TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT
Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian writer and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was long a symbol of the struggle of Palestinian prisoners and wrote about Israel’s use of torture during his time in prison. In his study of Israel’s psychological war on Palestinian prisoners, titled Searing Consciousness (Or on Redefining Torture), Daqqa described in particular Israeli authorities’ psychological torture of Palestinian prisoners as a microcosm of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people as a whole. There is a long and well-documented history of Israeli torture and ill- treatment of Palestinian prisoners. In 1977, the London Sunday Times published a detailed inquiry on Israel’s use of torture. The inquiry reported that: Torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as ‘rogue cops’ exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy. Some of the ill-treatment is merely primitive…But more refined techniques are also used…This sort of apparatus, allied to the degree of organisation evident in its application, removes Israel’s practice from the lesser realms of brutality and places it firmly in the category of torture.
Significantly, in 1987, the Israeli government adopted the recommendations made by a preceding commission to authorise the use of “moderate physical pressure,” making Israel the first state in the world to publicly and officially sanction interrogation techniques that constituted torture under international law. There is a long record of both use of torture by Israeli authorities against Palestinians, and documentation and reporting on it. In May 2016, the UN Committee Against Torture published a report expressing concern over an increase and intensification of abusive practices carried out by Israel towards Palestinian detainees (and even non- detainees), including coerced confessions from children, force- feeding and even complicity of medical personnel in abusing prisoners. Israel’s ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian detainees typically starts from the moment of arrest. The majority of detainees, including children, report being beaten, kicked, threatened, having their property illegally searched and confiscated and their family home destroyed. On occasion, relatives and neighbours of detainees report being used as human shields.
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