Human Rights
Watch Indicts Israel
By Human Rights
Watch
15 January, 2005
Human Rights Watch
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The Full Report Here
The
human rights situation in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip remained grave throughout 2004, as armed clashes continued to
exact a high price from civilians. While many see the period after Arafat's
death on November 11 as the beginning of a new era in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, few changes have occurred on the ground where the wall regime
Israel is building inside the West Bank and the illegal Israeli settlements
continue to expand. On December 3 a top Hamas leader said that the group
would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip and a long-term truce with Israel. It remains to be seen
whether Israel will make reciprocal declarations and whether words will
be translated into action.
In 2004, the Israeli
army and security forces made frequent and, in the Gaza Strip, large-scale
military incursions into densely-populated Palestinian areas, often
taking heavy tolls in terms of Palestinian deaths and injuries as well
as property destruction. Palestinian armed groups fired rockets from
areas of the Gaza Strip at Israeli civilian settlements and populated
areas in Israel close to the border, and carried out seven suicide bombings
inside Israel and four around Israeli army checkpoints in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT). Armed attacks and clashes in the course
of the year brought casualties since September 2000 to well over three
thousand Palestinians and nearly one thousand Israelis killed, and more
than 34,000 Palestinians and six thousand Israelis injured. Most of
those killed and injured were civilians.
The Israeli authorities
continue a policy of closure, imposing severe and frequently arbitrary
restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and
East Jerusalem, contributing to a serious humanitarian crisis marked
by extreme poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity. The movement
restrictions have also severely compromised Palestinian residents' access
to health care, education, and other services.
Over the past two
years these restrictions have become more acute, and in many places
more permanent, with the construction of a "separation barrier"
inside the West Bank. While the stated Israeli security rationale for
the barrier is to prevent Palestinian armed groups from carrying out
attacks in Israel, 85 percent of its route extends into the West Bank,
effectively annexing to Israel most of the large illegal Jewish settlements
constructed over the past several decades as well as confiscating some
of the most productive Palestinian farmlands and key water resources.
In October 2004
the Knesset approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage"
from the Gaza Strip in 2005 by withdrawing its military forces and Jewish
settlements, although the plan will leave Israel in control of Gaza's
borders, coastline, and airspace. This move will not end Israel's occupation
of Gaza or its responsibility for the well-being of its inhabitants.
The control of the
Palestinian Authority (P.A.) over Palestinian population centers is
frequently nominal at best, and conditions of lawlessness prevail in
some areas of the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank. Palestinian
gunmen carried out lethal attacks against persons alleged to have collaborated
with Israeli security forces, and political rivalries sometimes erupted
into clashes between armed factions and attacks on PA officials and
offices.
Unlawful Use of Force
The Israeli army
and security forces carried out numerous attacks in Palestinian areas
over the course of 2004. These were most intense and extensive in the
Gaza Strip, and were often carried out in a manner that failed to demonstrate
that the attackers had used all feasible measures to avoid or minimize
harm to civilians and their property. Human Rights Watch documented
serious violations of international humanitarian law in the course of
the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) May 2004 assault in the southern Gaza
town and refugee camp of Rafah, in which over two hundred homes, along
with cultivated fields, roads, and other infrastructure, were razed
without regard to military necessity. Israeli forces also continued
to use lethal force in an excessive or indiscriminate manner. On May
19, 2004, for instance, during the Rafah incursions, an Israeli tank
and helicopter gunship fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing nine
persons, including three children. In late September 2004, Israel launched
a massive incursion into the northern Gaza Strip. Around 130 Palestinians
were killed, more than a quarter of them children. One thirteen-year-old
girl, Imam al-Hams, was shot twenty times by an Israeli officer. Several
children were killed in their classrooms in other incidents.
There were also
numerous instances in the West Bank of civilians killed by indiscriminate
Israeli gunfire, such as the deaths in Nablus in June 2004 of Dr. Khaled
Salah, a lecturer at Najah University, and his sixteen-year-old son.
Israel has failed to investigate suspicious killings and serious injuries
by its security forces, including killings of children, thus continuing
to foster an atmosphere of impunity. While in 2004 the number of Palestinian
suicide bombings and similar attacks targeting civilians inside Israel
dropped considerably compared to immediately preceding years, neither
the Palestinian Authority nor the armed groups responsible have taken
any serious steps to act against those who ordered or organized such
attacks. Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip on numerous occasions
fired socalled Qassam rockets, an inherently indiscriminate home-made
weapon, at illegal Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as well as at
communities on the Israeli side of the border. Qassam rockets killed
a man and a small child in the border town of Sderot in June, and in
a separate incident killed two small children in the same town in September.
In August 2004 gunmen apparently affiliated with the Hamas movement
threw one or more grenades into a cellblock in a P.A.-run prison that
housed alleged collaborators, and subsequently entered a Gaza City hospital
to kill two of those who had been seriously wounded in the grenade attack.
In July 2004 gunmen attempted to assassinate Palestine Legislative Council
member Nabil Amr after he criticized PA President Yasir Arafat in a
television appearance; Amr was gravely wounded and doctors had to amputate
his leg.
Separation Barrier and Restrictions on Freedom of Movement
The government of
Israel cites the significant decrease in suicide bombing attacks in
2004 to buttress its claim that the separation barrier performs a valid
security function, but it fails to make the case that a barrier constructed
entirely on the Israeli side of the "Green Line" would not
have been at least as effective. The actual route, instead, is designed
to "capture" some 80 percent of the Jewish population now
living in illegal West Bank settlements, and the land and resources
they control, while government policy continues to support the expansion
of settlements. In the case of many Palestinian villages like Jayyous
and Isla, the barrier separates farmers from their agricultural land,
greenhouses, olive and citrus trees, and even water. Other Palestinians
who find themselves on the "Israeli side" of the barrier must
have special permits to reside in their own homes. By making movement
and in some cases residence so difficult, the barrier seems intended
to encourage Palestinians to leave for other areas of the West Bank,
or even other countries.
In June 2004, Israel's
High Court of Justice ruled on a petition challenging a forty-kilometer
portion of the separation barrier, finding that the route in this case
violated the principle of proportionality because the hardship and severe
injury caused to the affected Palestinian population, by separating
them from the agricultural lands on which their livelihoods depended,
was excessive compared to the purported security benefit. The injury
caused by the barrier, the court wrote, is not limited to the immediate
inhabitants: "The injury is of far wider scope. It is the fabric
of life of the entire population." The government responded that
it would revise thirty kilometers of the route in that area to meet
the objections of the court, but neither the court nor the government
addressed the issue of proportionality as it pertained to other areas
of the barrier.
The following month,
the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in an advisory opinion responding
to a request from the U.N. General Assembly, held that the barrier is
in violation of international humanitarian law. The court wrote that
Israel should cease construction of the barrier on Palestinian territory,
dismantle those portions already constructed on Palestinian territory,
and pay reparations for damage caused by its construction there. However
the construction of the barrier has continued since the ICJ decision.
Israeli restrictions
on freedom of movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are so extensive
as to constitute collective punishment, a serious violation of international
humanitarian law. These restrictions are the result of the barrier,
government-sponsored illegal settlements, the network of Jewish-only
roads that support them, and the more than 700 checkpoints that are
frequently operated in an arbitrary manner. This system of collective
punishment is also in direct violation of Israel's obligation, as the
occupying power, to provide to the extent possible for the welfare of
the population it controls.
Gaza "Disengagement"
The Israeli Cabinet
adopted Prime Minister Sharon's Gaza "disengagement" plan
on June 6, 2004, and the full Knesset gave its approval on October 26.
The plan calls for the withdrawal of Jewish settlers and the redeployment
of Israeli troops to posts on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza,
while Israel will retain control of Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace.
Israel is reserving the right to launch incursions into Gaza, and will
continue to control Gaza's economy and trade, telecommunications, water,
electricity, and sewage networks. The plan explicitly envisions the
demolition of hundreds more homes along the Gaza-Egypt border in order
to expand the buffer zone there. The plan states that the disengagement
"will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel's responsibility
for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." In fact, under international
humanitarian law, the steps envisioned will not end Israel's occupation
of the territory, and Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare
of Gaza's civilian population.
Key International Actors
Israel remains the
largest bilateral recipient of United States military and economic assistance,
amounting to about U.S. $2.7 billion in Fiscal Year 2004. The IDF continues
to use U.S.-supplied weaponry in military operations in the OPT, including
Apache and Cobra helicopters, F-16 fighter aircraft, and M-16 automatic
weapons. Through the Foreign Military Sales Program, Caterpillar Corporation
supplies to Israel bulldozers built to military specification which
have been used to demolish Palestinian homes and other civilian property
in violation of international humanitarian law. Public reactions by
Bush administration officials to reported Israeli violations of international
humanitarian law continued to emphasize Israel's right of self-defense
without clear reference to international humanitarian law standards,
and the U.S. took no public steps to pressure Israel to meet its obligations
under those standards. In April 2004, during a visit of Prime Minster
Sharon to Washington, President Bush endorsed the Gaza "disengagement"
plan and voiced support for a West Bank final status in which Israel
would continue to control many of the illegal settlements constructed
there. Although the U.S. calls for a "freeze" on construction
of illegal settlements, in 2004 the administration declined to deduct
from the U.S. $9 billion in loan guarantees awarded in 2003 any amount
corresponding to Israeli expenditures on settlements, as it had the
previous year. There were Israeli press reports in 2004 that some U.S.
army units were training at a "special anti-terror school"
at an IDF base near Modi'in.
In early May 2004,
representatives of the "Quartet"--United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen representing the presidency
of the European Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell--met at the U.N. and issued a communique
that, among other things, called on Israel to exercise its legitimate
right to self-defense "within the parameters of international humanitarian
law" and on the P.A. to "take immediate action against terrorist
groups and individuals who plan and execute such attacks."