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28. Written statement by Ambassador Lamdan to UN Commission on Human Rights, 20 March 1998.
In the course of debate in the UN Commission of Human Rights meeting in Geneva, Israel's ambassador to the UN Offices in Geneva, wrote a statement dealing with anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs such as Israel being accused of injecting Palestinian children with the AIDS virus. He also noted the huge number of human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority as reported by various Palestinian human rights groups. Text:
Mr. Chairman,
Without wishing to re-open this painful issue, some members may wonder why such strong objection was taken regarding the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slur made in the course of last year's debate.
After all, to accuse Israel of injecting Palestinian children with the HIV (AIDS) virus may seem on a par with other absurd charges which the Palestinian Observer regularly trumps up against Israel. But it is not at all the same, because racism - in this case, anti-Semitism - belongs to quite a different order of things.
Anti-semitism - specifically, hatred of Jews - is a complex historical phenomenon. In this century, it formed part of an ideology which led to the Holocaust and the extermination of six million Jews.
One of its several strands goes as far back as Hellenistic times and the hideous lie that Jews were engaged in human sacrifice. During the Middle Ages, that dreadful calumny went through various mutations, each worse than the other - that Jews kill Christian children for ritual purposes, that Jews poison Christian wells, that Jews seek the death of all Christians. Known collectively as the "Blood Libel", these totally false accusations spread beyond Europe - inter alia, into the Arab world - from one especially notorious case of alleged ritual killings in Damascus in 1840, all the way to a Syrian Representative who revived the charge of "well-poisoning" in this Commission in 1991.
It needs no special sensors to recognize that the outlandish remarks made last year were no less than a Blood Libel with a new and ugly twist, directed against the State of Israel. Matters were made worse by accusations from the same quarter that Israel was experimenting with new drugs on Palestinian prisoners - a lie which the Arab League thought fit to pick up and disseminate, despite a categorical denial by the Israeli Minister of Health last September. In the meantime, the Palestinian Minister of Information went overboard and accused Israel of "germ-warfare". There is no end to these demented fantasies.
Everywhere and every time the Blood Libel has been raised against Jews, it has fanned the flames of rabid and frequently murderous anti-Semitism, often leading to massacres and expulsions of Jews. That is why renewed instances could not be ignored without strong protest by Israel - and why they were rightly not passed over in silence in this Commission.
Mr. Chairman,
Item 4 on the agenda raises the question of violations of human rights in so-called "Palestine". The time has come to address the issue head on in a hard-nosed way and without wearing blinkers.
First, as was observed last year, one must establish the correct address for accountability for human rights' violations in the territories. The Oslo agreements of May 1994 (Gaza-Jericho) and September 1995 (Interim Agreement) produced major changes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the geographical areas this item terms "Palestine". While the underlying legal status of those areas was not changed, Israel transferred wide-ranging civil powers to the Palestinian Authority (PA). For its part, the PA formally undertook inter alia to comply with internationally accepted norms and principles of human rights and the rule of law. Today, the PA is responsible for the welfare and well being of about 97% of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - that is to say, it has some 2.2 million people under its direct jurisdiction. The PA runs all the main institutions for this purpose, including a large civil service, courts, prison systems and a ramified police and security apparatus.
And it is the PA - I repeat the PA - that is the correct address for responsibility for human rights' violations in the areas under it effective authority and control. Scapegoating Israel, as is the practice here, misses the mark.
Mr. Chairman,
Since "Oslo I" (May 1994), and even more so, since "Oslo II" (September 1995), the Palestinian Authority's human rights record has been frankly atrocious. This alarming state of affairs has not gone unnoticed by the international community, even if it has generally preferred to play down the PA's violations. For confirmation, one can - and should - refer to recognized human rights monitoring groups, to governmental reports of the U.S., Canada, and so on, and especially to Palestinian sources, such as People's Rights, the journal of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, which is sponsored by a number of Canadian and European foundations.
Take, for example, an overview in a press release, issued last autumn by Human Rights Watch. It is datelined New York, 3 October 1997:
"The first three years of Palestinian self-rule have been characterized by widespread arbitrary and abusive conduct by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its mushrooming security agencies, according to the "Human Rights under the Palestinian Authority", a report released today by Human Rights Watch/Middle East.
"Hundreds of arbitrary detentions violated defendants' most elemental due-process rights. Detainees who were interrogated were commonly tortured, and the few who were brought to court were denied a fair trial. Physical abuse caused or contributed to many of the fourteen deaths that have occurred in [Palestinian] custody since 1994. The PA has also threatened and arrested journalists, human rights activists, and other critics, encouraging self-censorship and creating a climate of fear and intimidation."
Mr. Chairman,
This devastating assessment deserves analysis element by element, since experienced observers note a systematic if not systemic denial of human rights by the PA, in violation of the Oslo agreements, international human rights law and, no less, the human rights provisions of the PA's "basic law".
Detention and Detention Rights
Professor Irwin Kotler of McGill University, an expert well known to many on this Commission, lists 13 types of PA violations in the area of detentions alone. They include:
"denial of the right to life, liberty and the security of the person.
"arbitrary arrest and detention.
"prolonged and incommunicado detentions without trial.
"coercive interrogation in secret service interrogation centers.
"denial of the right to be presumed innocent and to a fair trial within a reasonable period of time.
"credible reports of torture... including beatings, painful tying up, threats, humiliation, sleep deprivation, hooding, and electro-shock.
"insults and threats, including threats against family members."
- (for source, see People's Rights, vol. i., 7 {August 1997}, p. 25.)
Torture
Members may refer to Amnesty International's Annual Report for 1997, pp. 251-252, for corroboration. Also witness, inter alia, the growing number of appeals against the PA being issued from this city by the Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture (OMCT).
The gory details will not be laid out here, but anyone wishing to inquire who the Palestinian torturers are, where they torture, why, by what methods, and for how long, need only refer to the Palestine Human Rights Monitor (May-June 1997), i, 3, pp. 6-8. Following the deaths of two Palestinians (Yussuf Baba and Mahmoud Jummayyel) in 1996, that journal conducted an in-depth study of 42 documented cases of Palestinian torture in the first half of 1997. The findings are graphic, brutal and conclusive. According to the same journal, at least 18 people had died in Palestinian jails by the end of 1997 (ibid, September-December 1997, i, 5).
In sum, the torturing by members of various Palestinian security forces, together with beatings and police brutality in general, goes on unchecked and constitutes a gross violation of human rights in the territories.
Extra-judicial Killings
Extra-judicial killings, especially of individuals suspected of having collaborated with Israeli authorities in the past or of having sold land to Israelis, must also be noted.
The Palestinian Human Rights Monitor, No. 4 (July-August 1997) indicates that Article XVI, paragraph 2, of Oslo II, protecting persons who cooperated with the Israeli authorities, is not being honored and such individuals are being eliminated, instead of being given a fair trial.
The threat is greater to land dealers, because high Palestinian officials, including the Minister of Justice, Freih Abu-Medein, have sanctioned such killings, by declaring land sales to Jews "treason and punishable by death". In my letter of 16 June 1997 (E/CN.4/1998/116), I called urgent attention to the abduction and brutal murders of three Palestinian land dealers in the Jerusalem and Ramallah areas. Other such abductions and murders have been foiled by the Israeli police.
Denial of Fair Trial
In my statement last year, I quoted Amnesty International condemning the PA's courts and judicial system in general as a "travesty of justice". To judge by purely Palestinian sources, such as the annual reports of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, nothing has changed; nothing has improved in the last year.
The situation remains dismal. Take, again, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitor, No. 4 (July-August 1997), which as always is succinct:
"The security services of the PA wield the law and the courts at their convenience, without viewing any of the existing laws as barriers to the actions of the security forces. One sphere in which this attitude has led to particularly severe human rights violations, is in those cases where suspects have been held for long periods of time without being charged or brought to court."
Harassment and Molesting of Human Rights Officials
With the obvious intent at intimidation, the PA harasses and mistreats officials and human rights defenders.
Amnesty International's Annual Report for 1997 (pp. 251-252) highlights the arrest and maltreatment of three cases which stand out in particular:
the Commissioner-General of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, set up by Yasser Arafat in 1993;
the Director of al-Damir "Conscience"), a Palestinian human rights group;
a field worker for B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group working in the territories.
In the first of these cases, for example, Dr. Iyad al-Sarraj, was "detained for making statements critical of the Palestinian Authority", held for eight days in May, rearrested in June, charged with possession of drugs, beaten, and, after smuggling out a message about the beatings, charged with "assaulting the police". The drugs charge was dropped, but he was held for another 16 days by order of the so-called "State Security Court", which is composed of military judges and given to holding express midnight "trials", invariably ending in guilty verdicts.
In fact, there is a documented pattern of widespread cruel and abusive conduct by the PA towards human rights' activists, in no small part "pour encourager les autres".
Denial of Freedom of Expression
The PA's violations in this sphere are particularly grave as regards the muzzling of the media, written and electronic. Again, one can turn for details to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitor (May 1997), i. pro-release 3, pp. 22-24. One finds a pattern of newspaper closures and shutdowns of TV stations. Journalists seen to be critical of the PA are harassed and arrested illegally. This intimidation of the press leads to two perhaps predictable results: Palestinian journalists exercise a fair measure of "self-censorship", or they "cozy-up" to the PA and "cooperate" (a prime case to point out is the close relationship between the chief editor of the large Al-Quds newspaper and the Head of the Palestinian Security Services, Jibril Rajub).
Commenting on attempts to stifle free speech and freedom of expression, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitor (issue 4, July-August 1997) observes that "the security forces disregard the laws regulating arrests and detentions to such an extent that it has become the norm." Adducing the cases of Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian-American journalist, and Drs. Ayyub Othman and Maher Faraf, two lecturers at the al-Azhar University in Gaza, this journal states that their illegal arrests "are punishments for deviating from 'acceptable' behavior, and as a warning to others. For the most part, such arrests are characterized by several recurrent themes: incarceration for several days, a lack of any formal charges, no contact with attorneys or family members, and the freeing of prisoners without bringing them before a court."
The case of Dr. Fathi Ahmed Sobh, also of al-Azhar University in Gaza, is particularly vivid. He had the temerity to ask his students in their final examinations about administrative corruption both at the University and in the PA. He was promptly arrested by the Palestinian Preventative Security Service, held in detention for months, tortured and finally released without charge or trial. His case was widely covered by CBS, CNN and other networks and became the focus of campaigns by several human rights NGOs.
Political Freedoms
Political freedoms are also denied or infringed by the PA. Parties in opposition to the PLO and the PA are harassed and political events are canceled or broken up. Opposition and trade union leaders (quite distinct from Hamas members, suspected of terrorist links) are arrested and held for extended periods without charge. According to the above-mentioned article in People's Rights, citing statistics supplied by the Mandela Institute, the number of political detainees held in PA facilities is consistently over the 1000 mark. They are mistreated, though apparently less so than "other kinds of prisoners".
Racism and anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitic propaganda has become an integral part of the rhetoric of high PA officials, and its use is encouraged in the Palestinian media. Regrettably this ugly form of racism permeates mainstream Palestinian newspapers, radio and television which operate under license from the PA. Six recurrent themes are discernible: classic anti-Semitic stereotypes (Shylock, Jewish "cabal"); Holocaust denial; comparison of Israelis with Nazis; delegitimization of Israel and the Jewish people; equating Zionism with racism; and plain, old-fashioned anti-Jewish slander, of the kind unfortunately raised in this Commission a year ago. To quote from newspapers like al-Hayyat al-Jadida (published by Nabil Amru, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council,) and al-Ayyam would make this statement excessively long. However, chapter and verse can be found in a letter of 8 January 1998 submitted to the UN Secretary-General by my colleague in New York, Ambassador Dore Gold (A/52/762 of 9 January 1998).
I would only point out that this Commission has defined anti-Semitism as a form of racism; that under Oslo II (Article XXII), the PA, together with Israel, has foresworn incitement, including hostile propaganda; and that in his remarks at the opening of
this session of the Commission, the UN Secretary-General warned of where such racism can lead - eventually, it can threaten every one of us.
Mr. Chairman,
Some members of this Commission may be offended at an attempt to raise the veil. After all, the PLO has been the "darling of the crowd" for years now and any criticism of it and the PA has been virtually taboo. Their righteous indignation will doubtless be all the greater when this criticism comes from a quarter they prefer to pillory. But facts are facts, even if not always convenient.
Apologists for the PA will probably make two main arguments:
(a) the PA is still in its infancy and has much to learn;
(b) the PA, so long as it is not an independent state, is not bound by international instruments and by UN human rights conventions or the Geneva Conventions.
Neither argument stands up to scrutiny.
As regards the first, let us refer back to the Human Rights Watch press release mentioned at the beginning of this statement.
"While the abusive record of the PA may be due in part to shortfalls in resources, training and experience, and to outside pressure to crack down on militant movements, the report by the 'Human Rights Watch/Middle East' stresses that these factors cannot justify or fully explain the PA's disregard for the rule of law, and intolerance of peaceful opposition and dissent. The pattern of abusive conduct goes well beyond cases involving suspected Islamic militants, and displays a pervasive failure of political will by the PA's top leadership to make human rights protection a priority."
As regards the second argument, the PLO and the PA, as already indicated, are bound under the Oslo II agreement to respect human rights and implement international law and norms. At a minimum, the PA must fulfill this obligation - with or without the fuss they make of their commitment to human rights conventions, including their self-proclaimed adherence to the Geneva Conventions. For sources, see Prof. I. Cotler "Palestinian Undertakings to Respect Human Rights -Basic Sources, Palestine Human Rights Monitor (May-June 1997) i., 3.
On the same point of PA responsibility regarding international conventions, Pax Christi International in its report of July 1997 on the peace process (p. 23) is emphatic:
"Time and time again the PA [has] underlined its willingness to be bound by [international] conventions as if it is an independent state. This gives the opportunity to the international community to address these issues.
"In addition, the Palestinian Authority is bound by non-derogable human rights, 'id est' those rights that have the status of preemptory customary law. These rights apply to non-state entities such as the territories under Palestinian autonomy. Claiming to be a state 'in statu nascendi' also means full acceptance of responsibilities belonging to such a status, even in times of emergency".
Mr. Chairman,
Over the years, this Commission has lost much of its credibility because of its one-sided, partisan and selective approach to human rights in various parts of the globe, particularly the Middle East. In the 50th year of the Universal Declaration, the time has come for the Commission to demonstrate that it can rise to the occasion and prove capable of some impartiality, determination and courage. Finding some way - and there are ways - of tackling the PA's gross violations of human rights would go some distance to redress the balance.
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