Shigemoto: SHTA and Van Vliet interpretation of the law incorrect

PHILIPSBURG--Finance Minister Hiro Shigemoto says St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association's (SHTA) interpretation of the changes to the turnover tax (ToT) law are incorrect, as is the analysis by Paul van Vliet of PricewaterhouseCoopers (see related story).

Shigemoto said in a press statement that he also had taken note of the SHTA's letter to Ombudsman Nilda Arduin-Lynch sent on Sunday in connection with the amendment of the ToT Law approved by Parliament on December 23.

"This misinterpretation and misinformation to the business community and the public at large will only lead to confusion and unnecessary worry. The Ministry of Finance has provided an elaborate explanation to Van Vliet with respect to the changes to the law," the minister said.

In its letter, SHTA stated that the association believes that while the increase was presented to the public as merely a change from three to five per cent in the existing legislation, the now published legislation introduces drastic changes to the turnover tax, depicting a completely different picture. SHTA is surprised that the Council of Ministers and Parliament would ratify legislation that is so drastically different from a simple increase of two per cent in the existing TOT.

The Ministry of Finance explained on January 7 in an "elaborate" e-mail to Van Vliet, who is also a member of the SHTA board and the Foundation Tax Committee, that his interpretation of Articles V and XI was not completely correct.

"There is indeed an omission in the ordinance, but that would be solved via what is known as a 'reparatiewet' or corrective law. Even if this reparatiewet was not done, which it will be done, even in such a situation the current law would not have led to the undesired situation as presented by the SHTA in its explanation in a letter to the ombudsman.

"The law operates under a clause known as the 'hardheidsclausule' whereby taxpayers can appeal their case when the law leads to consequences which were clearly not intended by the legislature. Any tax advisor would know this," Shigemoto said Sunday evening.

Commenting on the SHTA letter, the minister said: "I find it difficult to understand why the SHTA, after receiving an explanation from the Ministry of Finance, still decided to write a letter to the National Ombudsman complaining about the lack of cooperation with the SHTA with the compilation of the Ordinance on the Turnover Tax.

"Although as Minister of Finance I explained in detail to the SHTA the unfortunate, but realistic circumstances under which the government was forced to come to this temporary solution, still at this stage such an action is undertaken."

The ordinance has been established in compliance with all constitutional requirements and is therefore legal, he added. "Moreover, 'goods' are also taken up in the old Article V, paragraph three (3). The amendment will therefore only be applicable to services, in order to restore the level playing field. For 'goods,' the old situation will be maintained," the minister pointed out.

An information campaign will commence soon with representatives of the Ministry of Finance providing information to the community about the ToT increase from three to five per cent.

"The provision of information is essential in order to avoid situations of misinformation. Professional organisations as well as other well known personalities within our community should have all the facts at hand and a complete understanding of the issue before making public statements, which only creates confusion."

Government looks forward to working with all social partners to reach an understanding where all interests are taken into consideration leading to a new tax regime that covers the budget, Shigemoto said.

He added, "The basis of the relationship has to be on the principles of trust. If there is no trust and we choose to communicate in such a manner, then how will this help to lead to a professional, productive and constructive environment which should serve as a working platform between government and its social partners in coming to a better tax system for country St. Maarten?"

Source: http://www.thedailyherald.com/islands/1-islands-news/12226-shigemoto-shta-and-van-vliet-interpretation-of-the-law-incorrect.html

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78 lights for Back Street

PHILIPSBURG--According to Minister of Infrastructure Theo Heyliger, about 78 new street lights will be placed on Back Street and will be financed by utility company GEBE. He did not disclose any figures. The new lights will be mounted on concrete bases which should guard against damage by vehicles and pedestrians. The previous light fixtures were of cast iron and damaged easily.

Heyliger said Front Street and the Great Bay beach promenade will also receive similar light fixtures. The Minister also said that government is working on an island wide lighting policy which will address how far apart lights are placed, possible conversion to LED lights etc.

Regarding the state of other fixtures on Front Street and Back Street, Heyliger said a different design will be explored for the bollards along the road, some trees will be replaced and bricks fixed. "A total inventory of the area is being taken and the Ministry of VROM will be looking to address these issues in the off-season," the Minister said.

Source: http://www.thedailyherald.com/islands/1-islands-news/12846-78-lights-for-back-street.html

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Egypt: Riots resume after Friday prayers

Protests erupted in Egypt following Friday prayers, with tens of thousands of demonstrators calling for the ouster of president Mubarak. In the port city of Alexandria, protesters streamed out of mosques to chant slogans against the government. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets.

According to Reuters, there were clashes between protesters and police outside a mosque in Cairo. Protesters reportedly threw stones at the police.

Clashes and riots reported from other cities and provinces across the country. 

 

� 2011 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Source: http://www1.albawaba.com/main-headlines/egypt-riots-resume-after-friday-prayers

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Palestine Papers: Israel's Peacemakers Unmasked

By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth
 
For more than a decade, since the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, the mantra of Israeli politics has been the same: 'There is no Palestinian partner for peace.'
 
This week, the first of hundreds of leaked confidential Palestinian documents confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observers that the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on the Israeli, not Palestinian, side.

Some of the most revealing papers, jointly released by Al-Jazeera television and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, date from 2008, a relatively hopeful period in recent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
 
At the time, Ehud Olmert was Israel’s prime minister and had publicly committed himself to pursuing an agreement on Palestinian statehood. He was backed by the United States administration of George W Bush, which had revived the peace process in late 2007 by hosting the Annapolis conference.
 
In those favourable circumstances, the papers show, Israel spurned a set of major concessions the Palestinian negotiating team offered over the following months on the most sensitive issues in the talks.
 
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has tried unconvincingly to deny the documents’ veracity, but has not been helped by the failure of Israeli officials to come to his aid.
 
According to the documents, the most significant Palestinian compromise – or “sell-out”, as many Palestinians are calling it – was on Jerusalem.
 
During a series of meetings over the summer of 2008, Palestinian negotiators agreed to Israel’s annexation of large swaths of East Jerusalem, including all but one of the city’s Jewish settlements and parts of the Old City itself.
 
It is difficult to imagine how the resulting patchwork of Palestinian enclaves in East Jerusalem, surrounded by Jewish settlements, could ever have functioned as the capital of the new state of Palestine.
 
At the earlier Camp David talks, according to official Israeli documents leaked to the Haaretz daily in 2008, Israel had proposed something very similar in Jerusalem: Palestinian control over what were then termed territorial “bubbles”.
 
In the later talks, the Palestinians also showed a willingness to renounce their claim to exclusive sovereignty over the Old City’s flashpoint of the Haram al-Sharif, the sacred compound that includes the al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked by the Western Wall. An international committee overseeing the area was proposed instead.
 
This was probably the biggest concession of all – control of the Haram was the issue that “blew up” the Camp David talks, according to an Israeli official who was present.
 
Saeb Erekat, the PLO’s chief negotiator, is quoted promising Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim in history” – using the Hebrew word for Jerusalem – as his team effectively surrendered Palestinian rights enshrined in international law.
 
The concessions did not end there, however. The Palestinians agreed to land swaps to accommodate 70 per cent of the half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to forgo the rights of all but a few thousand Palestinian refugees.
 
The Palestinian state was also to be demilitarised. In one of the papers recording negotiations in May 2008, Erekat asks Israel’s negotiators: “Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?” The Israeli answer was an emphatic: “No.”
 
Interestingly, the Palestinian negotiators are said to have agreed to recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” – a concession Israel now claims is one of the main stumbling blocks to a deal.
 
Israel was also insistent that Palestinians accept a land swap that would transfer a small area of Israel into the new Palestinian state along with as many as a fifth of Israel’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens. This demand echoes a controversial “population transfer” long proposed by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister.
 
The “Palestine Papers”, as they are being called, demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering – and erroneous – assumptions made by many Western observers about the peace process.
 
The first relates to the United States’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker. What shines through the documents is the reluctance of US officials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as the Palestinian team make major concessions on core issues. Israel’s “demands” are always treated as paramount.
 
The second is the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of a rightwing Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu. He has drawn international criticism for refusing to pay more than lip-service to Palestinian statehood.
 
The Americans’ goal – at least in the early stages of Mr Netanyahu’s premiership – was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist opposition party Kadima. She is still widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace.
 
However, Ms Livni, who was previously Mr Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians. At a key moment, she turns down the Palestinians’ offer, after saying: “I really appreciate it”.
 
The sticking point for Ms Livni was a handful of West Bank settlements the Palestinian negotiators refused to cede to Israel. The Palestinians have long complained that the two most significant – Maale Adumim, outside Jerusalem, and Ariel, near the Palestinian city of Nablus – would effectively cut the West Bank into three cantons, undermining any hopes of territorial contiguity.
 
Ms Livni’s insistence on holding on to these settlements – after all the Palestinian compromises – suggests that there is no Israeli leader either prepared or able to reach a peace deal – unless, that is, the Palestinians cave in to almost every Israeli demand and abandon their ambitions for statehood.
 
One of the Palestine Papers quotes an exasperated Mr Erekat asking a US diplomat last year: “What more can I give?”
 
The man with the answer may be Mr Lieberman, who unveiled his own map of Palestinian statehood this week. It conceded a provisional state on less than half of the West Bank.
 
- Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National - www.thenational.ae - published in Abu Dhabi.)

Source: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16583

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MPs have full day of committee meetings

Democratic deficit to be discussed Friday

PHILIPSBURG--Members of Parliament (MPs) have a full day of committee meetings, today Wednesday. The eight permanent committees will meet for the first time and will also tend to the appointment of their chairpersons and deputy chairpersons.

President of Parliament Gracita Arrindell announced the day of meetings that run from 9:00am to 3:00pm during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in the old Parliament Building.

The eight groups are the committee on Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure; committee for Public Health, Labour and Social Affairs, Justice Committee; Finance Committee; committee for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports; the committee on Tourism, Economic Affairs and Transportation; committee for Kingdom Relations and the committee on Petitions.

She said the committees would have to establish their action plans and get to work by either tackling topical issues or matters they deem important such as the need for better regulation of the Rental Committee.

From these meetings, the committees can prepare advices to be sent on for deliberations in the Central Committee and then, if necessary, to the General Session of Parliament if some decision or law needs to be approved.

Arrindell has also prepared a preliminary meeting schedule for 2011 and expects the input from the rest of the MPs about additions or changes.

On Parliament's agenda for the rest of this week are meetings dealing with the Ombudsman on Thursday and first session of the ad hoc committee to review the Rules of Order of Parliament on Friday.

The Committee for Kingdom Relations and Internal Affairs will also meet on Friday morning to discuss the democratic deficit in the Kingdom about which a report had been prepared some years ago.

Arrindell explained that there is some urgency to deal with the issue of Democratic Deficit as a meeting of the Parliaments of the Kingdom is slated for April in The Hague. She added that Dutch Second Chamber Chairwoman Gerdi Verbeet had requested the early handling of the matter in lieu of the upcoming meeting.

The Parliaments of St. Maarten, Cura�ao and Aruba are expected to meet on the Democratic deficit prior to the meeting in The Hague.

Another Central Committee meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, January 25 at 9:00am for MPs to get and request information on the Penal Code and the draft Law on Special Investigation Powers for law enforcement. Professor H. den Doelder has been invited to talk on these two matters.

Asked if she would invite Justice Minister Roland Duncan to the session as he has strong opinion on the draft law and what it would mean for privacy, Arrindell said this was a parliamentary session for the legislators and dualism was in effect.

Source: http://www.thedailyherald.com/islands/1-islands-news/12309-mps-have-full-day-of-committee-meetings-.html

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The Palestine Papers: Offering Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud

The Palestine Papers had damaged whatever little credibility the Ramallah-based authority still enjoyed among Palestinians The Palestine Papers, the 1,300 leaked documents that Aljazeera began publishing starting January 23, are the Palestinian response to the Israeli ‘generous offer’, an Israeli diplomatic ruse that was aimed at discrediting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat following the collapse of the Camp David talks of July 25, 2000.

But unlike the fictitious Israeli ‘generous offer’, the Palestinian offer, as revealed by Aljazeera, was barely a testament to the spirit of the famed Arab generosity, but a series of decided and embarrassing concessions that, at times, took even the Israelis by surprise.

Over a decade has passed since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reportedly made his ‘generous offer”, only to be met by “Arafat's recalcitrance” (L.A. Times editorial, April 08, 2002) and “Palestinian rejectionism” (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, March, 22, 2002, as referenced by Seth Ackerman in Fair.org).

The invented offer, which turned out to be a term coined by Israeli officials merely to discredit Arafat and absolve Israel from any commitment under previously signed agreements, was described as “extraordinary and “far-reaching” by leading American newspapers. Every attempt at dispelling that myth largely failed before immovable US-Israeli official discourses, which often, if not always, define mainstream narratives.

But now Aljazeera had courageously followed in the footsteps of Wikileaks, verifying and revealing hundreds of documents, spanning from 1999-2010, which expose the extent of the Palestinians’ ‘generosity’, that is truly extraordinary and far-reaching, if not a cause of utter shame to many of those involved, along with their die-hard supporters.

What The Documents Reveal...

The Palestine Papers are too many and represent a final indictment of the PA, and its willingness to meet, and at times, exceed the expectations of the Israeli government, at the expense of the Palestinian people

The Palestine Papers revealed much about the skewed nature of the relationship between two parties – Israel and the Palestinian Authority - who are purportedly in a state of conflict, if not war. But as it turned out, the Palestinian leadership seemed to negotiate and offer the very opposite of what the Palestinian public truly wants, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees, as enshrined in international law, contiguous borders for the proposed Palestinian state, dismantling of all illegal Jewish settlements and more. The extent of the Palestinian compromises has in fact exceeded the most cynical of estimations.

According to one leaked document, Saeb Erekat for example who holds the weighty title of the ‘Chief Negotiator’, gave away most of Occupied East Jerusalem with little hesitance. On June 30, 2008, in a meeting that included Tzipi Livni, the then Israel foreign minister, Ahmed Qurei, top Fatah official and former PA prime minister, Erekat declared: “It is no secret that on our map we proposed we are offering you the biggest Yerushalayim (the Hebrew word for al-Quds or Jerusalem) in history.”

Erekat’s personal offer was an extension of one proposed by Qurei himself, in a meeting two weeks earlier, on June 15. Qurei “proposed that Israel annexes all settlements in Jerusalem except Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa). This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to do so in Camp David.”

To leave no doubt in Israeli officials minds that the Palestinians truly mean ‘all settlements’, Erekat “went on to enumerate some of the settlements that the PA was willing to concede,” reported Gregg Carlstrom in Aljazeera. They are “French Hill, Ramat Alon, Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, Talpiot, and the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s old city. Those areas contain some 120,000 Jewish settlers. (Erekat did not mention the fate of other major East Jerusalem settlements, like Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Ya’akov, but Qurei’s language indicates that they would also remain a part of Israel.)”

As for Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary (the third holiest of Muslim shrines anywhere and a sight that saw much violence as a result of desperate Palestinian attempts at defending the holy site in the face of Israel fundamentalists backed by Israeli army and police), Erekat offered ‘creative’ solutions, such as placing the Palestinian Muslim shrine under international supervision, thus ceding almost complete control over the occupied city.

This is barely the tip of the iceberg. The compromises are plentiful and brazenly contradict international law, Palestinian national aspirations, Arab consensus, and even the declared official position of the Palestinian Authority itself.

Selling Out the Refugees

The Palestine Papers also confirm that both sides are in agreement regarding the Palestinian people’s right to return, that, more or less, such a right will not be carried out. A summary of an August 2008 meeting indicated an Israeli offer of a land swap that would guarantee that the majority of illegal Jewish settlers remain in the occupied West Bank. It included a proposal by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to allow a total of 5,000 Palestinian refugees (out of nearly six million) to return to their homes over the course of five years.

In an October 21, 2009 meeting with US diplomat and Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Erekat seemed to have no qualms with the proposal. “Palestinians will need to know that five million refugees will not go back. The number will be agreed as one of the options. Also the number returning to their own state will depend on annual absorption capacity.” In another leaked document dated January 15, 2010, Erekat told US diplomat David Hale that the PA offered Israel the return of ‘a symbolic number’ of refugees. Until then, the refugees, according to Erekat will have no voting rights on any peace deal with Israel. Aljazeera also quoted Ziyad Clot, a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators on refugee issues, saying: “President Abbas offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process.”

The Palestine Papers are too many and represent a final indictment of the PA, and its willingness to meet, and at times, exceed the expectations of the Israeli government, at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Out of Context?

Following Aljazeera’s release of some of the documents, PA officials went on the offensive, attacking the news network, instead of contending with the damning message. Some of their accusations contradicted each other, the same contradictions that are marring the Palestinian official narrative altogether.

“Fabrication... lies,” screamed Erekat; “out of context,” said Abbas. As for senior PLO leader Yasser Abd Rabbo, he spent nearly half an hour in a Ramallah press conference on Monday, January 24, heaping insults and accusations on Aljazeera. Considering all of this, it was only expected that some 200 Fatah supporters (who reportedly included many plain-clothed PA security personnel) attacked and vandalized Aljazeera offices in Ramallah, ironically shouting “Aljazeera is a Zionist channel!”

The other irony is that a few days earlier, on Wednesday, January 20, the PA reportedly refused to grant permission for a Palestinian rally to celebrate the overthrow of Tunisia’s authoritarian president and to stand in solidarity with the Tunisian people.

It’s hard to believe that there are many Palestinians – aside from those who directly benefit from the current regime – who truly believe that the Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has the interests of the Palestinian people at heart. The Palestine Papers had damaged whatever little credibility the Ramallah-based authority still enjoyed among Palestinians.

Propped by US funds, sustained by European and American political validation and secured by the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, it is unclear how long the PA will continue to serve a purpose in the West Bank. It is certain, however, that the purpose is not exacting Palestinian rights or preserving the national integrity of the Palestinian people and territorial integrity of a Palestinian state. The Palestine Papers made this very clear, and lashing out at Aljazeera changes nothing.

- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com. You can visit his website through this link: www.ramzybaroud.net.

Source: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16585

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Price of Dignity: Palestine's Political Prisoners

By Kim Bullimore – The West Bank

Currently there are more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners locked up in Israel's jails. This week, I found out that my friend Hasan (not his real name) is one of them. When in Ramallah, I mentioned to a mutual friend that I had planned to ring him to let him know I was in Palestine. Our mutual friend informed me that Hasan was being held under “Administration Detention” and had been in prison for three months.

I last saw Hasan more than a year ago, when I was last in Palestine. A year previous to this last meeting, he had emailed me to apologise for not answering my phone calls and emails when I had tried to contact him when I was in Palestine. Unfortunately, he apologised, he had been in prison for seven months held without charge or trial by the Israeli military under an Administrative Detention order. 

When I met him last year in a local Ramallah coffee shop, he looked the same but different.  In his early to mid-twenties, Hasan, who I had met him several years before, had always had a lean but strong build, but now he was thinner than I remembered him. He was also smoking more and his demeanour was different. He was still as politically sharp as I remembered him, but his youthful, upbeat enthusiasm had been tempered and he was much more cynical and world-weary than before. I could see that the seven months he spent in Israel’s prisons had taken a definite toll on him. Hasan told me that he had been repeatedly tortured while in prison but it had made him stronger and more committed to his people’s struggle.

Hasan with wry humour, also recounted the toll his imprisonment had also had on his family, particularly his mother. An atheist himself, Hasan, comes from a Christian Palestinian family and upon his release from Administrative Detention; he came home to find that his mother, a believer, had hung a crucifix on his bedroom wall and left a small crucifix on his study table. For the first few weeks, he told me, he out of love and deference for his mother he allowed the Cross on the wall to remain but would put the small one on his table away. However, every time he returned home from being out, he again would find the small cross had reappeared on his table, placed there by his concerned mother. Our mutual friend, when she told me of Hasan’s re-incarceration, also recounted to me that his mother after his release from his first imprisonment woke at 3 am every morning, the time the Israeli military had raid the family’s home to kidnap Hasan. His mother, terrified that the Israeli military would again raid her home and take either one or both of her sons, woke at this time each morning to check they were safely in their beds. 

Hasan’s imprisonment, our mutual friend informed me, came at a time when he was finally getting over the horrors of his first imprisonment and torture and was much more like his “old-self”. As I write this article, I worry that my friend is being tortured and that his family is suffering, like so many other Palestinian families who are experiencing the same horrendous situation. 

Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians or twenty percent of Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been detained by Israel. According to the Palestinian prisoner's support and human rights association, Addameer, most of those detained are male.  Addameer notes that this translates to more forty percent of the total male Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories being incarcerated since 1967.

Since 1967, when Israel illegal seized and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, more than 1500 military regulations have been issued by Israel’s military to “govern” the West Bank, while more than 1400 have been issued to “govern” the besieged Gaza Strip. These military orders can be issued on the whim of an Israeli military commander and do not need to be publicised. As a result, the Palestinians and the wider public, including the media and legal services, only become aware of the existence of such orders when they are implemented. In 1970, Israel issued Military Order 378, which authorised the military commanders of regions to issue “Administrative Detention” orders. These orders allow Israeli occupying forces to detain and arrest large numbers of Palestinian civilians without charge or trail. In 1988, Military Order 378 was amended by Military Order 1229 in the Occupied West Bank and Military Order 941 in the Gaza Strip, with these amendments allowing military orders to be issued for Administrative Detention without designating a maximum period of time for incarceration without charge or trail.

According to the first paragraph of Military Order 1229: “If a Military Commander deems the detention of a person necessary for security reasons he may do so for a period not in excess of 6 months, after which he has the right to extend the detention period for a further six months according to the original order. The detention order can be passed without the presence of the detainee...”

Under this regime, 22% of persons held under administrative detention are held for less than 6 months, while 37% have been held between 6 months to 1 year.  Another eight percent have been held for 2-5 years. The longest period an individual has been held under administrative detention without then being charged is 8 years.

Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem notes that the highest number of Palestinians held under administrative detention was during the First Intifada, with almost 1800 Palestinians detain in November 1989. During the early to mid 1990s, between 100-350 Palestinian political prisoners were detained under administrative detention at any given moment. By the second year of the Second Palestinian Intifada, approximately 1000 Palestinians were detained under Israel's regime. B'Tselem notes that as of August of 2010, 189 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention.

B’Tselm points out that while administrative detention is allowed under international law, it “can only be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means”. B’Tselem notes, however, that Israel uses administrative detention in an arbitrary and regular manner in order to detain Palestinian civilians, denying them proper legal recourse, which is in violation of international law. Not only are Palestinians, who are detained under Administrative Detention orders, not charged with anything and denied the right to a trial, both the detainee and their legal council are denied the right to even know what the detainee is accused of. The detainee’s lawyers are also denied the right to access the military ‘evidence’ against those detained under the Administrative Detention regime. Addameer notes that the use of administrative detention by Israel is such a manner is in contravention of Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as other international and human rights law.

Nearly all Palestinian political prisoners, both male and female, as well as adults and minors, have suffered torture at the hands of their Israeli captors. According to Addameer, “Physical and psychological torture against Palestinian and Arab prisoners has been a distinguishing factor of Israeli occupation since 1967”, noting that “torture has taken different shapes throughout the period of occupation”.  According to Addameer since the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, at least 30,000 Palestinians have been tortured by Israel.

Many of the Palestinian political prisoners detained under the Administrative Detention regime are minors. In the last week, the village of An Nabi Saleh, has been raided almost nightly and at least four Palestinian minors have been kidnapped by the Israeli military, including an 11 year old off the streets of the village. Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children age 14 years and over are tried as an adult in Israel’s military courts. In practice, however, children as young as 11 and 12 have been brought before these courts and held under Administrative Detention. According to Defense for Children International, 213 Palestinian children are currently being held in Israeli prisons as of December 2010. The majority of Palestinian child political prisoners report that they have also been tortured by the Israeli military.

The children kidnapped and detained in An Nabi Saleh are now being imprisoned under the same barbaric and illegal regime that my friend Hasan is imprisoned under. Their freedom is denied and the Israeli military will attempt to break their spirits and their resistance to the brutal military occupation which Israel is intent on perpetuating. While the Israeli state and its military machine may break the bones and tear the flesh of its captives, it will fail to break their resistance because these young boys, men and women understand the struggle in which they are engaged is not just a struggle for a homeland, but a struggle for human dignity, equality and freedom. And no man or woman or child, no matter how hard pressed by their oppressor, will ever give up the struggle for such basic and inalienable human rights.

- Kim Bullimore is currently living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service: www.iwps.info. She writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action: www.directaction.org.au and has a blog at: www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Source: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16592

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