Israeli Press
Haaretz says the army hid a beaten detainee's whereabouts for three days
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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A Palestinian man was beaten during a raid on his village, taken into Israeli custody, and hospitalised. For three days the Israeli army would not tell his family where he was.
Amira Hass reported the case in Haaretz on Wednesday. Sultan Jabarin was arrested last week after Israelis entered his village south of Bethlehem, and he needed medical treatment for what was done to him.
His family learned where he was being held only after two petitions were filed with Israel's High Court of Justice. The Shin Bet's ban on his meeting a lawyer was lifted after those petitions too, Hass wrote, and at the time she filed he still had not seen counsel.
Why three days is the story#
Israeli military law permits holding a Palestinian detainee incommunicado, and the machinery around that permission is what this case exposes.
A family that does not know which facility holds a relative cannot instruct a lawyer, cannot ask a doctor what was done to him, and cannot document injuries before they fade.
The three days were not an administrative delay in reaching an answer. The answer existed the whole time and was withheld until a court was asked for it.
That the restrictions fell away as soon as the petitions were filed is the part worth holding onto. Nothing about Jabarin's case changed in those hours except that it acquired a file number.
The week this sits in#
The report lands in a week of Israeli coverage about what happens to Palestinians when Israelis arrive in their villages and the state's own forces are the ones present.
Haaretz published on Tuesday the account of Dr Majed Alian, the Jerusalem dentist beaten by settlers on his own land near Bethlehem while police questioned him rather than his attackers.
Settlers have held three houses under siege at Ras al-Ein in Qusra since 9 August with the army watching. And the defence minister has ordered the army to hand civilian enforcement over settlers to the police, an order the Jerusalem Post reported he never coordinated with his commanders.
Each of those stories turns on the same question, and Hass's report puts it in its narrowest form: when a Palestinian is beaten and then detained, which Israeli authority is answerable for him, and how long can that authority decline to say where he is.
The answer this week was three days, two High Court petitions, and a lawyer he had still not met.
