Israel Behind Barbed Wire

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Beatings and other varieties of brutality are rare. Minor infractions of camp rules may be punished with an hour "in the corner" -- kneeling in the dirt, hands behind the back, forehead to the ground -- while more serious troublemaking can earn a stay in solitary of two to four days. Three times daily the prisoners are mustered outside their tents, hands behind their backs, heads down, to count off. Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi, once a pediatrician from Khan Yunis and now an administrative detainee at Ansar, is known as No. 561. Says he: "Our hearts are bleeding, and we prefer to die rather than do this."

"Everything is done to break our spirit," says Mutawakel Taha, 30, a journalist from Khalkilya. "We are completely isolated from everyone," says Raji Saalim, 28, who used to live in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. Newspapers are rare at Ansar 3, books -- except the Qur'an -- and radios are unavailable. Few of the prisoners at Ansar 3 have seen any relatives, not even those who are detained in another section of the camp. The army responds that family visits to the prison have been prevented by "activist Palestinians," who intimidate relatives. The families complain about the cost, the long distance they must travel and formidable amounts of red tape.

For their part, Israeli military officials insist conditions are no worse in detention than in Israeli military camps. They defend regulations as necessary for "security" and argue they are providing more privileges for those in detention than convicted criminals normally receive.

Before the uprising, some 5,000 Palestinians were confined in Israeli jails, but only a relative handful were under "administrative detention," the imprisoning of security offenders for six months without trial. In March the army abolished a requirement for judicial review of detention orders; appeals were reinstituted only two weeks ago. As of now, well over a third of the 5,000 people jailed for involvement in the intifadeh have not been charged or tried. The detained population includes doctors, lawyers, labor leaders, | students, human-rights activists, close to 30 journalists, as well as hundreds of suspected members of the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization and the growing Islamic fundamentalist movement.

Justice is almost as harsh for Israelis accused of supporting the intifadeh. Last February the authorities closed down the tiny left-wing newspaper Derech Hanitzotz (Way of the Spark), which was known for its pro-Arab views. Eventually all six of the paper's editorial staffers -- five Jews and one Arab -- were arrested. Israel accused two of the publication's female editors of membership in the illegal Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Remanded for trial, the journalists have been held without bail in a women's prison, where inmates last week violently assaulted them.

Few of the Ansar 3 prisoners who managed to appeal their detention orders have won release. The brief appeals hearings before a three-man military tribunal generally amount to little more than ritual. And so the prisoners will continue to languish in their tents, with little to do but discuss politics. Detention, says Inmate No. 1,231, Kassan Ali, 29, of Gaza, "only strengthens our demand for national rights. Conditions here create more hatred."