While the Israeli violations detailed in this report-including hostage-taking, denials of ICRC and family visits, and long-term arbitrary detention-have been known for several years, the U.S. government has said or done practically nothing to prompt Israel to conform its treatment of Lebanese prisoners and detainees to international human rights and humanitarian law standards.
According to officials in the Department of State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs interviewed by Human Rights Watch, the United States government has made no public demarches in recent years on the issue of Lebanese detainees held hostage, in extended periods of detention without charge or trial, or beyond expiration of their sentence, or on the issue of prolonged incommunicado detention or the denial of family visits.77 The Israel chapter of the Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996 provides only the following terse summary of the problem:
The Government detains 140 non-Palestinian Arabs, who comprise a mixture of common prisoners, administrative detainees, and security detainees. It continues to deny the ICRC access to two Lebanese citizens, Sheikh [sic] Mustafa Dirani and Sheikh Obeid. The disposition of these two cases appears linked to government efforts to obtain information on Israeli military personnel believed to be prisoners of war or missing in Lebanon.
Aside from the Country Reports, however, the United States has rarely, if ever, publicly criticized Israeli policies towards Lebanese detainees.
77 Human Rights Watch/Middle East telephone interview, Washington, D.C., February 7, 1997.