OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 23 July 2003 — An Israeli rights watchdog painted an alarming picture of the Jewish state’s human rights record in its annual report published yesterday. In an introduction to the 30-page report, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel denounced “the deterioration of Israel’s democratic foundations and social support network”.

In a special section on human rights in the Palestinian territories, the report condemned “an increase in the scope of human rights violations” in the third year of the intifada. ACRI blamed the Israelis for the high number of civilian deaths resulting from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policy of killing wanted militants.

“The majority of deaths are never investigated, and of the ones that are only a very few result in the filing of charges,” the report added. The rights group also denounced violations at checkpoints in the Palestinian territories, as well as the Supreme Court’s failure to unambiguously ban the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields during military operations.

But ACRI was just as critical of the government’s performance in the field of social welfare and human rights inside Israel proper. “The attack on social rights over the last year is so severe that it threatens to bring about the collapse of the welfare state as a whole,” the report said.

The report documents “the continual erosion of the weakest sectors of the population through cuts in national insurance, unemployment benefits, pensions and guaranteed income benefits”. Although Benjamin Netanyahu’s name does not appear in the ACRI’s report, the survey is a stinging attack on the finance minister’s ultra-liberal policies.

The report listed government measures it said were “undermining Israel’s democratic foundations”. ACRI cited attempts to disqualify Israeli Arab political lists in the last general election, discrimination against the Negev Bedouin community and “unbearable” detention conditions in the country’s prisons.

The report comes amid a tense social climate in Israel, where the struggle of single mothers against the government’s attempts to cut their benefits has captured popular imagination.

Another section blasted the conditions in Israeli prisons, as well as a government plan to privatize some jails, charging considerations of profit were likely to “severely” harm the prisoners. The report said prisoners in Israel had about three meters living space, while the international standard determined by the United Nations advised 12 meters per detainee.

Some 600 prisoners are forced to sleep on mattresses on the floor for lack of beds, it added. The sharp rise in Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel has aggravated these conditions.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops raided homes in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah yesterday, Palestinian security sources said, prompting accusations that Israel was violating security agreements. The army “raided several homes and assaulted their inhabitants although we asked them to stop carrying out these aggressive measures,” a senior Palestinian security official said on condition of anonymity.

“The Israeli side told us that a Palestinian was trying to cross the border from Egypt, but it turned out to be a false report,” he added. The Palestinian official also complained that Israel had not fully implemented a June 29 Gaza security deal, which led to a troop withdrawal from most areas reoccupied since the start of the intifada in September 2000.

Israel must “implement the agreement’s remaining clauses, especially to ensure freedom of movement on the Salaheddin road where the Israeli Army still controls at least four kilometers,” he said.