Palestinian prisoners handled humanely, but they are denied legal status of POWs

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — The 6,000 Palestinians that Israel has captured in Lebanon are being treated humanely, but have not been given the legal status of POWs.

Israeli officials say that armed men of the Palestine Liberation Organization taken prisoner since Israel invaded Lebanon June 6 are being held as “administrative detainees” who may have to face trial and long prison sentences, though this has yet to be finally decided.

The status Israel has given the Palestinian prisoners contrasts with that of the 60 Syrian soldiers taken captive by Israel's invading army and who are regarded in all aspects as prisoners of war.

Palestinian captives have not been granted prisoner-of-war status because they were not serving in the army of a recognized state, especially one — such as Israel, Syria and most other countries — that is a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war.

Israel's position appears to be in violation of the Geneva Convention, Article 2, which declares: “although one of the powers in conflict may not be a party to the present convention, the powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.

They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.” The PLO, not being a state, is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention.

However, it has said that it is treating Israeli prisoners according to the internationally recognized rules, something Israeli officials Wednesday said they hope is true.

Israeli courts always have rejected the pleas of Palestinian infiltrators or others caught carrying out violent acts within Israel or its occupied territories that they had the right to be treated as prisoners of war, not as “terrorists.”

However, Israel never before has been faced with having so many Palestinian captives — caught not while trying to attack Israel, but while trying to defend their bases and refugee camps in Lebanon. Israel is torn by different concerns. On the one hand, it hardly wishes promptly to release thousands of PLO members who could soon be ready to fight Israel again.

On the other hand, Israel is keenly sensitive to the fate of about 10 Israeli soldiers who have been taken prisoner in Lebanon by the PLO or Syria, realizing that if the Palestinian captives are not given all the protection of prisoner-of-war status, neither are the Israeli POWs likely to be.

There is an added complication for Israel in how it legally defines the Palestinian prisoners since the national policy is to refer to all armed Palestinians as “terrorists.”

Thus Israelis would label as a “terrorist” both a Palestinian who plants a bomb that explodes and kills innocent people, and a Palestinian who was drafted into a local militia in Lebanon but never fired a shot at anyone until captured last week.

The Geneva Convention that Israel has agreed to says that prisoners of war include: “Members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such forces” or members of “organized resistance forces belonging to a party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory.”

The Geneva Convention goes on to say that members of resistance groups who should be treated as POWs are those: • “Commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;” • Who have “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;” • Who carry “arms openly,” and • Who conduct “their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”

Israel apparently contends that, as a terrorist organization, the PLO does not meet the last criteria, and perhaps, as a guerrilla force, not the second one. However, the PLO units are organized in military fashion, with their own flag, and members carry arms openly.

Israeli military sources said that part of the Palestinian prisoners are in Israel and part in Lebanon, living in enclosed shelters where they are being fed and receiving medical care, as well as being questioned and classified. The Palestinian prisoners reportedly include hundreds of minors, some as young as 11.

The number of PLO prisoners must be putting a strain on the military police, since they outnumber all the Palestinians being held in Israel's jails for domestic offenses by 2 to 1. The captives include a number of non-Palestinians, including men from Bangladesh, Ceylon and Arab countries who allegedly fought with the PLO.

Context added by this archive

The headline says handled humanely. The story reports that Israel's position appears to be in violation of the Geneva Convention and that the prisoners include hundreds of minors, some as young as 11.

Cite this item

"Palestinian prisoners handled humanely, but they are denied legal status of POWs," Houston Chronicle, 19 June 1982. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1982-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1982-036