Human rights under PA, Hamas rule the worst in years

From AP via Daily Star Lebanon:

OCCUPIED RAMALLAH: A leading Palestinian advocacy group says human rights for people living in the Palestinian territories are at their "worst" in years.

The annual report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said hundreds of people were tortured by authorities in Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas, and in the West Bank, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

It says several people died in Hamas detention and one died while incarcerated in the West Bank. It also says Hamas took 16 prisoners from their jail cells and killed them during the war with Israel last year.

Commission chief Ahmad Harb said other violations include bans on peaceful gatherings. He said rights violations "increased in volume" over the past four years.

Kudos to AP for reporting what is generally unreported.

And brickbats to practically every major subscriber to AP for not bothering to choose this story.

I found this in very few sources; a few Israeli papers and this Lebanese one, plus some generic news aggregators. But when stories about Israel are instantly reproduced in thousands of news sites within minutes, it is very telling that something like this gets all but ignored.

Also, it is interesting that while the original AP story uses a dateline of "Ramallah," the Daily Star says "Occupied Ramallah." I wonder if AP allows subscribers to change their datelines for political purposes.

(h/t Yenta Press)