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Israel
Index
The penal system of both Israel and the occupied territories
was administered by the Israel Prison Service, a branch of the
Ministry of Interior independent of the Israel Police. It was
headed by the commissioner of prisons. The prison system was
originally set up in 1926 as part of the British Mandate police
force. Many of the prisons still in use in 1988 were built in the
1930s by the British authorities. Outside the authority of the
Prison Service were police lockups located in every major town and
military detention centers in Israel and the occupied territories.
As of January 1, 1987, the Prison Service operated thirteen
prisons and detention centers in Israel and eight penitentiaries in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Palestinians of the occupied
territories serving sentences of more than five years were
incarcerated in maximum security prisons within Israel. The prison
population in Israel was 3,837 and in the occupied territories was
4,527. Neve Tirza, the sole facility for women, had ninety-seven
inmates.
These totals did not include the sizable numbers of
Palestinians who were being held in military detention centers. As
of mid-1988 about half of the detainees were confined at Ketziot,
a tent camp in the Negev Desert close to the Egyptian border, which
held at least 2,500 prisoners. A large number of rock-throwing
juveniles were held at Ansar 2, a camp in the Gaza Strip. As
described in the Israeli press and by visiting human rights
officials, tension among the detainees at Ketziot--many of them
business and professional people--was high owing to petty
humiliations, boredom, severe climatic conditions, overcrowding,
and isolation. No radios, watches, or books were permitted.
Punishment included periods of exposure to the fierce desert sun,
but beatings and brutality were said to be rare.
Israeli prisons were chronically overcrowded; violence and
abuse on the part of the staff were common. As of the early 1980s,
an American specialist described the available occupational and
rehabilitation facilities as only nominal. An investigative
commission appointed by the Supreme Court reported in 1981 that
"the condition of the prisons is so serious, subhuman, and on the
verge of explosion that it calls for a revolutionary change in the
way prisons are run." Conditions were especially bad in two of the
four maximum security penitentiaries, Beersheba, the largest prison
in Israel, and Ram Allah. At Beersheba the commission found severe
lack of sanitation, drug smuggling, and close confinement with
almost no opportunity for exercise. The commission recommended the
demolition of the Ram Allah penitentiary as unfit for human
habitation.
Palestinian and international human rights groups have
complained of widespread and systematic mistreatment of Arab
prisoners. Periodic hunger strikes have been undertaken by
Palestinian prisoners demanding the same basic privileges as Jewish
inmates.
A number of new prisons were completed during the early 1980s
and, as of 1987, construction of a new prison hospital was
underway, as were new wings at several existing prisons. The
increased accommodation would, however, do little more than provide
space for a rising prison population. During 1986 the total number
of inmates had risen by 587 while new construction added 670 spaces
in the prison system.
Supplementary courses to enable prisoners to complete
elementary or secondary education were available and completed
successfully by nearly 1,000 inmates in 1986. In some prisons,
employment was available in small-scale enterprises operated by the
prison service or by private entrepreneurs. About 2,700 prisoners
were employed in some fashion. A total of 500 inmates participated
in vocational training in 1986 in a variety of trades, including
carpentry, bookbinding, printing, tailoring, and shoemaking.
Furloughs were granted for good behavior; 15,000 permits for
home leave were issued in 1986. A temporary parole often was
allowed non-security prisoners after serving one-third of their
sentences. After completing two-thirds of their sentences, such
prisoners could earn a permanent parole for good behavior. Although
parole privileges were not extended to those convicted of security
offenses, the president had the power to grant pardons and, on
occasion, group amnesties were offered to security prisoners.
During 1986 about 40 percent of the prisoners in Israel were
serving sentences for crimes against property and a further 19
percent for drug trafficking or possession. In the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank, nearly 36 percent had been convicted of terrorist or
hostile activity, although many others were serving sentences for
related crimes, such as use of explosives and Molotov cocktails,
armed infiltration, and endangering state security. Less than 6
percent had been convicted of property offenses.
* * *
Among general studies on the IDF, one important work is The
Israeli Army by Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, which provides
both a historical and a contemporary perspective up to the
mid-1970s. Additional material can be found in Zeev Schiff's A
History of the Israeli Army, 1874 to the Present, published in
1985, and Reuven Gal's A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier,
published in 1986.
A vast amount of writing on the Israeli national security
establishment resulted from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Perhaps
the work with the greatest impact was Israel's Lebanon War
by Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari. This highly critical account, with
considerable detail on the personal interaction among leading
political and military figures, caused an uproar when it was
published in Israel. Flawed Victory, by Trevor N. Dupuy and
Paul Martell, recounts Israel's military involvement in Lebanon
over a somewhat longer period and provides a detached appraisal of
the performance of the IDF.
The Middle East Military Balance, 1986, by Aharon Levran
and Zeev Eytan, includes country-by-country analyses of the
competing forces in the region. The study assesses the growing
external security threat to Israel posed by the Arab military
build-up between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s and the budget
restrictions affecting the IDF beginning in 1984. The capabilities
of the IDF vis-à-vis its Arab neighbors are also examined in
briefer commentaries by Kenneth S. Brower and Drew Middleton.
Since limited data are available from official sources on the
units, personnel strengths, and equipment of the IDF, much of the
discussion in this chapter is based on estimates published in
The Military Balance, 1987-1988, by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Israel's links with many
other countries in the form of military sales and training
assistance are traced in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's The Israeli
Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why. A fuller, more scholarly
treatment of the same subject is Israel's Global Reach: Arms
Sales as Diplomacy by Aaron S. Kleiman. One chapter of Bernard
Reich's The United States and Israel: Influence in the Special
Relationship is devoted to the military aspects of cooperation
between the two countries. Mordechai Gazit's article, "Israeli
Military Procurement from the United States," provides additional
details on the subject.
An overview of the first six months of the uprising that began
in the occupied territories in December 1987 can be found in Don
Peretz's "Intifadeh: The Palestinian Uprising" in the summer 1988
issue of Foreign Affairs. Israeli punishment and legal
sanctions against the Arab population are assessed in the United
States Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1988
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