Activists Assail Israel’s ‘Legal Hostage-Taking’

Human rights activists and legal experts Thursday sharply criticized an Israeli Supreme Court decision permitting foreign nationals to be held as “bargaining chips” for use in securing the freedom of Israeli prisoners of war.

The court acknowledged that imprisoning Lebanese guerrillas, many of whom have not been tried or have served their sentences, is a “painful” violation of human rights. But such abuse is outweighed by Israel’s security concerns and the desire to retrieve missing or captured Israeli soldiers, the court said in a ruling made public Wednesday.

“The high court has legalized hostage-taking,” Elizabeth Hodgkin, a senior analyst with Amnesty International, said in Tel Aviv. “This is a terrible decision. . . . If an armed group takes hostages, it is universally condemned. And now it’s OK for a state to behave like an armed group? It’s OK for a state to hold hostages?”

Although the secret detention of suspected Hezbollah militants has been denounced by human rights organizations, the court’s ruling was the most detailed official admission yet of the practice. The use of these prisoners as negotiating leverage had never been so explicitly stated, legal experts said.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by an Israeli lawyer representing 10 Lebanese who have been held for up to 11 years in Israeli-controlled prisons.

They are part of a larger group of at least 21 men represented by lawyer Zvi Rish, some of whom were abducted by Israeli commandos and did not have access to attorneys until recently, human rights officials said.

In the lawsuit, Rish petitioned for release of the 10 men, who were identified as members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah or its allied organizations.

In a split 2-1 decision, the court denied the request, saying the release would “cause real harm to national security” and “fatally damage” efforts to free Israeli POWs.

Supreme Court President Aharon Barak agreed that the continued detention is a serious offense to human rights.

But, he wrote, “this damage--grave and painful as it may be--is forced by the reality of security and of state. It reflects the appropriate point of balance . . . between the individual liberty and the need to protect the security of the state.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Dalia Dorner said she was not convinced that holding the Lebanese will in fact help in recovering missing Israeli soldiers.

Barak agreed to allow the case to be reviewed by the full nine-member Supreme Court.

Attorney Rish said a date for the review had not been set.

The court’s ruling highlights a wider controversy over Israel’s treatment of prisoners, which has been attacked by human rights organizations.

Israeli law allows administrative detentions, under which suspects can be held indefinitely without trial or charges being filed. Several hundred people, most of them Palestinians, are under administrative detention, human rights activists and opposition politicians say.

Israel traditionally has defended its handling of prisoners by arguing that bending a law was justified if it prevented a greater evil. The argument was used after the Supreme Court in 1996 approved the use of “moderate physical pressure” in the interrogation of prisoners.

Human rights groups blasted that ruling, saying it condoned torture in violation of international treaties and accepted standard practice.

The new ruling on the Lebanese cases was in fact handed down in November but kept secret until now. Only a portion of the decision has been released, with the names of the Lebanese nationals blacked out under rules of censorship.

The Hezbollah detentions are apparently aimed at negotiating the release of Ron Arad, an Israeli airman shot down over Lebanon in 1986, taken captive by guerrillas and now missing. At least three other missing Israeli soldiers are being sought, and the continued conflict in southern Lebanon could result in others being taken prisoner.

Rish said, however, that the Israelis could not be certain that Arad is still alive.

Soon after Arad was shot down, the Israelis retaliated with the abduction of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Hezbollah cleric based in Lebanon. Obeid was seized in a predawn raid on his home in 1989 and has been held since in what lawyers described as virtual isolation in an Israeli prison. He is part of the group being represented by Rish.

Obeid, in a rare newspaper interview, told the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot on Thursday that he opposed hostage-taking and willingly made a public appeal for Arad to be released.

“I believe it to be inhumane to hold people hostage,” he said. “It is a mistake to hold me hostage as well.”

Hezbollah is fighting to oust Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and has been blamed for terrorist bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.

Human rights officials condemned the Supreme Court’s open admission that militants like Obeid are not being held so much for what they did but rather as bargaining chips.

“This is an immoral decision,” said Dan Yakir, an attorney with the Israeli Assn. for Human Rights. “A democratic state cannot employ means like capturing hostages. In the past, security concerns were used to trump basic civic liberties, but I cannot recall a decision that so fundamentally did so.”

Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament’s constitution and law committee who is from the leftist Meretz Party, is a vocal critic of the government’s detention policies and regularly visits prisoners being held without trial.

Zucker said he might see justification for a limited use of prisoners as bargaining chips if the goal were specific and the negotiation period finite. But in the case of the Lebanese, most have been held for years.

“The overall picture is quite depressing,” Zucker said. “Some of [the detainees] are not angels. But that’s why we have things called trials and judges and courts and prisons.”