Rights Guarantees Should Be In All Israeli, Palestinian Agreements
Human Rights Watch Urges Governments to Make Aid and Trade Conditional (New York, November 30, 1998) --Human Rights Watch called upon donor governments meeting in Washington today to incorporate human rights guarantees in all their agreements with Israel or the Palestinian Authority. In a letter released today, the New York-based human rights group urged that all new aid, trade, or security treaties include explicit provisions for monitoring and preventing human rights violations by Israeli or Palestinian forces.

The group sent the letter to ministers from the Middle East, Europe, Japan and Russia to coordinate funding for implementing the Wye River Memorandum. Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the security memorandum on October 23.

"The Wye River agreement lacks any mechanism for preventing human rights violations," said Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division. "Making aid conditional on human rights performance would force both Israelis and Palestinians to take rights seriously."

Megally noted that since signing the agreement the Palestinian Authority has conducted mass arrests of political opponents, increased restrictions on journalists, and made incitement to "breaching agreements" signed with the PLO a criminal offence.

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern over Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights, including torture, administrative detention without proper judicial review, hostage-taking, house demolition, and the imposition of strict closures in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The group urged the ministers to question U.S. officials on the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in monitoring the memorandum's implementation. CIA officials represent the U.S. on the U.S.-Palestinian and U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli monitoring committees created by the agreement.

"Secret intelligence agencies have a poor record of respecting human rights," said Megally. "In the past the CIA has been silent when groups it supported committed gross human rights violations. How can we depend on it to speak out now?"

The text of the letter is available at the Human Rights Watch web site at http://www.hrw.org/hrw/press98/nov/isrl-ltr.htm