Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli military forces, many held incommunicado for prolonged periods.

Unlawful Detention of Palestinians

Most were convicted of security offences – ranging from rock throwing to armed attacks – and are serving sentences imposed by Israeli military courts whose proceedings do not meet international standards for fair trial. The overwhelming majority of cases before Israeli military courts are decided in plea bargain, an indication that both defendants and lawyers feel that they have little hope of obtaining a fair trial.

Administrative Detention

In early 2009, some 300 children and 550 people were held without charge or trial under military administrative detention orders, a procedure under which detainees are held without charge or trial. Administrative detention orders are issued by Israeli army commanders for terms of up to six months and can be renewed indefinitely. Thousands of Palestinians have been detained administratively since 2000, including some who had been held for up to six years.

Administrative detainees have the right to appeal every detention order and are entitled to legal counsel of their choice. However, in the vast majority of cases, neither the lawyer nor the detainee is informed of the details of the evidence against him since the court is authorised to choose how much information to disclose based on grounds of security. There is therefore no possibility for the defence lawyer to cross-examine witnesses or even to inquire about their existence.

Detained in Israeli Prisons

Almost all Palestinian detainees were held in prisons in Israel in violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the removal of detainees to the territory of the occupying power. This made it difficult or impossible in practice for detainees to receive family visits.

Torture

Reports of torture and other ill treatment of prisoners by the Israeli General Security Service (GSS) have increased. Some 900 Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip were denied any family visits for a second year.

Amnesty International’s submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture

House Demolitions, Forced Evictions, Illegal Settlements

For decades Israel has pursued a policy of forced eviction and demolition of homes of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the homes of Israeli Arabs in Israel. The scale of the destruction carried out by the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories has reached an unprecedented level. The victims are often amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged in both Israeli and Palestinian society. The targeted homes lacked building permits, which were systematically denied to Palestinians.

Forced evictions and house demolitions are usually carried out without warning, often at night, and the occupants are given little or no time to leave their homes. Sometimes they are allowed a few minutes or half an hour, too little to salvage their belongings. Often the only warning is the rumbling of the Israeli army’s bulldozers and tanks and the inhabitants barely have time to flee as the bulldozers begin to tear down the walls of their homes. Thousands of families have had their homes and possessions destroyed under the blades of the Israeli army’s US-made Caterpillar bulldozers.

More than 94 per cent of building permit applications submitted by Palestinians in ‘Area C’ (some 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank) from January 2000 to September 2007 were rejected. Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities have continued to build and expand Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in these same areas, in violation of international law and in contempt of resolutions by the UN Security Council and other UN bodies.

The destruction of Palestinian homes, agricultural land and property in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, is inextricably linked with Israel’s long-standing policy of appropriating as much as possible of the land it occupies, notably by establishing Israeli settlements. The establishment of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories violates international humanitarian law, and the presence of these settlements has led to mass violations of human rights of the local Palestinian population.

International law prohibits population transfers by an occupying power into lands that it occupies. There are now 450,000 settlers in the West Bank, and 250,000 in the disputed area of East Jerusalem.

Since its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli authorities have established more than 150 settlements in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem. The establishment of these settlements is in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and the Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land.

The Separation Barrier

The separation barrier in the West Bank cuts deep inside Palestinian land. The Israeli government claims that it is a ‘defensive measure, designed to block the passage of terrorists, weapons and explosives into the State of Israel’.

However, most of the separation barrier is not being constructed on the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank. Close to 90% of the route of the separation barrier is on Palestinian land inside the West Bank, encircling Palestinian towns and villages and cutting off communities and families from each other, separating farmers from their land and Palestinians from their places of work, education and health care facilities and other essential services.

The total route of the separation barrier runs for more than 700 kilometres, more than double the length of the Green Line, and has an average width of 60 to 80 meters, including barbed wire, ditches, large trace paths and tank patrol lanes on each sides of the fence/wall, as well as additional buffer zones/no-go areas of varying depths.

The route of the separation barrier has been designed so as to encompass a large number of Israeli settlements inside the Occupied Territories, which have been built and continue to be expanded in violation of international law. Some 54 Israeli settlements in the West Bank and 12 in East Jerusalem are located on Palestinian land, which is being cut off from the rest of the West Bank by the fence/wall.

In total, more than 320,000 Israeli settlers, that is approximately 80% of the settlers living in the Occupied Territories, will be living on the western side of the separation barrier, thereby enjoying more direct territorial contiguity with Israel.

UN agencies and other major international humanitarian and development organizations all agree that there is no realistic prospect for economic recovery in the OPT as long as the stifling regime of military checkpoints, blockades, closed areas and forbidden roads remains in place.