Israel Behind Barbed Wire

Thousands of Palestinians detained in the desert swelter and endure

The prisoners call it Ansar 3, after the lockup in Lebanon where Israel held Palestinian guerrillas captured during the 1982 invasion. Like the original, Ansar 3, deep in the Negev Desert, is something of a prisoner-of-war camp, this time for veterans of the intifadeh (uprising), the sticks-and-stones insurrection against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, a rebellion that began last December and still sputters on. Most of the 2,483 men and boys detained at the Negev camp are in effect political prisoners, held without charge, trial or sentence. They make up half of the nearly 5,000 Palestinians jailed in...

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