In Prison, Who Knows Why? --Mohammed Omer

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"My son has been on hunger strike for a week," says Ramdan al-Baba, standing outside the Red Cross office. "He worked as a guard at [former] president Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah in 2003. His crime was that he had that job." The conditions in Israeli prison are dire, he said. "I can't even send him a letter."

Palestinians find themselves unable to invoke habeas corpus, a provision under the Geneva Convention by which a state must produce information on the whereabouts of a person within its jurisdiction. Israel denies this option on the grounds that it is not necessary for persons under administrative detention. At the moment 863 Palestinians have been in jail for more than 15 years under such detention, according to official Palestinian figures.

There are a total of 10,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. These include 90 women and 328 children below the age of 18, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees. Forty-six of the prisoners are members of parliament, mostly members of Hamas.

Israeli human rights groups say that security forces called Shin Bet regularly torture Palestinians in Israeli jails. The two groups B'Tselem and HaMoked: Centre for Defence of Individuals, tracked 73 prisoners between July 2005 and July 2006. They reported that Shin Bet routinely uses "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation" to torture Palestinian prisoners.