[Column] The situation in the Middle East

Jeong Inhwan, Reporter for the Hankyoreh 21 newsmagazine.

Two out of ten Palestinians have been detained at least once by Israeli authorities. The situation must be bad if the Palestinian Authority has to maintain a department dedicated to matters relating to current and former prisoners. Many are victims of so-called "administrative detention."

It is hard to know how many Palestinians are in Israeli prisons, because Israel does not release any figures. The Israeli civic group B'Tselem, also known as the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, estimated in January that the number of Palestinan prisoners is over 8,200. Of those, 3,111 are in Israeli military detention centers, and 741 Palestinians in such facilities are under "administrative detention" and therefore unable to receive outside aid. Palestinians in regular Israeli prisons number 5,127, with 53 of those also under "administrative detention."

Administrative detention is based on Israeli military order number 1229, issued in 1988, which allows the military to hold Palestinians detained in the Occupied Territories without trial for six months, a period that can be extended. In her book "Palestinian Prisoners: The Forgotten Facts," Isabelle Humphries says Israel is using the same methods the British once used to suppress Jewish and Arab residents when it held Palestinian land as a colony.

According to figures released by Defence for Children International, some 388 Palestinian children are being held by Israeli authorities. Hundreds have become adults under detention after having been captured in their teenage years. The Palestinian Authority says at least 3,000 Palestinian youths have been held in Israeli detention facilities since the start of the second intifada, which began in September 2000. In the West Bank last May, Israeli forces were criticized for hilding a six-year-old child for six-and-a-half hours for throwing a rock at one of their tanks.

There are approximately 100 female prisoners. Since the start of the second intifada, two of them have given birth in Israeli facilities. They are subjected to nude searches in front of male guards, and there are unnerving reports of rape by Israeli soldiers. Some 85 percent of former Palestinian prisoners say they were subjected to harsh physical treatment. Thirteen have died in Israeli prisons since the second intifada.

Israel has invaded Gaza to rescue its captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, and is now expanding the battlefield to Lebanon. Its stated reason is that Lebanon’s Shiite armed group, Hezbollah, kidnapped two of its soldiers during battle. How grotesque.