PARIS, 20 July 2003 — The French government says that it supports the initiative announced yesterday by several human rights organizations, notably the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), to have the European Union consider the suspension of its partnerships with Israel.
The official French position was unveiled following revelation by the FIDH that Palestinian prisoners in Israel are detained under “inhuman” conditions, also that the real reason behind Israel’s systematic imprisonment of 28,000 Palestinians between September 2000 and April 2003, was nothing less than Israel’s objective of “beheading Palestinian society.”
“We are effectively aware of the complaint filed by the FIDH,” announced Amb. Herve Ladsous, the French foreign ministry spokesman during the Quai d’Orsay daily press briefing, “and think that it could be examined during the next session of the EU when the European Union will evoke its relationship with Israel.”
The Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH, International Federation of Human Rights Leagues) is to publicly release July 24-25 at Geneva, during an upcoming session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, a report in which it denounces the “inhuman” conditions under which it says Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel. The report condemns Tel Aviv for having “flagrantly violated” international conventions “that it has otherwise ratified, as well as other texts adopted by the United Nations with regard to the treatment and detention of prisoners.” The two principal authors of the report, Michel Tubiana, president of the Ligue francaise des droits de l’homme who is also the FIDH’s vice president, as well as another FIDH official Philippe Kalfayan said that in undertaking their investigation they were refused all cooperation from Israel “in both written or oral form.”
According to the report, which was based on an investigation undertaken by the two men between 17 and 22 February in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, a total of 28,000 Palestinians were imprisoned or placed in detention camps between September 2000, the start of the second Intifada, and April 2003.
As of last April, say Tubiana and Kalfayan, “there were approximately 5514 prisoners in the Israeli and Palestinian detention facilities, among them 66 women and 325 minors under the age of 18.
The objective of the policy, they note, “was to behead Palestinian society,” which is why among the first arrested at the start of the second Intifada were “political leaders, those responsible for social and security services,” as well as “young activists, notably those who threw stones,” of which at least 15,000 were detained between March 2001 and April 2002, “with the female population subject largely to the same treatment.”
The report also faults Israel for what it characterizes as the “intolerable” conditions of detention, with food being described as “of bad quality and insufficient,” sanitary facilities being “limited in number,” cells that were “tiny and overpopulated,” and the “total psychological isolation” to which were subject the detainees, with this latter condition described as being “utilized as an arm to break their will and attempt to turn them into collaborators.”
Then too, says the FIDH, Israel has never recognized the Palestinians as prisoners of war, much like the United States with the prisoners it has detained at Guantanamo Bay, with Palestinians being kept under lock and key under what Israel refers to as “administrative detention,” which allows authorities to detain a person for a period of six months which is automatically renewable without giving any reason for the detention.
Moreover, accuses the FIDH report, the possibilities accorded to Palestinians to defend themselves before the Israeli military courts “preoccupy us greatly,” for “only Israeli lawyers can plead before the military jurisdictions, and then there have never been many candidates” willing to defend the Palestinian detainees.
Also, notes the report, “conversations between Israeli lawyers and their prisoners are not considered as confidential,” while “neither the lawyers nor the prisoners have any possibility of accessing to the ‘proof’ provided by Israeli authorities” as to the justification for the Palestinians’ detention.
