Iran Press/Middle East: "Whilst Israel ratified the Convention against Torture (CAT) in 1991, it has failed to incorporate it into its domestic legislation. Moreover, despite the UN committee’s affirmation to the contrary, Israel claims that CAT does not apply to the Occupied Palestinian Territory," it said in a report.
The Israeli regime has passed several rulings around the issue of torture that have bolstered and condoned the activities of its security services, read the report's Executive Summary.
"Though Palestinian human rights organizations regularly submit complaints to the Israeli authorities they rarely receive a reply, and when they do it is often to inform them that the case file has been closed due to a lack of evidence."
The report said that Israeli law permits the military to hold a prisoner for up to six months without a charge under a procedure known as administrative detention.
"It is during the period of initial detention, whether administrative or otherwise when prisoners are often deprived of contact with lawyers or family members that they are subjected to the most severe forms of interrogations and torture," it added.
Al-Shabaka said that children are not spared the ordeal of imprisonment and torture within the Israeli military system and that they are nearly always denied the presence of parental guardianship during interrogations.
"Whilst physical torture can leave serious bodily damage, including broken bones and chronic muscle and joint pain, especially as a result of stress positions or being confined to a small space, the psychological damage can be even worse, with such conditions as deep and lasting depression, hallucinations, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts," read the report.
It also said that many mechanisms of torture require the complicity of actors within the Israeli military court system, including medical personnel despite the code of medical ethics as defined by the Declaration of Tokyo and Istanbul Protocol that doctors must not cooperate with interrogators conducting torture, must not share medical information with torturers, and must actively oppose torture.
"Doctors in Israel are, for example, complicit in force-feeding – another, albeit less common, mechanism of torture used by the Israeli regime."
For Palestinians, torture is just one facet of the structural violence they face at the hands of the Israeli regime, which entraps them in an open-air prison and deprives them of their fundamental rights, the report concluded.
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