Media

MEP calls for EU Council to take action on Palestinians in Israeli Jails

15 April 2008

Baroness Nicholson MEP today called on the European Union Council to take action on the 11,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails including hundreds of children and women, the majority held in administrative detention and with little right to judicial oversight.

According to the Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, published in January of 2008, there are some 11 000 prisoners in Israeli jails, a number which includes 376 children, 118 women, 44 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and some 813 in administrative detainees.

Those held in administrative detention, for renewable periods of up to six months, are imprisoned solely as a result of an administrative decision which violates international law because Israel has refused to define what constitutes ’state security’.

Speaking after raising these concerns, Baroness Nicholson Stated:

“While all nations enjoy the right to protect themselves, their also has to be responsibilities which all states must uphold, including Israel.  The arrest, interrogation and imprisonment of Palestinian children by Israel has become systematic in recent years, usually prosecuted under the same military system which is used with Palestinian adults which is in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).  Even though these commitments were entered into force in Israel in November 1991, Israel denies its applicability to the Palestinian territory.”

Referring to the report of the UN Special Rapporteur prisoners are subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment, interrogations are carried out in an inhuman manner, sometimes amounting to torture, food is poor, and there is serious overcrowding.

In 2007, two reports published by Israeli NGOs (Center for the Defence of the Individual and B’Tselem, and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel) have shown that arrested persons are subjected to physical ill-treatment and deprived of basic needs, such as sleep, for more than 24 hours.

Baroness Nicholson also raised the issue that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners being held in jails in Israel.  This - besides making family visits frequently impossible - violates Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires persons from an occupied territory to be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted, to serve their sentences therein.  The European Council has yet to respond to the issues raised.

END