generalspeaking

Thursday, October 25, 2018

“Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent”

"Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states."
"Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent."
Tom Porteous, deputy program director, Human Rights Watch

"A PA civil servant, arrested after a friend tagged him in a Facebook post calling for protests on the electricity crisis, spent most of his days in the Internal Security’s Gaza City detention center subjected to positional abuse… causing him to feel ‘severe pain in my kidneys and spine’ and as if his neck would ‘break’ and his ‘body is tearing up inside'."
"Palestinian forces in both the West Bank and Gaza regularly use threats of violence, taunts, solitary confinement, and beatings, including lashing and whipping of the feet of detainees, to elicit confessions, punish, and intimidate activists."
"Systematic arbitrary arrests and torture violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded. [The] systematic practice of torture by Palestinian authorities may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court."
Human Rights Watch report

Palestinian security troops in Hebron, (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

The routine use of torture and arbitrary arrests used by both of the rival Palestinian governments, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza, has long been noted by the Israeli press, and by Palestinian Arab writers in detailing the behind-the-scenes activities in both governments. The world has taken little interest, considering the sources no doubt, biased. Now, Human Rights Watch has issued a report of their own highlighting the corruption and abuse suffered by Palestinians, condemning both governments for committing what the rights group equate with war crimes.

Illustrative: The hands of a young man tied with rope (nito100; iStock by Getty Images)

This, the result of a two-year investigation part of which information was elicited by interviews with close to 150 people, among them a cadre of Palestinians who had suffered detention and experienced the "machineries of repression" meant to stifle dissent. The systematic use of torture, emphasized the report, could be characterized with good reason as a crime against humanity under the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. Human Rights Watch went so far as to recommend that countries providing funding to Palestinian law enforcement suspend such financial assistance.

The government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas itself had formally joined the Convention Against Torture following the acceptance of 'Palestine' as a non-member state at the United Nations. This is typical of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas as well, portraying themselves as legitimately subscribed to upholding human rights, for their human rights as Palestinians were upended with the creation of the State of Israel, a formula accepted without question by their supporters abroad fully sympathetic to the 'cause' of the 'Palestinian homeland'.

Whipping the feet of those apprehended for questioning their government's actions and administration; forcing detainees into painful stress positions; hoisting people's arms up behind their backs with rope, and coercing suspected critics into giving access to their mobile phones and social media accounts are all detailed as methods of torturing those whom each government suspects of attempting to undermine their authority.

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's group director for Israel and the Palestinian territories informed a news conference that the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank had detained 220 Palestinians without charge or trial as consequences of their having posted issues on social media. Included among the detained were 65 university students and two journalists. In Gaza, Hamas detained over 45 people for their activity on social media. "These numbers do not speak to the scale which both authorities have gone to in order to shut down dissent", he added.

But he must certainly be in error, for both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah, factions viewing one another as enemies for whom only Israel surmounts the venom they hold for one another, both deny those accusations of less than stellar administrations.