Special UN Committee Told That Israel is Taking Hostages on West Bank

The United Nations special committee investigating human rights in Israeli-occupied territories was told this weekend during their hearings in London that Israel is now taking hostages in the West Bank if the person sought for arrest is not home. The witness who made this disclosure, Moshe Machover, who described himself as an Israeli according to a report received at the United Nations in New York from a UN information officer accompanying the committee, submitted a letter from Israel Shank in which this information was contained. Mr. Machover described Mr. Shank as the chairman of the League for Human Rights of Israel. He said that Mr. Shank’s letter, sent to him on March 27, described the hostages as old people and children 13 or 14 years old.

Another witness at the hearing, Miss Manuela Sykes described only as “of the Jerusalem Committee’ by the UN information officer’s report, said that her committee had sent people to the occupied territories “under some cover, such as being a tourist,” in order to obtain evidence on human rights in the area. Miss Sykes said she had been to the area herself and stated that while it was possible to visit the prisons the Israelis denied any access to the “detention camps where most allegations of torture came from.” According to the information officer’s report, Miss Sykes told the committee that her organization would continue to send people into the occupied areas and “make whatever evidence it could obtain available to world public opinion.”

Miss Granya Brikett, secretary of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, told the hearing that there were “definitely” not enough lawyers to represent aggrieved persons in the occupied territories. She also claimed that she had visited the areas and conceded that she had no knowledge of any of the “deportations” being challenged in Israeli courts. Miss Brikett said she was not aware of any group acting as legal defense for the Arabs in the occupied territories. According to her, trials were usually conducted by military courts and that to the best of her knowledge no Arab civil courts are currently operating in the territories. The three-member committee conducting the open and closed hearings in London is scheduled to continue hearings in the next few weeks in Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Cairo, with a stopover in Geneva, before returning to the UN headquarters in New York. Israel has criticized this committee, which was set up by the General Assembly, for its failure to conduct an investigation of Jews in Arab countries and limiting its probe exclusively to conditions in the occupied territories.