Ever since the start of the current Gaza war, IDF spokespersons and their ardent supporter repeat that the IDF and Israeli government, in the pursuit of this war are the ‘most moral’ army in the world. Some ‘military experts’ point to the fact that civilians are warned to evacuate an area that will be attacked. A deeper examination to Israeli government and military conduct in regard to Palestinians is needed. By definition this has to extend further back than simply pretending that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict suddenly emerged on Oct 7th 2023.
While the claim to be the most moral army will be addressed later, suffice to mention that telling defenseless civilians that they must move doesn’t absolve one of due care needed to avoid civilian deaths. Further, having destroyed the infrastructure including roads, electricity, and water supply asking them to move to a waste land of concrete merely condemns them to a death from starvation, as indeed has happened. This is not to mention the fact that many were then killed by IDF in the ‘safe zones’ (ala Tent Camp in Rafah) or picked off by snipers.
At the outset one has to make a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian civilians; this current war is between Hamas and Israel in the conduct of which Israel has slaughtered defenseless civilians. While there is ample evidence that during 2023 alone IDF and Settler violence in the West Bank, prior to Oct 7th, resulted in 400 plus deaths it cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians. Yet this ‘moral’ argument does not start and end there, because there is a long history of the ‘moral military’s’ conduct which is in violation of human rights. The case for war crimes is not something that should be restricted to events of Oct 2023. All parties to the conflict have to be held accountable for this conduct of hostilities and the loss of life of any noncombatant is unacceptable.
The pursuit of occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel is not only physical positioning of troops on the land. Since 1967 there has been a whole legal and administrative system that aims to create a state of terror amongst the Palestinians. In the Occupied Territories and Jerusalem, the IDF and the Israeli Police do not need any arrest warrant to detain a Palestinian. The case file can be based an incident or based on an ‘intelligence’ report which is only shared with the Judge and lawyers, if any, of the detained person have no access to this ‘secret file’ on the suspect. The trial procedure and the confinement of Palestinians is well documented. The most notorious of the detention prisons is the Al Moscobiyeh prison in West Jerusalem (which was an orthodox Russian church bought by Israel from Church in 1956 for two shiploads of oranges, the Orange Deal as its called).
In this prison, which is just one example of many others, there are only military courts, and it is an interrogation facility. While some of the detainees are represented by a Palestinian group of lawyers the lawyers having no access to the file or ability to cross examine the witnesses, if any, and can only appeal on the weakest of reasons for a release. In 1988, in response to an Israeli Supreme Court request to reform the treatment of Palestinian prisoners the Landau Commission recommended, and it became law, that ‘reasonable methods of physical and psychological torture can be used against’ Palestinians accused of undermining security. Further Israeli laws state that members of declared terrorist organizations and their sympathizers are not afforded the protection of legal process. Herein lies the problem, every Palestinian organization, including the PLO, are still on the list of terrorist organization even though the Oslo Accords were signed with the PLO!
International organizations, including Israel’s own human rights organizations have called these laws to be draconian and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) registers a minimum of 200 complaints every year of excessive torture against mainly Palestinians and Israeli activists against government policies. Shin Bet, the Israeli Intelligence agency, is empowered with the right to detain and ‘interrogate’ a suspect for six months at a time and can seek extensions from Military Courts to that period.
While detentions resulting from rock throwing (mostly under 18-year-olds) are incident driven, there is plethora of vaguer sort of reasons for detention. As an illustration there was the case in 2016 of an 18-year-old man who was distantly related to the wife of a Hamas official who was implicated in the murder of a Rabbi. The youth had attended a large reception at Iftar (breaking of the fast) where the Hamas official had been present. Based on this information alone the youth was picked up, interrogated and only released after a prolonged detention. During this period the family of the wife of the Hamas official was approached to put pressure for her and others to provide testimony against the official.
In Occupied Palestine the arrest of a person is related to a systemic effort to put pressure on the entire family, and the best way to do that is to target the young. While Israeli law prohibits the arrest of anyone below the age of 16, the IDF and agencies regularly have arrested children as young as 9 years old to put pressure on families. One has to appreciate the fact that since 1948 Israeli agencies have developed incredible intelligence on Palestinians. Back then the Irugun, the predecessor to the IDF was instructed to develop “lists” which were detailed names and other information on Palestinians. These were compiled village by village, setting out the hierarchy of the villages, relationships between people and then connecting village to village. Today it is estimated that Israel has over 25,000 informants working for them in intelligence gathering amongst the Palestinian population.
This system is extensive on the information it holds. Blood relationships, friendships and even anecdotes within families. Information is thus available to Israeli intelligence agencies to the extent that if a person is arrested what pressure points within the family will be affected. Thus in ‘security operations’ its not a wide net that is thrown. Quite the opposite these ‘Lists’ allow the security forces to pre-determine before the raid as to who is to be arrested to put pressure on whom. There is no reason or justification needed to be given for the arrest other than a ‘security concern’. Interesting that this same ‘security’ concern is used as a justification for the Gencide in Gaza.
These Lists and this approach have been perfected across into the West Bank and Gaza and hence explains how mass arrests are conducted without investigations. It’s a well-planned net that is thrown to ‘terrorize’ the population. Since Oct 7th, over 9,185 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank. Since 2000 it is estimated that on average Israel has 10,000 to 14,000 detainees at any given time from the Occupied Territories and Jerusalem. The sweeping power comes from the legal cover provided for ‘security’ that such detentions are justified and then the legal process is entirely the domain of military courts. In 2014 alone the number of Palestinians detained were 17,146 at the peak. During the First Intifada, 1987-1991, as many as 79,000 Palestinians were detained. Contrast this with Israeli media’s hysteria about 120 Israeli hostages, which is awful even if some of them are IDF soldiers, yet there is not a single voice about the thousands of Palestinians detained with no rights, no legal process and in many cases under conditions of physical and psychological torture. Hamas’ methods of taking prisoners rests upon militant means, Israel’s methods of taking prisoners (political hostages) are institutional and arbitrary. Both means are wrong and one cannot simply talk of one and not the other. Amnesty International, ICRC, the ICJ and even PCATI have often talked of Israel’s need to stop these human rights violations with little effect.
More often the legal process of the military courts and the detentions are in support of land grab by Israeli settlers. Take the case of Nabi Saleh, a Palestinian village, 25 km from Ramallah on the West Bank. In 2014 in response to encroachments of the village land by Israeli settlers from the nearby Halamish settlement the villagers started a series of peaceful protests. Settlers supported by IDF personnel used violence to quell the protests in response to which youth resorted to stone throwing. In reaction 21 youth between the ages of 12 and 14 were arrested and after a short trial in the notorious Ofer prison sentenced to prolonged sentences. This systemic violence and use of a truncated legal system continued till 2017 when protests were called off. However, violence by IDF continued and numerous incidents of arbitrary killings in the Nabi Saleh area have been recorded. These measures have been designed to target Basem al Tamimi and his family, a human rights activist who was held without trial for three years and declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. Nabi Saleh, a village with 600 Palestinians, 350 of whom have either been injured or detained, illustrates at the micro level of the conditions of terror that are created to further settler colonization.
When Israeli PM Netanyahu says that the aim of the war in Gaza is to destroy Hamas he fails to understand where groups like Hamas get their volunteers who are filled with anger. It is precisely this sort of indiscriminate justice system inflicted upon the Palestinian people that fuels the fire of resistance to Israel. We can play around with the words we give them, ‘terrorist’, ‘freedom fighter’ etc, but we cannot ignore that it is IDF, the Settlers and the human rights violations from decades that is one of the main reasons peace is derailed. US politicians and celebrities have often spoken of the anguish of the past 8 months for the families of Israeli hostages and that is fine they can and should speak up for them. But don’t stop there, speak about the 9,000 plus Palestinian children in Israeli jails, speak about the 564 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since Oct 7th. Speak against the terror of prisons like al Moscobiyeh and Ofer and the military courts. One cannot be myopic about this conflict which has to see beyond the incidents of violent confrontation to the deep-rooted cause of this anger. This surely has to rest upon Israeli policies of oppression of people who are not political activists or armed to attack Israel, but are people protecting their homes and land.
Israel has taken too much of the media space to project itself as the victim. While it may well be the victim of many incidents of violence, it has, on a daily basis, subjected people it has occupied to a state of terror and to what one author called ‘suspended violence’ and ‘systematic incertitude’. This sense of uncertainty as to what can happen tomorrow and will most likely tear the family and social fabric of Palestinian society in to tatters. The terror faced by child prisoners in Israeli detention is well documented and Netanyahu and Co fail to understand they are sowing the seeds of continued strike and violence.
