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Allegations of West Bank Torture Increase
(Financial Times-UK) Tobias Buck - According to former inmates and activists familiar with Palestinian prisons in the West Bank, prisoners affiliated with the Islamist Hamas movement are beaten regularly and deprived of medicine and basic comforts such as blankets and mattresses. There is evidence that a significant number of detainees are tortured during interrogation. The most common form of abuse is known as Shabeh, in which detainees are handcuffed and bound in stress positions for long periods. There has been a sharp rise in reported cases of torture and abuse by members of the Palestinian security forces, leading Human Rights Watch to remark last month that "reports of torture by Palestinian security forces keep rolling in." Many analysts and observers fear that life in the West Bank is taking on an increasingly authoritarian hue. "I feel real concern that we are reaching the level of a police state," says Shawan Jabarin, the director of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group. For governments in Europe and North America, the worsening human rights situation poses a thorny political dilemma. Many of them provide generous financial support to the PA, and the U.S., fearing an Islamist takeover of the West Bank, has provided much of the training for the PA security forces. Human rights abuses raise difficult questions for donors: "If we are building a police state - what are we actually doing here?"