OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 3 January 2003 — Israel is detaining 1,007 Palestinians without charge or trial, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem reported yesterday as Israeli Army continued its offensive raiding refugee camps and killing Palestinians.

“For the first time since the previous intifada (1987-1993), more than 1,000 Palestinians are being held in administrative detention,” said the group, which monitors human rights in the occupied territories. “B’Tselem urges the Israeli government to release all administrative detainees immediately. Detainees against whom there is evidence should be brought to a fair trial, and given the right to present their case,” the statement said.

Administrative detainees are held without trial or charges, sometimes without even being questioned or told why they are being held, for extendible periods of six months.

Their imprisonment is authorized by a major general’s order rather than by judicial decree. It is permitted under international law, but B’Tselem charged that Israel ignores many restrictions on its implementation.

In another development, Israeli guards fired tear gas and stun grenades in a large West Bank detention camp yesterday to break up a protest by Palestinian prisoners over alleged mistreatment. Israeli medics and Palestinian human rights workers said several dozen Palestinians were suffering from tear gas inhalation at the camp next to the Israeli Army’s Ofer base near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Some 700 Palestinians have been detained at the Ofer camp. Khalida Jarrar, from the Palestinian human rights group Al-Dameer, said the prisoners had declared a hunger strike in the morning yesterday to protest at alleged beatings by camp guards when detainees are taken to a nearby military court.

In Tel Aviv, the West Bank leader of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group was yesterday dragged — handcuffed and on his back — from an Israeli court where he is being tried for murder and heading a “terror organization”. Marwan Barghouti was brought to Tel Aviv district court for a technical hearing on his detention when families of victims of Palestinian attacks across the courtroom started shouting at him, said an AFP reporter in the room.

“You killed my children, murderer!” screamed a handful of families gathered in the courtroom.

“The intifada (uprising) and peace will win and the occupation will be defeated,” Barghouti replied on entering the courtroom.

But as he tried to raise his cuffed hands in the air and flash a V-sign to the crowd of protesters, supporters and journalists swarming around him, the Israeli security guards escorting him tried to pull his arms down.

It was not clear whether he was pushed to the floor or whether he tripped in the scuffle, but Barghouti — whom many have seen as a potential successor to Arafat — was dragged out of the courtroom on his back. The incident drew fierce accusations from his defense team.

In another development, Israeli forces backed by helicopter gunships raided refugee camps in Gaza yesterday after killing four Palestinians Wednesday night who the army said were on their way to attack Jewish settlements.

In a separate incident, police said they killed a Palestinian who broke into a home in the Israeli village of Maor, five km from the West Bank. An Israeli couple in the house escaped when the intruder’s rifle jammed. The army sent infantry and armor, supported by assault helicopters, into the Nusairat, Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza Strip. Ambulance workers said several Palestinians were wounded before Israeli forces withdrew from Nusairat and Bureij after a two-hour night operation. The army began an operation in Maghazi, sending in 10 tanks and armored personnel carriers and detaining 13 people before pulling out several hours later, Palestinian security sources said. Israeli Army bulldozers destroyed 25 Palestinian-owned houses in the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah, Palestinian residents said.