6 SEPTEMBER 1999

This morning, the special nine-judge panel of the Israeli High Court issued a judgement outlawing torture methods, such as sleep deprivation, shaking or detention in uncomfortable positions. The High Court's decision finally overturns years of arguments by Israel that these methods were necessary and legal.

The case against torture was submitted in January 1998 by a number of human rights groups requesting that the High Court pronounce torture illegal. During the proceedings, Israel argued that torture was a necessary defense to protect the State and Israelis. However, both legally and factually these arguments have been disproved.

Israel's use of torture cannot be legally justified, and in 1998, the UN Committee Against Torture, castigated Israel for using arguments of security to support its claims that it was only using moderate physical pressure. The committee said these acts amounting to torture are outlawed without exception. This view appears to have been repeated by the Israeli High Court.

Despite the State's claims, it is clear that Israel's use of torture is used against innocent people to extract general information or to force the signing of false confessions prepared by the security services in advance. These are not associated with serious threats against the State or its individuals and the Israeli Government has admitted that it is not only used to stop potential bomb attacks but also to collect information and extract confessions. In any case, the use of torture is questionable in the interests of security: the victim suffers from severe psychological distress and any information imparted cannot be relied upon. Despite this, throughout Israel's occupation these confessions have been used to convict Palestinians to lengthy prison terms, as the Israel military courts accept these confessions as valid, even in the absence of other evidence.

LAW welcomes the High Court's decision and demands the Israeli Government immediately apologize for its use of torture. LAW requires it to fully comply with the High Court's decision by:

LAW has written to the Government of Israel today demanding that these measures are taken.

LAW will monitor the situation and will be submitting cases to ensure that the Israeli Government, if not voluntarily, then by the force of litigation, respects the full impact of this decision.

LAW - the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicating to advancing human rights through legal advocacy LAW is affiliate to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Federation Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) and the World Committee Against Torture (OMCT)

web site: http://www.lawsociety.org/

By Uri Avnery

A donkey looks at its rider with sad eyes and asks: "Is this journey really necessary?" This was a poster distributed by the British Government of Palestine during World War 2, to stimulate the saving of petrol.

I feel like this donkey when I ask the Prime Minister: Was all this fuss about the Wye agreement really necessary? I know what we lost, but I do not know what we gained by it.

Barak lost something priceless. His election caused much joy and hope among the Palestinians, and the Arabs in general. It was like a whiff of fresh air. After three years of sabotage and cheating by Netanyahu, here, they believed, is a new man who promises to move towards peace.

During the last month, the hope was dashed and the joy disappeared. Barak looked more and more like an improved model of Netanyahu. (Disappointed Israelis in Jerusalem displayed a sticker with the poignant message "The same Kharah - only without Sarah". Khara is the equivalent of "shit".)

The peculiar style of Barak -- composed of arm-twisting and ultimatums -- has destroyed the trust on the Palestinian side. The climate of confrontation has come back: One side has to lose so the other side can win. That's not an atmosphere conducive to peace.

That's the loss. So what's the gain? It's hard to see.

The Israeli withdrawal has been postponed for some weeks. What for? Only someone who does not really want to fulfil this obligation, and is just waiting for some pretext to break it, such as an outbreak of desperation and violence, can want a postponement. Barak's did not succeed to tie the withdrawal to the permanent status negotiations. But he has said that before the withdrawal will take place, he will see whether sufficient progress on the permanent status track has been made. This is an implied threat: If the Palestinians do not accept the Barak diktat regarding the final settlement, even this tiny withdrawal will not take place.

Israel will release only 350 prisoners, instead of the 400 demanded by the Palestinians. Is this good? Those right-wing Israelis who shout "they have blood on their hands" will shout anyway. On the Palestinian side, the party has been spoiled. The release of the 300 prisoners ("freedom fighters" for all Palestinians, "terrorists" for most Israelis) will not be perceived by the Palestinians as an Israeli act of goodwill, but rather as an Israeli bowing to pressure. The thought about the prisoners who continue to languish in prison will poison the atmosphere in spite of the agreement. Is this wise?

Barak has insisted on a timetable, according to which an agreement on the framework of the final settlement must be achieved until February 2000, and the final settlement until September. Where is the gain? The Palestinians, more than the Israelis, want a quick solution. There is no need to push them. But no timetable will compel the Palestinians to accept conditions against their will. As the Israeli poet Alterman once wrote (about ourselves): "A people does not retreat from the trenches of its life". Either we reach a fair compromise with which both peoples can live, or not.

According to the agreement, the Palestinians will not declare the creation of their state within one year. They would not have done so anyhow, as long as there is a chance of achieving an agreed solution. The Americans have promised that the Barak government will not set up settlements, demolish houses, confiscate land and build by-pass roads. Barak could have promised that even without the visit of the old lady.

It follows that the whole exercise was quite superfluous. Barak could have found a better way to open the new page and to prove that things have changed. It is a pity that he has surrounded himself with a group of former Mossad agents, Shabak officers and military governors. These people would not know what peace is if it had been handed to them on a platter.

Yet after all, one has to welcome this agreement.

All in all, things are moving ahead, and every such movement

is good. The Palestinians will get more territory. More prisoners are being released. There is a clear obligation to stop the creeping expansion of the settlements. And most importantly: it is now perfectly clear that the permanent solution will lead to the setting up of the State of Palestine side by side with the State of Israel, and there is a reasonable chance that this will happen next year. Slowly byt steadily, the Arafat policy pays off. The new sea-port and the opening of the safe passage will bring change in the daily life of the Palestinian population..

On the Israeli side too, the agreement will bring blessings. The feeling that things are on the move will encourage the economy and increase foreign investments. The Americans will give a big baksheesh.

Now, tough negotiations will begin. Barak and his people will try to shackle the Palestinian State in the name of security and bind it with iron chains to the Israeli economy. They will try to tear away big chunks of territory for "settlement blocs".

But the same logic that was at work during the last few days will dominate the whole process. The world wants peace, most Palestinians want peace, most Israelis want peace, and, in the final test, even Barak wants peace. So it's a pity to waste time. (Unabridged version of an article published in Ma'ariv Aug. 9, 1999)

How did the right win this claim to be the guardians of Israel's strength? Through a myth of generations that strategic conflicts in the Middle-East can be resolved through strict control of the neighboring Palestinian population. Feeling insecure? Go bulldoze a house. Flex some military muscle over a civilian population, and you might not be safer but you’ll certainly feel stronger. This is the great fallacy of security ideas propounded by the right; an insistence that the main threat to Israel is the neighboring Palestinain population, despite all evidence to the contrary. It is a philosophy riddled with racism and it is not helping anyone. The Left is caught in its own system of errors. Somewhere along the line, Israel’s left seems to believe that the peace should be a great regional birthday party in which everyone constantly smiles under the banner of the American dream and if some balloons get burst along the way, one should try to overlook it. The truth is, in the regional struggle for identity, peace is the greatest weapon against terrorism. The idea that Palestinians and Israelis sit together and meet mutual security challenges is still inconceivable to many; but they do and they must; especially as one of the coming challenges to security is embodied not only by Jews or Arabs, but by Christians from far afield.

Today, terrorism is not threatening in its conventional form. Security activity and self-policing of Palestinians has effectively curtailed the ability of terror groups to import quantities of explosives under their jackets into Israel’s cities. Indeed, parts of Hamas seem to be undergoing some serious revision in terms of accepting the Oslo accords as a working reality. The days of buses exploding could well be behind us, giving way to something far more ghastly and challenging to all the peoples of the region: terrorism originating from distant, scattered world-networks using weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax, VX, smallpox, ebola, (among others). The hard part for a terrorist group seeking non-conventional weapons is not so much acquiring them as deciding that they are crazy enough to use them. Such a decision could have unforeseen ghastly effects beyond immediate human casualties, including the contamination of the very land they’re fighting over. It would evoke such a depth of horror that no-one with any rational political cause at stake is likely to risk its use. On the other hand, biological and chemical weapons can be slipped across borders with such ease that they could sail through customs at Ben-gurion, having arrived on a flight from Switzerland and with the greatest ease be hand-delivered into any public-air-condition, or inserted on a taxi which could unknowingly distribute it around Tel-aviv. This is an obnoxious security reality, but if the left does not alert itself to this reality and begin addressing security challenges, nobody will. Such is the ideological inflexibility of the traditional right that they consciously choose to focus on stabbings in Hebron (in order to gain an edge in their century-long neighborhood dispute) rather than on the possibility of a single terrorist (from somewhere like Pakistan) annihilating 30,000 people in central Tel Aviv. In this sense the title "professors for a strong Israel” is a little silly. The truth is, that Israelis and Palestinians are in grave danger, daily, from an attack using non-conventional weapons - and such an attack could be as unconnected to the peace process as the nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway by a Japanese cult in 1995 was unrelated to interest rates.

Over the next year, some six million tourists are going to be passing through Israel, many of them hoping to take part in the end of the world. We already know that 14 “Concerned Christians” were uprooted from Jerusalem where they were planning to bring about the final days through mass suicide and incitement of Jews and Arabs in the Temple Mount area. 50 other members of the group, including its fanatic leader, are still missing, probably underground somewhere in Israel. There are several such groups planning to arrive in Jerusalem that already show dangerous signs and are being watched. There are many more, including white Aryan groups and quieter cults from across the world who are coming to our cities with their own private doomsday agendas. It should be remembered that the publicity given to the threat of non-conventional terrorism in the US is such that there have been over 200 anthrax hoaxes, many targeted by Christian militant groups at abortion clinics. Anthrax is all the fashion. It should also be remembered that the Aum Shinriko cult in Japan operated extremely quietly, had acquired and were trying to weaponize a handful of lethal diseases, and were never suspected by anyone of anything until the fatal day that nerve-gas created havoc on the Tokyo subway. All the lunatics are coming, and they’re well capable of envisioning the kind of disaster they could create to the hasten the coming of the messiah, the building of another temple, or whatever else these guys from Texas are after. Non-conventional terrorism. If we don’t start raising the alertness among our soldiers, doctors, police-force, members of knesset, the costs of the millennium could be high. All this without Ossame bin Laden or Saddam Hussein lifting a finger.

We are making peace. It is time for the peace-makers to sit down together and to think how to keep that peace safe. For more resources on the threat of non-conventional terrorism in the Middle East, visit Sleeping Giant

The Israeli officials to be contacted are the following:

Mr. Eliyahu Suissa
Minister of National Infrastructure
234 Jaffa Street
Jerusalem
Telephone: 02-5006714
Facsimile: 02-5006715

Mr. Meir Ben Meir
Water Commissioner of Israel
20 HaArba'a Street,
P.O. Box 20365
Tel-Aviv
Telephone: 03-6971812
Facsimile: 03-6971689

Nabil El-Sherif
Head of the Palestinian Water Authority
Orabi Street,
Al -Rimal, Gaza
Telefax: 07-8226967