The mother of an administrative detainee.
WEST BANK, PALESTINE – Ayman Ramahi is a resident of Jalazone refugee camp. Ramahi describes his 16-year-old son, Mutasem, as “the cleverest son I have.” But at 16, Mutasem was arrested on the charge of establishing a military group called “Lion.” He has been in detention for nearly two years, but Ramahi says the charges against his son are false.
Mutasem has joined the likes of hundreds of students here who have been put into administrative detention, a form of detention used when national security is said to be threatened. Students are often held without formal charges for undetermined lengths of time. While widely unpopular with human rights groups, legal analysts say administrative detention is necessary in some areas, including the United States, which uses the terms of administrative detention to hold people suspected of engaging in terrorism.
But here, advocates say it is not just an issue of detention. It is about education.
Educators say that since the First Intifada – the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule from 1987 to 1993 – the detention policies of the Israeli forces have often targeted students and interrupted the education of Palestinian students like Mutasem. According to Defense for Children International Palestine, DCI, an international children’s rights organization, approximately 6,700 secondary school students have been put into administrative detention in the past nine years. Since 2004, 411 students from Birzeit University have been detained, with similar detention rates at Al-Najah University, Al-Quds University and Bethlehem University.
The students who have been detained and put into detention tend to be those who are most active in school organizations, such as student council, says Anan Quzmar, coordinator of Birzeit’s Right to Education Campaign.
According to Amos Guiora, a professor of criminal law, global perspectives on counterterrorism, national security law, and religion and terrorism at the University of Utah, the terms of administrative detention have been in effect here since the Defense Emergency Regulations of 1945 and have been approved by the Israeli Supreme Court. According to the terms of the regulations, an individual may be detained when intelligence information indicates that he or she may be involved in a future act of terrorism. The maximum period of administrative detention is six months, but the stay may be renewed for an additional six months an unlimited number of times, Guiora writes in a blog called Opinio Juris.
Student activists say their peers have been arrested under administrative detention for actions ranging from throwing stones at soldiers to taking part in protests to joining student or political organizations.
Students are often detained on the basis of Military Order 1591, which empowers military commanders to detain someone, including children as young as 12, without charge or trial, for up to six months if they have “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention.” The World Organization Against Torture, a global human rights organization, reports that these administrative detentions are often based on “secret evidence” and are renewed just before the expiry date so the detention can continue indefinitely.
“The fundamental premise of the administrative detention model is the individual’s involvement in a future act,” Guiora says. “While human rights organizations, Israeli and international alike, have been extremely critical of the process, which denies the detainee the right to confront his accuser, the High Court of Justice has upheld the measure as lawful and necessary in the context of national security provided the following questions have been weighed and balanced by the military commander, who signs the detention order based on the recommendation of the intelligence community.”
NGOs and campus organizations, such as Birzeit’s Right to Education Campaign, provide legal services for students and attempt to reintegrate them back into the university after their stints in detention. Although advocates suggest a troubling pattern in the rate and timing of arrests, some families do not want to pursue cases after the students are released. Although many students do not return to their schools after a stay in administrative detention, some students do return to school, but often choose to attend different institutions in order to distance themselves from their past affiliations, Quzmar says.
Politically Active Students Feel Targeted
Students affiliated with on-campus student organizations, political parties or military groups are most often targeted, Quzmar says. Information from the Israeli army suggests that it formally initiated this policy at the beginning of the First Intifada in 1987 in the form of a military order that banned an on-campus student society. Since then, students belonging to those organizations say they have been subject to intense scrutiny, with approximately 100 students detained each year.
Former Birzeit student body president Fadhi Hamad was arrested and sentenced to 18 months during his first term in 2006. The charge was belonging to the student government. Upon his release, he returned to school and was re-elected to his former position. But he was once again imprisoned, as were his vice president and the vice president’s deputy. Nothing is known about his other political activities. While Hamad could not be reached for comment, he is just one of three of the last four student body presidents at Birzeit who were arrested during their terms as president for their involvement in student groups. About 75 university students remain in administrative detention today.
After a year of working with the Right to Education Campaign, Quzmar says he has observed a troubling pattern in the rate and timing of arrests. Generally, students in their first year are targeted with the aim of scaring them away from student organizations, but there is also a pattern of arresting students in their final year of study.
“You have four years of education behind you,” Quzmar says, “and if you don’t cooperate with them – whatever that cooperation means – then you will lose your education and have to wait and probably repeat. So you are on the verge of graduating, and then they arrest you. That’s when they can pressure you most.”
Israel has long argued that the administrative detention of students in the West Bank is “an imperative security measure,” according to a 2007 national security report. But, officials with the Israeli army did not return requests for comment on this issue.
Still, the rate of arrests changes little from year to year and widely depends on student actions.
“It would be foolish to say [their] forces have a quota for arrests,” Quzmar says. “But after a year of working here, it feels as if they do.”
Administrative Detention Rules Questioned
Many of the students who are imprisoned under administrative detention say they did not have legal recourse during their detentions, and attorneys confirmed that they remain uninformed about the reason for the students’ arrests.
According to an Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, detainees have no say in the process.
“Administrative detainees are not provided meaningful information on the reasons for their detention and are not given an opportunity to refute the suspicions against them,” reports the B’Tselem Web site.
As such, legal advocates say it is nearly impossible to fight the charges or additional six-month extensions in detention.
One such case involved Arafat Dawood, a student who began studying at Birzeit in 2003 and was arrested in 2004 for belonging to a student organization. He was released after serving his 18-month sentence. But he was arrested again in 2006 and this time placed under administrative detention. His sentence was renewed six times before he was released in 2010.
Fighting for Students’ Release
Attorneys from DCI and Birzeit’s lawyer, Elia Theodory, say they face difficulties in defending clients under administrative detention in Israeli military courts because many students choose to plead guilty to the charges of belonging to a student organization or to stone throwing in order to reduce their time in prison.
According to a DCI attorney who asked not to be named for fear of harming some of his clients’ pending cases, innocent students often serve their sentences instead of fighting the charges in order to avoid the time they would be forced to spend in jail while their guilt or innocence is determined.
“Notably, no Palestinian has ever been released by the Israeli forces for being innocent; only on lack of evidence,” the DCI attorney says.
Although Birzeit’s Right to Education Campaign has worked to raise awareness around individual cases of students in administrative detention, they say generating awareness is often extremely difficult because of opposition from the students’ families.
“The families are worried [the campaign] might backfire and the Israelis will punish their sons even more because of any hassle a campaign can cause them,” the DCI lawyer says. “The families also don’t believe that a Palestinian campaign can make a difference. Who cares what the Right to Education Campaign or Birzeit University thinks?”
Seventy-five Birzeit students remain in administrative detention.