The Wrong Brother

The Israeli soldiers hammered on Abed al-Rahman al-Ahmar's door at 3 a.m. last Nov. 22. Wearing night-vision goggles, the soldiers hauled him out into the darkness to the olive grove in front of his Bethlehem home to shiver with his parents and siblings, al-Ahmar's family recalls. "Where's your brother Bilal?" the soldiers demanded. Al-Ahmar said he didn't know. After two hours, al-Ahmar's family says, one of the soldiers spoke into a radio headset: "We don't have the package, but we have the brother of the package." That was al-Ahmar. The soldiers took him away for questioning. He still hasn't come home.

Since 1994, al-Ahmar has been in and out of Israeli jails often enough to accumulate five years of time. Not once in that period has he ever been formally charged or tried. He's been held instead under what Israel calls "administrative detention," one of the most controversial aspects of its occupation of Palestinian lands. As a gesture of goodwill to the Palestinians since President Bush began a new peace initiative in April, Israel has freed some 270 administrative detainees, bringing the number held down to 850. Palestinian officials, however, complain that those let out were mostly prisoners who were close to serving out their six-month period of detention anyway. Bringing home all the detainees — plus those convicted in Israeli courts — was one of the main demands of militant Palestinian groups in their cease-fire announcement this month. The Israeli cabinet approved a list of 350 detainees and convicts for release last week, though none were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas needs a bigger prisoner release to deflect criticism from his own Fatah Party that he's giving away too much to the Israelis. Last week that criticism was so harsh that Abbas offered his resignation from Fatah and threatened to quit as Prime Minister. "Without the prisoners' release, the cease-fire will collapse," he has said.

Israeli human-rights groups say Israel has held 6,000 people in administrative detention since 1988, the first full year of the first intifadeh against occupation. Last year, Israel increased its use of this power after invading West Bank cities in an effort to suppress the new uprising. In each case, the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, sends a secret file of evidence to a military officer, who issues the order. It is reviewed by a military judge in the presence of defense attorneys, who aren't shown the evidence. Israeli army officials say they're following a Fourth Geneva Convention provision that allows states to incarcerate people who might present a danger during military actions. But human-rights groups accuse Israel of applying the provision in a way far more widespread and long term than the Convention intends. "Israel uses this narrow exception far beyond the bounds of what international law allows," says Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli human-rights organization B'tselem.

Al-Ahmar's case is one of the most troubling. A field worker for B'tselem, al-Ahmar, 35, was alleged by Israeli military officials to be a "senior military activist" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Al-Ahmar denies it. During a long spell of detention in 1996, he says, he was subjected to torture. After his release, he was one of the petitioners in a landmark 1999 case in the Israeli Supreme Court that banned the use of torture by the Shin Bet. Before he was arrested in November, he filed suit against the Shin Bet for $200,000 in damages. The case is still pending.

While the P.F.L.P. was behind a number of lethal shooting attacks on Israelis during the latest intifadeh, including the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister, a senior Palestinian security official told Time that al-Ahmar hadn't been involved. Bassem Eid, who employed al-Ahmar two years ago at his Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, calls al-Ahmar "a peaceful person." Al-Ahmar has told Time that he believes Jews and Arabs should live together peacefully as equal citizens of a single state in the land that now makes up Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Last year, he married an Israeli Jewish attorney, Allegra Pacheco, whom he met in jail when she represented him. Pacheco gave birth to their son, Quds, two months ago.

When al-Ahmar was arrested last November, an Israeli army spokesman told Time he was "not wanted, but is needed for questioning" — presumably about his brother. But an administrative detention order was issued the following month stating that al-Ahmar was "a risk to the security of the area." Al-Ahmar expected to be released in early June, but his Israeli lawyers discovered the day before his release that the detention had been renewed through December. Israeli military officials say they won't bring him to trial because "the evidence against him is classified." Al-Ahmar says he has "dreams about receiving a trial, even if it wouldn't be a fair trial. Just so I would know why I am kept here in prison." At a recent hearing to review the renewal of his detention, al-Ahmar's lawyer showed him photographs of the new son he has never seen. Al-Ahmar asked if he could take the snapshots back to his tent in the camp. The judge refused. He didn't have to give his reasons.