International human rights activists who have made a career of harshly criticizing Israel for alleged human rights violations turned their attention this week to the Palestinian Authority’s treatment of its own citizens.
But plans to focus exclusively on the government of Yasser Arafat’s human rights violations partially backfired when witnesses used the stage at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing to rail against Israel’s closure of the West Bank and Gaza.
“Just as we have protested Israeli violations of human rights during the years of military occupation, so we will remain vigilant and protest against continuing violations by the Israeli government in this period of transition away from military occupation and towards Palestinian self-rule,” said Neil Hicks, coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Four of the five witnesses at the hearing explicitly called on Israel to work toward lifting the closure of the West Bank and Gaza. A closure has been in effect since the first in a series of suicide bomb attacks in Israel earlier this year.
But while criticism of Israel peppered the testimony of representatives of the Robert Kennedy Center for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the harshest statements were reserved for the Palestinian Authority’s security courts and Arafat’s security forces.
“At least half of those arrested” by the Palestinian Authority “are subjected to torture,” said Maryam Elahi, Amnesty International’s program officer for the Middle East.
Joe Stork, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, added that areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority have “one of the highest ratios of police to citizens in the world.”
The hearings by the International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights were called in response to the recent arrest of Eyad al-Sarraj, director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, on what are widely believed to be trumped-up drug possession charges.
Sarraj was eventually released from a Gaza jail after an international uproar.
Human rights activists have continually called for reform of the Palestinian Authority’s judicial system. State security courts frequently meet in closed sessions, where defendants are denied an attorney, the activists said.
They asserted that Israeli and American pressure to round up suspected terrorists has led to an atmosphere where Palestinians disregard human rights.
The loudest criticism of the Palestinian judicial system came from Irwin Cotler, a professor of law at McGill University in Montreal. Cotler cited a recent 80-page report of the Israeli-based Peace Watch to lambaste what he termed the Palestinian Authority’s “dismal” human rights record.
Although human rights abuses are a direct violation of the accords the Palestinians signed with Israel, the witnesses were united in opposing cutting off U.S. financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. The United States provides about $75 million in cash assistance annually to the Palestinians. Under U.S. law, the Palestinian Authority must be in compliance with its accords to receive the aid.
Critics of the aid charge that the State Department has repeatedly overlooked human rights violations by the Palestinians.
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