Citing Terrorism Concerns, Israel May Return to Torture

JERUSALEM —  When the Israeli Supreme Court ruled three months ago against the use of excessive force by state security agents against suspects--what many would call torture--praise was heard worldwide. Inside Israel, however, a new debate was only beginning.

A number of senior officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were worried about depriving security forces of a valuable “tool” in their fight against terrorism. The only way to make the use of coercive physical force legal, several argued, would be to write it into law.

Today, human rights activists and Western diplomats are warning that Israel may lose the international goodwill it earned from the court decision if it becomes the only country in the world to legislate practices that amount to torture. The Clinton administration in particular has been quietly lobbying Israeli officials to think twice about such legislation.

A bill circulating before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, would authorize “special interrogation means,” including the exertion of “physical pressure on the suspect’s body,” when doing so would save a life or prevent a “real and present danger to the security of the state.”

This is an expanded version of the “ticking bomb” scenario that many Israelis--whose collective experience is riddled with terrorist attacks--argue justifies the use of force against suspects. The theory is that a suspect with knowledge of an imminent attack should be made to give up the information because lives are at stake.

“Israel has to fight terrorism more than any country in the world,” said Reuven Rivlin, a Knesset member from the rightist Likud Party, who is sponsoring the bill. “This cannot be swept under the carpet.”

Rivlin has gathered the signatures of 46 legislators, six more than one-third of the Knesset, in support of the bill and hopes to introduce it in two weeks. The language of the draft, he said, is carefully chosen to narrowly define the circumstances under which force can be used.

But opponents argue that once a government allows coercive force in some cases, it starts down a slippery slope.

“Once you lift the taboo . . . you can’t limit it to exceptional cases. It becomes the norm,” said Eitan Felner, executive director of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that helped press the torture case in the Supreme Court. “If you want to be part of the club of Western democratic states, you don’t torture people, and even less so do you legalize it.”

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, sounded a similar alarm. “The history of torture in Israel should caution against any exception that would legislate the use of torture,” Roth said. “The GSS [Shin Bet, the state security service] has shown itself willing to drive a Mack truck through any loophole it’s given.”

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling Sept. 6, banned state security forces from employing the tactics they had used for more than a decade to extract information from thousands of Palestinian prisoners. The techniques included shaking, forcing prisoners into contorted positions and depriving them of sleep.

Bennett Freeman, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s human rights division, spent a week in Israel recently to discuss the legislative moves. U.S. officials denied a local news report that Freeman had suggested that U.S. aid to Israel would be in danger if such a law is approved.

Barak, who initially said security forces needed a way to interrogate suspects in “ticking-bomb” cases, is now less supportive of doing this through legislation, a spokesman said. He appointed a panel of experts to come up with a solution, but it is divided as to what to do.

Dan Meridor, another Knesset member and former justice minister who testified before the panel against legislating torture, said the dilemma is a painful one: how to strike a balance between preventing terrorism and the need to adopt Western values. Ultimately, he said, every war has its limits.

“There is a price to pay for being a democracy,” Meridor said.