What is happening to MAZRAAT the tens of thousands of
imprisoned
Palestinians
Some weeks ago, in a Turin hospital, International Viewpoint correspondents in Italy were able to talk to wounded Palestinians evacuated from Lebanon, as well as a doctor from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, who worked in the hospitals during the Israeli invasion.
The wounded Palestinians said:
Since the Israeli invasion was part and parcel of the Zionist government's aggressive policy, the Palestinian people In Lebanon were not surprised by it, any more than they were by the preceding wars.
All that the Palestinians had to defend themselves with was their determination and the resistance forces of the PLO. A civilian population found itself facing an army of 160 thousand men armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated American-made instruments of destruction. The latter included nerve-gas bombs, fragmentation bombs, and vacuum bombs, which
EL B certainly cannot be called conventional weapons.
The result of all this was that whole villages were destroyed. The outstanding example is the Ain el Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Even after the nearby city of Sidon fell, and after twelve hours bombardment from the air and sea, it was razed by bulldozers to keep the remaining people from continuing the resistance.
On the ruins of Ain el Hilweh, a concentration camp was set up without any buildings for the remaining population and the other prisoners to live in. The bulldozers started rolling while those wounded in the fighting were still lying on the ground.
At present, there are about 70 thousand unhoused Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon, most of them around the cities of Sidon and Tyre.
We asked the doctor about the situation of the prisoners being held by the Israelis.
We only have information about those in southern Lebanon. Moreover, we have been unable to update those because the Israeli authorities will not allow the Palestinian medical aid bodies, such as the Palestinian Red Cresent Society, which is part of the International Red Cross, to operate.
There is some information provided by the International Red Cross, but it is not reliable. The facts they present have always been very different from the ones we have. It is well known that the International Red Cross is not all that neutral.
In the Ansar concentration camp, there are 25 thousand civilian prisoners. The Israeli authorities have nothing against them except the fact that they are Palestinians. Their families are not allowed to visit them, and they are not permitted any contact with the outside world. The treatment of the prisoners has similarities to the procedures in the Nazi concentration camps. For example, the Palestinian prisoners wear a yellow star, the Lebanese a white cross.
It is impossible for us to know exactly what is happening to these prisoners, but there have been some eyewitness reports of executions, atrocious torture, and accounts of many deaths. All this, clearly, is in violation of the Geneva Convention, which requires occupying forces to provide medical assistance, food, and shelter for prisoners.
Another grave fact is the disappearance of 700 members of the Red Crescent. Despite our appeals to the Red Cross and other international bodies, we have been able to get no word of them.
Some of our foreign colleagues who worked with us in the hospitals during the invasion were taken prisoner. They have reported that most of the Palestinian medical personnel were imprisoned with them and then deported to pris ons in Israel. We know even less about what is happening in these prisons than we do about the ones in southern Lebanon.
International public opinion must not be allowed to forget about the tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese being held in concentration camps and prisons by the Israeli authorities.
(For an account of the conditions in these camps and prisons, see "Caught in an Israeli Roundup," an intervieu with a member of the Lebanese section of the Fourth International who was held several weeks by the Israelis. International Viewpoint, No 19, December 13, 1982.)
It is essential that all those interested in human rights keep asking questions about what is going on in these camps and prisons. A spot light must be focused on them.