Mistreatment of Arabs in Israeli Camp Charged

A U.S.-based human rights group issued a strongly worded report Wednesday that sharply criticized Israel for maintaining allegedly “inhumane” living conditions at its main internment camp for Palestinian dissidents.

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which has conducted investigations in 25 nations, called the Ketziot camp in the Negev Desert an “unacceptable environment in which to maintain long-term detainees.”

The New York-based group also deplored the detention without trial of five Palestinian human rights activists and two Arab lawyers who defended opponents of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The government of Israel has exceeded its detention powers,” it declared in its 95-page report. The report was prepared under the direction of the committee’s chairman, former Federal Judge Marvin Frankel, and its executive director, Michael Posner.

The committee expressed “great concern” about reports of brutality at the Ketziot camp, which was established after the intifada, or uprising, began last Dec. 9. More than 2,000 prisoners reportedly are held there, most of them without specific charges being filed against them.

Detainees are held nearly 30 to a tent in cramped barbed-wire compounds, the report said. Prisoners have long complained of physical abuse, inadequate drinking water and overcrowding.

Probe of Aug. 16 Riot

In addition, the committee called on the Israeli military to complete and make public its own investigation of the camp, prompted after a violent disturbance Aug. 16 in which two Palestinian prisoners were shot by soldiers.

The report charged that moving Palestinian prisoners to Ketziot, a site within Israel’s recognized borders, violated the Fourth Geneva Convention. It quoted Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, military chief of staff, as acknowledging that the location might be a “contradiction” of the accords but adding that Israel had the right to transfer prisoners “into a sovereign part” of the country.

Nevertheless, the report deplored “Ketziot’s location in a remote part of Israel proper, its extremely harsh desert climate and its crowded, inhumane living conditions.”

The report was particularly pointed in criticizing the seizure of two attorneys from Gaza and five human rights workers from Ramallah-based Al Haq, a Palestinian affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. The lawyers have been released since the report was compiled, but the rights workers are still in detention.

“Administrative detention should be used only on the basis of specific and public charges of unlawful activity supported by disclosed evidence,” the committee said. Israeli law allows the detention of suspects for up to six months without charges.