, as in paragraph 23, the report seems to equate
these two realities and somehow legitimize the army’s excessive use of force
against Palestinians, the closure, the economic sanctions, the destruction of
property, the settlements, etc. In light of the fact that from 29 September to 2
December 2000, Israeli security forces killed more than 200 Palestinian
civilians and wounded about 10,000 more, we believe that the report should have
taken a strong and clear stand against Israeli violations of human rights
standards as such.
Again,
we appreciated the opportunity to meet with you, and we welcome the inclusion of
some information about discrimination and human rights abuses by the Israeli
government against Palestinian citizens in the report. With both of these
actions, we believe that a new channel of communication has opened between us,
and that issues relating to the Palestinian minority in Israel are beginning to
receive some urgently needed attention by the international community. It is in
this spirit that we offer our remarks to the report, and hope that in the
future, the Office of the Human Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Human
Rights Commission will examine and investigate the systematic discrimination and
human rights abuses against Palestinian citizens, and hold the Israeli
government to its commitments under international human rights law.
Sincerely,
Hassan
Jabareen, Advocate
General Director
CC:
Prime Minister, Ehud Barak
Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin
Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Shlomo Ben Ami
Chairman, High Follow-up Committee for Arab
Affairs, Muhammed Zeidan
Dr. Amin Mekki Medani, Chief Technical Advisor,
OHCHR, Gaza Office
Karim Ghezraoui, Human Rights Officer, OHCHR,
Geneva