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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/06/israel-military-courts-palestinians-law-uk">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/06/israel-military-courts-palestinians-law-uk</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel's military courts for Palestinians are a stain on international justice</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Sahar Francis - March 6, 2021<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p><span><span>T</span></span><span>he
overwhelming majority of Palestinians in the West Bank were born into,
and have spent their entire lives under, an Israeli military occupation
that violates their right to self-determination. A <a href="https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Judge_Jury_Occupier_report_War_on_Want.pdf">new report by the UK charity War on Want</a>
exposes how a core part of what sustains that occupation is a military
judicial system characterised by violations of international law.</span></p><p>The
report – Judge, Jury and Occupier – is a deep dive into the diverse
ways in which Palestinians’ rights are being violated – from arrest,
through interrogation, conviction and jail time. It reflects the
experiences of Palestinian lawyers and human rights groups. The
prisoners’ rights organisation I lead, Addameer, was proud to contribute
evidence.</p><p>One of the report’s important contributions is to make clear that, despite the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/on-the-middle-east/2013/feb/04/israel-palestinians-water-arafat-abbas">Oslo accords</a>
and establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for Palestinians in
the West Bank, there has been, and remains, no escape from Israel’s
military judicial system.</p><p>Regardless of the existence of the PA
penal code and judiciary, which operate with limited autonomy in parts
of the occupied territory, all Palestinians, wherever they reside in the
West Bank, remain subject to the jurisdiction of Israel’s military
courts if they fall foul of certain laws.</p><p>The impact of this military judicial system is far-reaching, and profoundly discriminatory.</p><p>Since
1967, for example, Israel has decreed more than 411 Palestinian
organisations illegal, including all the major Palestinian political
parties. Palestinian civilians are then prosecuted for “membership and
activity in an unlawful association”, a key tool in Israel’s repression
of anti-occupation activism.</p><p>Public order offences, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/12/17/born-without-civil-rights/israels-use-draconian-military-orders-repress#">include the charge of “incitement”</a>,
defined as any attempt “to influence public opinion … in a manner which
may harm public peace or public order”. Palestinians can also be
detained for “bringing into hatred or contempt, or the exciting of
disaffection against” authorities.</p><p>Other charges heard by the
military courts include being in Israel illegally – that is, those
caught looking for work without a permit – as well as traffic
violations. The latter accounts for some 40% of all Palestinians brought
before the military courts each year.</p><p>The military judicial
system is part of a “separate and unequal” reality. In contrast to
Palestinians, Israeli settlers arrested in the West Bank are tried in
civilian courts inside Israel. Two populations, two different legal
systems – Israel’s largest human rights group is therefore right to call
this a form of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/12/israel-largest-human-rights-group-apartheid">apartheid</a>.</p><p>Within this wider discriminatory system, there are specific and serious violations of international law.</p><p>One
such violation is torture, a method that the report documents is used
routinely, along with other cruel and degrading acts, to extract
confessions from Palestinians during interrogations (access to a lawyer
can be denied for up to 60 days). These confessions are then used as the
primary evidence to secure convictions in the military courts. One
example of many is Tariq, a school counsellor arrested in 2019 for
allegedly being a member of a proscribed organisation; his ordeal
included beatings, stress positions and verbal abuse. Another
transgression of the law concerns the fact that most Palestinian
prisoners are held in prisons within Israel, despite the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5">fourth Geneva convention</a>’s prohibition of the transfer of prisoners from the occupied territory into the occupying state.</p><p>All
of this occurs within a system that – as I know from my own years of
experience defending people in the military courts – cannot be
“reformed” but rather must be abolished.</p><p>Any occupying power is
obliged to act in the interests of the occupied population; Israel, by
contrast, is violating Palestinians’ civil and political rights. In
addition, as <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/CountriesMandates/PS/Pages/SRPalestine.aspx">UN special rapporteur Michael Lynk</a> has <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22315">laid out</a>, after half a century, Israel’s “role as occupier … has crossed a red line into illegality”. </p><p>Britain
has a particular role, and responsibility. An important element of
Israel’s military rule in the occupied West Bank is the <a href="https://www.btselem.org/legal_documents/emergency_regulations">Defence (Emergency) Regulations</a>
enacted by the British mandate in Palestine in 1945. Today, the UK
government approves the sale of weapons, components and military
technology to Israel, as well as imports of Israeli-made military
technology.</p><p>The report thus calls for the UK government to
implement a two-way arms embargo, and also urges the government to
increase support for Palestinian human rights defenders and
organisations.</p><p>Applying meaningful pressure on Israel to end its
occupation and military judicial system is the necessary response to a
historical wrong and a present injustice. For the Palestinian men, women
and children subjected to a Kafkaesque denial of their liberty this is
not just necessary, it is urgent.</p><ul><li><p>Sahar Francis is director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association</p></li></ul></div><br></div></div>
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