ISRAELI-OCCUPIED WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP

Human Rights Developments

From a human rights perspective, 1993 ended far more optimistically than it had begun. Following the signing in Washington of a Declaration of Principles by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on September 13, there was a reduction in some human rights abuses by the Israeli authorities,notably killings by security forces. There were also hopes that, as Israeli forces began to withdraw from populated areas and turn over partial authority to the PLO, the human rights picture would improve.

Improvements would be welcome after a year that was one of the worst in human rights terms of the six-year-old Palestinian intifada. Since becoming prime minister in July 1992, Yitzhak Rabin's willingness to negotiate a political settlement with Palestinians had been accompanied by no trend toward greater respect for fundamental rights.

The winter of 1992-1993 provided many illustrations. On December 17, 1992, Rabin summarily expelled 415 suspected Islamist activists in response to a series of fatal attacks on Israeli soldiers, for which Hamas, the militant Islamist organization, had claimed responsibility. During December and January, security forces killed thirty-eight Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In March, Rabin imposed the most stringent closure in the occupied territories since their capture in 1967-indefinitely preventing Palestinians from entering both Israel and occupied East Jerusalem without difficult-to-obtain permits. And, throughout the year, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pursued a tactic adopted in late 1992 of using anti-tank missiles and other heavy weaponry against the suspected hideouts of armed fugitives, a tactic that usually destroyed or damaged dozens of neighboring dwellings and left innocent families homeless.

Established patterns of human rights abuses continued during 1993. These included the use of excessive force against demonstrators and "wanted" activists, the torture of detainees to extract information and confessions, and restrictions on movement affecting the entire population. Both before and after the signing of the accord with the PLO, Israel refused to recognize the de jure applicability to the occupied terrritories of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and violated many of its articles pertaining to the treatment of the protected population.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces increased for the second straight year. Some of these killings were justified by life-threatening situations in which soldiers found themselves, such as when challenged by activists wielding firearms. (Palestinians killed sixteen soldiers in the occupied territories during the first ten months of 1993.) However, eyewitness testimony collected by human rights organizations and journalists indicated that many of these killings occurred when soldiers were dispersing stone-throwers or pursuing unarmed fleeing suspects, and were in no mortal danger.

The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported that 126 Palestinians were killed between January 1 and September 30, compared to seventy-nine killed during the last nine months of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government. Forty-two of those killed during the first nine months of 1993 were younger than seventeen, compared to eleven during Shamir's last nine months.

Under the military orders applied by the Israeli authorities, demonstrations in the occupied territories were forbidden without a permit. Troops sent in to disperse demonstrators were often confronted by youths throwing stones, bottles, and sometimes Molotov cocktails. Although equipped with tear gas, shields and rubber bullets, the soldiers often resorted to live ammunition against the youths-whether or not their own lives were in danger. This disproportionate response was effectively condoned by the military command which, except in rare cases, allowed soldiers who used excessive force to go unpunished.

Demonstration-related deaths declined immediately after the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord in September. The principal cause of the drop appeared to be instructions issued to soldiers not to break up pro-accord demonstrations, and to avoid unnecessary friction with the Palestinian population. In the ensuing weeks, soldiers interfered little with the many rallies staged both for and against the accord, and the demonstrations ran their course with few clashes or casualties.

With regard to the killing of fleeing suspects, the IDF's open-fire orders violated internationally recognized police standards that forbid the use of lethal force, except in the presence of an imminent mortal danger. (See chapter titled "Applicable Legal Standards" in Middle East Watch's July 1993 report, A License to Kill.) Israeli soldiers were instructed to shoot at the legs of fleeing Palestinians suspected of grave offenses who refused to halt. Given the unreliability of aiming at the legs and the difficulty ofenforcing such a command, the orders effectively gave soldiers a license to kill fleeing suspects, even when they posed no imminent danger.

Many fleeing suspects were killed during undercover hunts for "wanted" Palestinians-activists sought on suspicion of having attacked Israelis or Palestinians they suspected of collaborating with Israel. Middle East Watch, in common with other human rights groups, concluded that IDF and Border Police undercover units often killed activists in situations where they were not endangering the security forces and could have been arrested.

While the authorities depicted the undercover units as risking their lives against armed extremists, the units spent much of their time targeting lower-level activists who were not on any "wanted" list, but who donned masks and engaged in such actions as stone-throwing, graffiti-writing, and enforcing political strikes. The masked youths often carried "cold" weapons such as axes or clubs but rarely carried firearms. When confronting these masked activists, undercover units frequently opened fire before the youths had an opportunity to surrender or as they attempted to flee. Several youths were killed in this fashion in 1993, and others were seriously wounded.

Undercover soldiers were rarely held accountable for their abuses. Despite clear evidence that their use of excessive force was systematic, Middle East Watch was aware of only two cases during the intifada in which an undercover soldier was criminally charged in connection with a killing. In one of the two cases, a lieutenant received a twelve-month prison term, half of it suspended, for the February 1993 shooting of a twelve-year old suspected stone-thrower; the child was attempting to flee at the time he was shot. The case exhibited the failure of the military justice system to hand out appropriately stern punishments in those rare cases when soldiers were court-martialed for using excessive force.

The main cause of killing, after security forces gunfire, was the slaying by Palestinians of other Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the authorities. Between January 1 and October 31 there were eighty-seven killings of suspected collaborators, according to the Associated Press news agency. Some collaborators carried Israeli-issued weapons and were themselves responsible for violent abuses against other Palestinians. They also assisted the security forces in operations that resulted in arrests and killings.

Many of the suspected collaborators were executed only after they had been abducted, and their bodies showed signs of torture. Middle East Watch condemns all killings of persons in formal or de facto custody as a violation of customary humanitarian law. The killing of suspected collaborators, often after a secret "trial" with little or no semblance of due process, cannot be excused by the absence of a formal Palestinian judicial system in the areas under Israeli occupation.

Even though many collaborator killings appeared to be the work of armed groups affiliated with the PLO and Hamas, the extent to which the latter groups were to be held responsible remained unclear. The perpetrators had ignored, and in some cases openly defied, public pleas from the political leadership of the PLO and local PLO-affiliated figures to halt the killings. It seemed clear, however, that even if the PLO could not rein in activists who captured and murdered suspected collaborators, at a minimum it could have unequivocally dissociated itself from those responsible. The PLO's failure during 1993 to do so seriously undermined its pleas that the killings be stopped.

As Palestinians prepared for the transition to limited self-rule, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat stated in early October that the PLO was committed to respect all internationally recognized standards and to incorporate them fully into Palestinian legislation. He also acknowledged the role of independent human rights organizations and pledged cooperation with those groups.

The PLO's commitment to these admirable goals will be tested in numerous ways during 1994, when it assumes authority over internal security in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among the challenges will be the issue of violence against suspected collaborators. A Palestinian authority that does not strive to prevent acts of punishment delivered outside of a fair judicial process will be seen as complicit in these abusive acts.

Shortly after Prime Minister Rabin came to office, in mid-1992, the IDF began using a new tactic against wanted fugitives, in response to incidents in which undercover soldiers had been killed. When itsuspected fugitives were hiding in a particular house, the IDF would seal off the surrounding neighborhood, evacuate its residents and call on the fugitives to surrender. If they did not respond, the troops would attack the suspected hideout using anti-tank missiles, grenades, machineguns, and dynamite. Invariably, neighboring houses and their contents were damaged in the process.

There were more than thirty operations of this kind between September 1992 and October 1993, most of them in the Gaza Strip. Like the undercover hunts for "wanted" persons, the massive firepower assaults did not cease with the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord. On October 2, the IDF used heavy firepower in five separate locations in the Gaza Strip, destroying or damaging eighteen houses, according to the Gaza Center for Rights and Law, an independent monitoring group.

The Gaza Center charged that in some cases of the large-scale assaults carried out during 1993, authorities did not give the fugitives an opportunity to surrender before launching the attack. Other attacks were launched only to discover that the fugitives had escaped or had not been there in the first place.

While these raids achieved their stated goal of reducing the incidence of serious injuries and killings during confrontations with "wanted" activists, the tactic rendered homeless hundreds of Palestinians accused of no wrongdoing. According to the Ramallah-based human rights organization al-Haq, a total of eighty-four houses were destroyed during heavy assaults on suspected fugitives between January and mid-September. The IDF's stated policy of offering compensation to innocent residents produced few payments; those that were made were generally not commensurate with the losses suffered. The use of massive firepower against suspected hideouts involved in many instances a use of force that was highly disproportionate to the security advantage gained.

The Rabin administration chose during 1993 to avoid a more familiar, and much-criticized, form of house demolition-that of tearing down the home inhabited by the family of a person suspected of a grave violent offense. However, the government persisted in using a less drastic form of collective punishment against the families of suspects: sealing houses shut in twenty-four cases and sealing particular rooms in eighteen other cases, according to a tally compiled by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem from January 1 to September 1.

The torture of Palestinians by IDF and General Security Service (GSS) interrogators continued during 1993. An estimated 5,000 Palestinians have been arrested and interrogated each year during the intifada; most have been ill-treated or tortured during an initial period lasting up to several weeks during which time they were denied access to a lawyer.

A number of developments kept the issue of ill-treatment in custody in the public spotlight in Israel during 1993: the death of a Gazan under interrogation (an incident in which medical negligence played a role), a public scandal over the complicity of Israeli doctors in torture, and GSS admissions in court to using certain abusive methods.

Interviews by Middle East Watch of thirty-one Palestinians who underwent interrogations since mid-1992 found a continuation of the systematic mistreatment previously documented by other rights organizations. In both IDF and GSS interrogations, abuse occurred before and between questioning sessions, when virtually all detainees were confined or shackled in painfully cramped positions for prolonged periods with hoods placed over their heads, threatened, insulted, deprived of sleep for up to five days at a time, and denied access to toilets for prolonged periods.

While these methods of "position abuse" were more severe in GSS facilities than in IDF facilities, IDF interrogators tended to use more violence during the questioning sessions. While the IDF routinely beat detainees severely during interrogation sessions, GSS violence was less common.

Ayman Nasser died on April 2 from lung inflammation, thirteen days after he was arrested in Gaza. An independent pathologist, who was permitted by the Israeli authorities to attend the autopsy, concluded that proper medical care during the interrogation phase would probably have saved Nasser's life. There were also two deaths under interrogation in 1992 to which medical negligence apparently contributed.

The complicity of Israeli doctors in torture became a public scandal in the spring of 1993, when a human rights lawyer obtained, and made public, a form in use at a West Bank prison. The form askedthe examining physician to state whether the person about to undergo interrogation was fit to withstand prolonged isolation, tying up, hooding, and prolonged standing. Publication of the "fitness form" prompted the chair of the Israel Medical Association, Dr. Miriam Tzangen, to instruct physicians publicly not to fill out such a form, which she characterized as "co-operation in torture." She was not dissuaded by a letter from Prime Minister Rabin claiming that the form had been "accidentally" put to use prior to interrogations, whereas it had been intended for use during interrogations when medical problems arose.

Further evidence that these methods were officially sanctioned, and were indeed routine, emerged from the 1993 trial in Hebron military court of accused Hamas activist Muhammad Adawi, who claimed that his confession had been coerced. His interrogator denied defense allegations that Adawi had been beaten, but readily told the court that Adawi had been hooded, confined to a small chair for prolonged periods, and deprived of sleep. The interrogator testified that Adawi was subjected to three lengthy periods without sleep, the longest of which was over 109 hours, interrupted only by two brief respites of several hours each, and by the moments when Adawi was able to doze off while confined to a painful position.

The number of Palestinians imprisoned for politically motivated offenses or charges remained one of the highest per capita rates found anywhere in the world. As of early November, approximately 11,000 Palestinians were being held in army or civilian-run prisons, following the first mass release of prisoners resulting from the Israeli-PLO accord. About 760 inmates were freed on October 25 and 26, most of them either under eighteen or over fifteen, or suffering from illness.

The prison population-according to an official tally in late September-included 277 administrative detainees who were being interned without charge or trial. The authorities have used administrative detention far less since 1991 than during the early years of the intifada. Roughly two-thirds of all prisoners and detainees were being held in facilities inside Israel, in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Mass expulsions in December 1992 were remarkable not only because they constituted the largest single act of deportation since 1967, but also because of the summary way they were carried out. Ignoring the appeals process accorded would-be deportees since 1980, Rabin ordered that several hundred Islamist activists be rounded up and transported immediately to the Lebanese border. Appeals were possible only from abroad.

The action came after Hamas claimed responsiblity for the killing of five Israeli soldiers and policemen in a one-week period, including the killing of a kidnapped border policeman. (Middle East Watch publicly condemned that in-custody slaying as an act of murder.) The Rabin government accused the deportees of being activists "who endanger human lives through their actions, or incite to actions of this sort." Rabin termed the deportations "temporary removals," explaining that, unlike previous deportees, the "removees" would be permitted to return within two years. Middle East Watch rejected this distinction, stating that the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition against deportations was absolute and was not negated by any time limit.

The deportees, who found themselves in Lebanon the morning after they were hastily rounded up from their homes and prison cells, remained camped on a hilltop near the Israeli border throughout much of 1993. Meanwhile, the governments of both Israel and Lebanon obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid to them, each saying the deportees were the other's problem. Israel's Supreme Court upheld the legality of the deportations in January.

Under pressure from the United States and the United Nations, on February 1, Rabin announced that one hundred of the deportees would be permitted to return immediately and the others in stages before the end of 1993. However, he insisted that Israel reserved the right to "remove for a limited time hundreds of inciters, leaders, organizers" in the future.

The deportees collectively rejected Rabin's offer, saying that none would return until all could return. In August, they dropped their all-or-none position and the following month 181 returned. All were initially held in investigative detention, and some were subsequently released. As of the end of October, 216 remained in the mountainside camp. Thirty other Palestinians, out of over 1,200 deported between1967 and 1991, were also permitted to return during 1993. Their return, granted in response to a demand made by the Palestinian delegation to the Arab-Israeli peace talks, was the largest such return of deportees since the beginning of the occupation.

The Israeli authorities' closure of the occupied territories, imposed in late March, was prompted by a wave of attacks by Palestinian assailants on Israelis. Many of the attacks occurred inside Israel. Like the deportations, in its execution the closure was an act of collective punishment, imposed arbitrarily on large numbers of persons not linked to specific offenses. The closure made it illegal for Palestinians to enter Israel or occupied East Jerusalem without a permit. Palestinians seeking permits were forced to wait for hours outside offices of the Civil Administration, the Israeli military-run local government. Many requests were turned down without explanation, while others were issued only after long waits, and then for only short periods of validity.

Those hardest hit by the new policy were Palestinians previously employed inside Israel, and their families. Before the closure, wages earned in Israel represented as much as one-third of the total income of West Bank Palestinians and one-half of the income of Gazans. Despite the fact that many Palestinians working in Israel had the same deductions taken from their paychecks as did Israeli workers, none were eligible for unemployment benefits. Also affected were Palestinians who needed medical care or had other pressing business inside Israel or East Jerusalem, and Palestinian farmers and businesses whose delivery routes were blocked by the new policy.

The closure compartmentalized the occupied territories, cutting off Palestinians from their main urban center, East Jerusalem, with its specialized hospitals, foreign consulates, and other institutions not found elsewhere in the occupied territories. In practice, the closure also made it illegal for Palestinians to travel between the northern West Bank and the southern half without a permit, since all connecting roads passed through Jerusalem.

By the summer, the number of Palestinians with permits to work inside Israel had crept up to 50,000, less than half the number previously employed. However, the closure continued to harm the Palestinian economy and inconvenience many Palestinians with compelling reasons to enter, or pass through, Israel or East Jerusalem.

On october 22, authorities eased restrictions on entering East Jerusalem. Physicians, lawyers, medical patients and Muslim worshippers were issued permits more readily than in previous months, and the permit requirement was dropped for men over forty and for women.

In Middle East Watch's view, Israel had no absolute obligation to allow residents of the occupied territories to enter its territory or provide them with jobs. However, it did have an obligation to attend to their welfare. After having transformed the West Bank and Gaza economies over the past twenty-six years into satellites of Israel's economy, the government of Israel had a duty to assist families suddenly deprived of their main source of income and for whom no employment was readily available. The small number of low-paying temporary public works jobs created by the Israeli government in the occupied territories after the closure were patently inadequate.

Curfews were another form of collective punishment imposed on security grounds. During 1993, the nightly curfew covering all 800,000 residents of the Gaza Strip entered its sixth year without interruption. In addition, the entire Gaza Strip was under round-the-clock curfews December 14-23 and 30-31, 1992. Shorter curfews were imposed on particular refugee camps, villages and towns on scores of occasions throughout 1993.

There were no long-term school or university closures during 1993, a form of collective punishment that was employed during 1988-1990 in response to demonstrations and disturbances that the authorities blamed on students. However, on about fifteen occasions between January and August, authorities closed particular schools and universities for up to two weeks at a time. Education was interrupted also by the closure of the occupied territories, which created obstacles for students who needed to obtain permits to travel between sectors of the territories.

The political breakthrough of 1993 raised hopes for general improvements in human rights. Under the Israeli-PLO declaration of principles, Israel committed itself to withdraw its troops from populationcenters and turn over responsibility for internal security in some areas to the PLO. However, as long as Israeli forces retain ultimate authority, the Fourth Geneva Convention continues to protect Palestinians resident in all territories captured in 1967-even areas from which Israeli troops withdraw. [For Israel's conduct in Lebanon, see chapter on Lebanon.]

The Right to Monitor

Human rights work was generally permitted in the occupied territories. However, there were constraints, which were far more onerous for Palestinians than for Israelis and foreigners.

Several Palestinian human rights organizations regularly denounced human rights conditions in the occupied territories, and their reports received international attention. New groups have been formed each year. The Jerusalem-based Palestinian press also reported critically on human rights issues, although the Israeli military censor often deleted or toned down the coverage.

Palestinian human rights workers and journalists risked harassment by soldiers at checkpoints and at the scene of disturbances or arrests. For example, Reuters photographer Ahmad Jadallah, a Gaza resident, was beaten by a group of soldiers on June 19 after he had filmed them assaulting a taxi driver in Gaza City. Several such incidents were reported during the year, involving both Palestinian and foreign journalists.

The indefinite closure of the occupied territories in March was a major obstacle to Palestinian rights workers, many of whom initially could not obtain permits to travel between different sections of the occupied territories. Prior to the closure, some human rights workers had already been barred from entering Israel and East Jerusalem.

At least in the case of the Ramallah-based rights organization al-Haq, all of its staff eventually obtained permits after the closure. Palestinian lawyers, except those residing in East Jerusalem, were prevented by the closure from traveling to consult with Palestinians imprisoned inside Israel, although most lawyers eventually obtained permits.

In contrast to previous years, no Palestinian human rights worker was jailed during the first ten months of 1993. However, Sha'wan Jabarin of al-Haq was barred from traveling to France to take part in a human rights course. Authorities stated, without furnishing evidence, that Jabarin was a "senior member" of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and his travel would "endanger the security of the area."

Representatives of foreign human rights organizations were generally able to travel about freely, and to interview Palestinians without hindrance. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) maintained a large field staff in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and was permitted by the Israeli authorities to visit all Palestinians arrested for security reasons within fourteen days of their arrest. The authorities permitted independent human rights organizations, including Middle East Watch, to inspect prisons and detention centers holding Palestinians. However, no group was permitted to visit interrogation wings, the part of the Israeli incarceration system in which the most serious human rights abuses were to be found.

U.S. Policy

The most dramatic moment in U.S. Middle East policy during 1993 was President Clinton's playing host to the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord at the White House. Middle East Watch hopes that the U.S. endorsement of the accord, and its efforts to promote international aid for West Bank and Gaza development, will lead also to a public role in promoting human rights during the difficult transitional phase due to begin by December 1993.

Such a role would represent a change of course for the administration. In his first year in office, President Bill Clinton showed no interest in openly challenging the poor human rights record of the Rabin government, and was quick to assure the Israeli prime minister that he favored maintaining U.S. aid to Israel at its annual level of over $3 billion. At no time did officials suggest that the aid, by far the largestannual amount that the U.S. gives to any country, should in some fashion be conditioned on curtailing abuses.

The only human rights issue that prompted public diplomacy by the Clinton administration was the deportation of 415 Islamists in December 1992, one month before inauguration day. It was in fact the new administration's first foreign policy crisis. The Bush administration had voted in favor of U.N. Security Council Resolution 799 on December 18, 1992 to condemn the deportations and urge Israel to rescind them. At that time, President-elect Clinton expressed concern that the deportations "may go too far and imperil the peace talks."

Upon taking office, the Clinton team lobbied against Security Council sanctions on Israel while Secretary of State Warren Christopher engaged in intensive consultations with Rabin. On February 1, Christopher and Rabin separately announced an Israeli compromise on the deportations. Christopher said Israel had agreed to allow about one hundred deportees to return immediately and to halve the period of exile for the remainder. He also announced that Israel would implement an appeals process that could further shorten the terms of exile, and that Israel would now assure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the deportees. Notwithstanding the fact that Resolution 799 demanded the "immediate return" of all the deportees, Christopher pronounced the U.S.-brokered compromise as "consistent" with the U.N. resolution. Christopher argued that further steps by the Security Council were therefore "unnecessary and ... might undercut the [peace] process which is underway." The prospect of a U.S. veto effectively killed efforts at the Security Council to enact further resolutions on the issue.

It was ironic that Christopher should have announced the deal while at U.N. headquarters, since it represented a bilateral end-run of the U.N. machinery and fell short of the conditions set by Resolution 799. He also claimed that Israel had agreed to stop obstructing humanitarian aid to the deportees, a representation that went unfulfilled: Israel continued to bar the ICRC from conducting a mission to the deportees until September, a matter about which the U.S. remained publicly silent.

While Secretary Christopher worked hard to convince the rest of the world of the merits of the compromise, Prime Minister Rabin presented it to the Israeli public with the cynicism it deserved. On February 1, he described the compromise as a "package deal" that bound the U.S. to "prevent any decisions in international forums that would have operational significance against Israel." He even told Israel's parliament, "The principle of our ability to remove for a limited time hundreds of inciters, leaders, organizers, remains."

This claim begged for a U.S. clarification of its own position on deportations, be they indefinite or temporary. But U.S. officials ignored this comment, at least in public. Instead, when testifying on March 9 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward P. Djerejian preferred to highlight another comment by Rabin-that the deportations were "unprecedented and an exception."

The Clinton administration handled the deportations with a focus primarily on renewing the peace talks. While this was logical, the U.S. at the same time weakened the cause of human rights by lending legitimacy to an inadequate Israeli appeals process, and by lobbying for a diplomatic compromise that left 300 arbitrarily deported persons in exile. In so doing, the U.S. undercut the credibility of a Security Council resolution and muffled its own objection to deportations in principle, a position that the Bush administration had repeatedly expressed.

On March 15, Rabin and Clinton met in Washington, for the first time as heads of government. According to senior aides cited in the press, Clinton assured the Israeli prime minister that he would oppose any attempt to reduce military and economic assistance to Israel not only in the coming fiscal year 1994 budget, but in subsequent years. At a news conference following their meeting, Clinton made no mention of Israel's human rights record. However, he stated that he and Rabin had not discussed the 400 deportees remaining in Lebanon.

During the rest of the year, the Clinton administration made no principled statements concerning Israeli abuses in the occupied territories. It said nothing publicly about the indefinite closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When questioned about it on April 12, a State Department spokesman avoidedraising concerns about its effects on Palestinians. He only noted that the U.S. viewed Israel as responsible for providing security for its people and for the territories under its control.

However, on the closure of the occupied territories and certain other human rights issues, the U.S. privately lobbied the Israeli government. Assistant Secretary Djerejian told reporters in May that the U.S. had asked Israel to ease the closure. A broader protest on human rights was described in the Israeli daily Maariv on June 28. According to that account, which State Department officials would neither confirm nor deny for the record, a senior official had warned the Israeli embassy that the U.S. would report a deterioration in human rights conditions if present patterns continued. The U.S. official expressed concern, according to Maariv, about the high number of children being killed by security forces gunfire and the demolition of houses caused by heavy weaponry used during the search for fugitives.

The Clinton administration did comment publicly when U.S. citizens became the victims of abuse. It lodged a formal protest with Israeli officials at the end of January, when consular officials were prevented for up to five days from visiting three Arab-Americans who had been arrested and interrogated on suspicion of helping Hamas. On February 9, the State Department sent a second letter, expressing concern about the men's allegations that they had been mistreated while in detention. The Israeli government responded that an investigation found no wrongdoing, according to a State Department official who asked not to be named. He called Israel's response "not satisfactory."

The Clinton administration never commented publicly on the routine abuse that Palestinian residents of the occupied territories undergo during interrogation. This, despite the death of a Gazan under interrogation in April and a scandal in Israel over a form that doctors in one detention center were using to verify a detainee's fitness for abuse during interrogation.

For years, successive U.S. administrations have argued that a policy of vocally criticizing Israel's human rights record was ill-suited to advancing the peace process in the region. Middle East Watch believes that Washington's generous annual aid to Israel bestows on it the authority, and the obligation, to be a public advocate for human rights. Speaking out even-handedly on abuses throughout the region will not, in Middle East Watch's view, derail the peace process.

The Work of Middle East Watch

In its work on the Israeli-occupied territories, Middle East Watch devoted resources to one of the main issues it has focused on since the organization was created in 1989: the use of excessive force by Israeli troops.

In June Middle East Watch issued a book-length report titled A License to Kill: Israeli Undercover Operations against "Wanted" and Masked Palestinians. While other human rights organizations had already reported on the phenomenon, the Middle East Watch report made a timely contribution because it documented killings under the newly installed Rabin administration, and supplemented Palestinian accounts with testimony by Israeli soldiers.

Middle East Watch maintained a field researcher in the Israeli-occupied territories for eight months during 1993. Among other work, he conducted over thirty interviews with former detainees who had been interrogated either by the General Security Service or the IDF since the advent of the Rabin administration. The researcher also attended the trial of a Palestinian who said that his confession had been extracted under torture. A report on mistreatment during interrogations was scheduled for release in early 1994.

In December 1992, Middle East Watch issued three statements critical of the mass deportations of Palestinian Islamists to Lebanon. A researcher traveled to southern Lebanon to interview the deportees and inspect their living conditions. The data he collected were combined with information gathered in the occupied territories and released at a press conference in Jerusalem on January 12. Middle East Watch's executive director held a briefing in Jerusalem for the families of the deportees that day, and traveled to the Gaza Strip to make a similar presentation. He also met with Justice Minister David Libai and IDFofficials.

Middle East Watch issued a statement criticizing the decision by the Israeli Supreme Court to uphold the deportations, and wrote a letter on February 4 to Secretary Christopher questioning his enthusiastic endorsement of a compromise on the deportations that failed to secure the immediate return of all deportees. A Middle East Watch newsletter published in August updated the situation of the deportees.

In March, Human Rights Watch publicly urged President Clinton to raise human rights issued during his first official meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In April, Middle East Watch issued a newsletter on the closure of the occupied territories and the isolation of occupied East Jerusalem. When the IDF issued a report defending its human rights record in July, Middle East Watch responded with a brief critique of that document. It also contributed a chapter on prison conditions in Israel and the occupied territories to Human Rights Watch's Global Report on Prisons.

During the year, Middle East Watch wrote to the Israeli authorities about restrictions imposed on a number of Palestinian human rights monitors. Letters were sent on behalf of members of the Khan Yunis-based Palestinian Lawyers for Human Rights who were not being given permits to enter or cross through Israel, and on behalf of Sha'wan Jabarin of al-Haq. Jabarin had been denied permission to attend a human rights course in Europe.

Middle East Watch took no position on the accord signed by the PLO and Israel on September 13, which was a political matter beyond the organization's mandate. However, three days before the signing ceremony, it issued a statement highlighting the absence of human rights provisions in the published declaration of principles, and arguing that a durable Israeli-Palestinian peace depended on respect for human rights by Israeli and Palestinian authorities. Identical letters on the subject were sent to Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Arafat.

Middle East Watch invited Mary Rock, a human rights lawyer and secretary of the Arab Lawyers Committee of the West Bank bar association, to be honored with other international monitors at the Human Rights Watch observance of Human Rights Day in December.