Israel’s Civil Rights Association charged Monday that efforts to suppress the Palestinian uprising have resulted in a rapid deterioration of human rights in recent months.
The association said in its annual report that this underlines the “substantive clash between continued military rule over a civilian population and the observance of human rights” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Judge Eli Natan, chairman of the association, said at a news conference here that a chief item of concern is the large number of administrative arrests.
Administrative arrests, a holdover from the British Mandate, allow the authorities to detain people for renewable six-month periods without trial or formal charges.
About 2,500 Palestinians are presently under administrative detention, according to a story last week in the magazine Koteret Rashit, which cited Israel Defense Force statistics.
The introduction to the annual report, written by Natan, states that “steps taken by the authorities to suppress the uprising in the territories have often led to severe and exaggerated physical violence and other measures which have done harm to basic human rights.”
Natan said that so far, 20 Palestinians in the territories have been killed in incidents unrelated to clashes with IDF soldiers. The police have not solved these killings.
ARAB COMPLAINTS UNHEEDED
He charged that Arab complaints against soldiers and border police are not seriously dealt with, unless they are publicized in the news media. As a result, Natan said, even Arabs who in the past complained, no longer bother to do so.
He recalled that it was only because his association appealed to the Supreme Court that the authorities were forced to give residents of Beita village, near Nablus, 48 hours advance notice that their houses were to be demolished.
That enabled them to appeal to the high court for a stay, but not before a dozen houses were bulldozed.
The villagers were being punished for a clash on April 6 with a group of teen-age Israeli hikers from a nearby Jewish settlement. The clash resulted in the death of one of the hikers, 15-year-old Tirza Porat.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, security forces closed down a family center in Ramallah on Monday after finding what they alleged was “anti-Semitic material” on the premises.
An IDF spokesperson held a news conference here to screen video tapes prepared by the center of a student play.
In the play, an actor in the role of an Israeli teacher beats up an Arab student for refusing to say that Israel extends from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Samiha Khalil, director of the center, called her own news conference to explain that she allowed children to make up games based on the Israeli occupation. She denied that the center disseminates anti-Semitism.
Two incidents of Arab violence inside Israel were reported Monday. An Egged bus was stoned passing through the Arab district of Shuafat in Jerusalem. It was bound for the Jewish neighborhood of Neve Yaacov. No one was hurt.
Three Arabs were grabbed by police after a bottle was thrown at a car near the Poria hospital in Tiberias. No one was hurt. The Arabs worked at a nearby moshav.
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