Barak Seeks New Law on Holding State Enemies

Six days after the Supreme Court rejected the practice, Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday ordered new legislation that would allow Israel to hold enemy fighters as pawns to gain information on missing or captured Israeli soldiers.

At the same time, Barak and his security Cabinet granted the release of 13 of 15 Lebanese detainees whose case was the subject of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last week. The men, most of whom have been held for more than a decade, some without charges, are due to go free today before the beginning of Passover at sundown.

Two senior leaders of Islamic forces fighting Israel in southern Lebanon will remain in custody. Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, abducted by Israel in 1989 and 1994 respectively, continue to pose a threat to the Jewish state, Israeli officials said.

The Supreme Court, ruling that the Lebanese detainees could no longer be held as “bargaining chips,” touched off an intense debate here last week over the importance of human rights versus the demands of state security and over the wrenching issue of how to retrieve the missing.

Barak said Israel must reserve the right to keep prisoners if doing so might provide information on Israeli soldiers who disappeared in battle. The proposed legislation would transfer the power of determining a detainee’s fate from the courts to the executive branch, most likely the Defense Ministry--which Barak heads.

Cabinet Secretary Yitzhak Herzog said that the proposal is not an attempt to evade the court’s ruling, which he said the government interpreted not as a ban on holding prisoners as bargaining chips but rather as an admonishment that such a practice needs to be legislated.

“This is not a contravention of the court but a complement,” he said.

The court’s decision had been hailed by international jurists and human rights activists, who had labeled the practice “legalized hostage-taking.” But many Israelis felt that it gave up a valuable tool to pressure Lebanese guerrilla groups, such as the militant Islamic group Hezbollah, for information on missing airman--and cause celebre--Ron Arad, who was captured after his plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986.

Rooted deep in Judaism is the paramount need to retrieve the Jewish dead from anywhere in the world and to provide for the “redemption,” or return, of all Jewish soldiers. Israelis are reared on the belief that the state will go to every end to bring its fighters home.

“What gives power to our soldiers, who are emissaries of the nation, is the knowledge that wherever they are, the state and society are behind them and will stop at no red light to free them,” said Avraham Burg, speaker of the parliament, or Knesset.

Burg conferred with Barak on the proposed legislation, which must be formally drafted and passed by the Knesset to take effect.

Israel must tread carefully on how it labels detainees in the new legislation. Successive governments here have been loath to recognize Hezbollah detainees as prisoners of war because it would in effect upgrade the organization to a legitimacy that Israel does not believe Hezbollah deserves.

When the Supreme Court ruled last year against the use of torture in interrogations, lawmakers similarly responded with legislation that would permit “coercive” techniques of physical pressure. That bill has not yet passed.

Legislation aside, Barak and the security Cabinet did agree to uphold the Supreme Court ruling and release 13 of the detained Lebanese. The ruling left open the possibility of continued detention of prisoners who pose a security threat, and government attorneys made precisely that argument Tuesday in asking that Obeid and Dirani remain behind bars.

A Tel Aviv district court agreed to hear the case May 8, ordering Obeid and Dirani to remain in custody until then.

When he was captured, Dirani was a leader of the Lebanese guerrilla group Amal, which briefly held Arad. Obeid was spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Zvi Rish, the Israeli attorney for the two men, said the claim that his clients pose a threat is bogus.

Within Barak’s government, there was widespread support for the continued imprisonment of Obeid and Dirani. But there was less consensus on the pending legislation and related issues.

Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said he wasn’t sure whether he will support the proposal, in part because it doesn’t seem to work.

“I never believed that these people [the Lebanese detainees] had true significance in the struggle to free Ron Arad,” he said.

Many Israelis argue that techniques such as holding prisoners without trial are part of an unsavory arsenal that Israel must employ given its neighborhood of largely nondemocratic Arab states and extremist factions bent on Israel’s destruction.

The Maariv newspaper, in an editorial Tuesday, said it understands the need to be able to pressure enemies but labeled the proposed law “a bad idea, since it legalizes illegality.” The liberal Haaretz newspaper said that when civilians are used as bargaining chips, “the moral fiber of a state stands on trial.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch decried Israeli efforts to put on the lawbooks what it sees as a deplorable tactic.

“Hostage-taking is a war crime,” said Hanny Megally, executive director of the group’s Middle East division. “No domestic legislation can change that.”

Burg, the Knesset speaker, said that Israel is in a “no-win situation” but that in the end, the potential ability to free an Israeli POW outweighs the inevitable international scorn.

“Israel tries to live fully and completely in the Western world and tries to respect and be part of its value system,” he said. “But sometimes Israel has to remind itself that it lives in an environment that requires different tools.”

Danny Naveh, a leader of the right-wing opposition Likud Party, put it more bluntly in declaring his support for the proposed law: “This is an important message for our enemies in terrorist groups that there is no limitation on our ability to harm them.”