Elizabeth Finkel

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F any Arab suspected of selling land to Jews, death by torture or a bullet to the head is becoming an occupational hazard. And, with another Arab realtor seriously ill in hospital after alleged torture, the Palestinian Authority’s death-penalty edict on Arabs who sell land to Jews means that medical staff who resuscitate patients—presumably to be returned to jail for further torture— are now acting under the authority of their own government (see Lancet March 1 p 627). This is one of the many human-rights abuses being documented in the region. The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group published The State of Human Rights in Palestine on May 26, charging PA security forces with systematic torture to extract confessions, even when the detainee could not have possibly committed the crime. One man accused of several murders in 1993 confessed under torture despite International Red Cross documentation that he was in an Israeli prison at that time. Chairmen of US Senate foreign relations and House international relations committees pledged on May 28 to withhold aid to the PA in protest at the death-penalty edict. Undeterred, PA Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein has extended his threat of execution to Israeli Arabs— 20% of Israel’s citizens—with execution for selling property to fellow Jewish citizens. “Israeli Arab real-estate agents are mistaken if they think that their Israeli ID papers will protect them from the Palestinian Authority”, said Abu Medein, adding that 12 Arabs have been arrested on suspicion of selling land to Jews, and “heavy sentences will be handed out to those found guilty”. On May 31, Mahmoud Ali Jamhour, who worked in a Jerusalem sandwich shop, was found dead with two bullet holes in the back of his head. This came after detention and interrogation by PA police, because he sold a small house in Jerusalem to buy another in the Shuafat refugee camp where he lived. Jamhour is the third Arab found dead since the formal announcement of the death-sentence policy. Abu Medein has denied any PA connection with the deaths. On May 28, the Israeli humanrights group, B’Tselem, released the report Prisoners of Peace: administrative detention during the Oslo process, which details Israel’s detention without charge or trial of about 800 Palestinians since September, 1993. At least 11 of the 249 still detained will have spent more than 3 years in detention when their current order expires. “Administrative detention is not illegal under international law. However, the Israelis’ use of it poses serious injury to due process rights; international law requires its use solely as a short-term . . . measure, in response to clear dangers to security”, said Jessica Montell, author of the B’Tselem report.

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Guernsey approves abortion The tiny channel island of Guernsey became the last place in the British Isles to legalise abortion last week. By 34 votes to 20, the island’s parliament approved legislation allowing a pregnancy to be terminated up to the end of the 12th week, provided two doctors give their consent. This will replace an 86-year-old law that made abortion punishable by life imprisonment. Many amendments were brought during the debate but all were rejected or withdrawn. Around 150 women travel each year from Guernsey and neighbouring islands to obtain a legal abortion in the UK. Proposing the law, Sue Plant, president the Board of Health, said that the island had to confront the problem . “That is what this House has done today, and very nobly”, she added. Anti-abortion campaigner Nick Paluch disagreed: “This is a sad day for Guernsey—one worries that over a period of time some of the concerns we have been expressing over abortion on demand will start to happen”. The issue has provoked one of the most controversial debates seen in the island since World War II. In July, Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, gave final approval to its abortion law, which permits a woman to choose by herself to have an abortion up to the end of the 10th week of pregnancy. Both islands’ laws now await Royal Assent by the Privy Council.