Middle East Trials and Errors

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Some of those put on trial last week had been arrested during the riots and held in detention camps. More than 1,000 others were seized later in a series of carefully planned army and police raids on the homes of suspected protest organizers. Armed with lists of names obtained from confessions of those already under arrest or collected with the help of videotapes shot by army cameramen during the disturbances, troops carried out nighttime raids in such restive refugee camps as Jabalia in Gaza and Balata near Nablus. In addition to their targeted prisoners, the raiders sometimes hauled in any male member of a household whose age made him suspect. Inside Israel proper, police took into custody more than 70 Israeli Arabs and charged them with fomenting disorder for participating in a strike staged two weeks ago to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

Israel governs the territories under laws dating from the British mandate of 1922 to 1948, when the land then known as Palestine was administered by London. Among other things, the code allows authorities to hold security detainees in "administrative custody," without trial, for up to six months. In the tumultuous days preceding Israel's achieving statehood in 1948, such provisions were frequently invoked against Jewish activists agitating for a British departure. With Israel coming under heavy criticism for violating internationally accepted standards of due process in its treatment of Arab prisoners, Rabin was only too happy to recall that history lesson. Said the Defense Minister: "I enjoyed reminding the BBC that the laws in force in the territories today are the laws the British left us."

Even so, Palestinians charged that the Israelis were perverting the laws. They claimed that beatings of prisoners were widespread and that Israeli soldiers urinated on detainees and inflicted other indignities. Even if many of the claims were exaggerated, and Israeli officials adamantly insisted they were, some Palestinians feared that a recent report by an Israeli Supreme Court commission might invite excessive zeal. In effect, the document endorses the use of "moderate" force by the internal-security agency Shin Bet in dealing with its prisoners.

Courtroom procedures were less than ideal. Palestinian lawyers charged that their clients were discouraged from attempting to prove their innocence out of fear of receiving harsher sentences if they demanded a trial and were found guilty. Since the standard $644 fine for a number of acts of rioting is the equivalent of nearly a year's wages for many Palestinians, more than a few were reluctant to contest the charges. Two weeks ago Palestinian defense lawyers in Gaza protested these pressures by refusing to accompany their clients into court, and last week their colleagues in the West Bank followed suit. Said Gaza Attorney Khalid al Qudra: "We find no justice when we can only advise clients to be guilty." The legal boycott had no effect on the proceedings, which, court officials contended, met accepted standards of military justice even without defense lawyers present.