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Prisoners as hostages
by Khalid
Amayreh
Israel's adamant refusal to
free as many as 6,500 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners is
once again galvanising the Palestinian public and infuriating resistance
groups. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have warned this week that the
fragile truce with Israel would be terminated if the prisoners were not
released.
Earlier this week, the Israeli
government agreed to release around 350 prisoners, including mostly
"administrative detainees", "agitators", and prisoners whose prison
sentences are about to expire.
According to the Palestinian
Prisoners' Club, many of the detainees Israel plans to release could be
classified as "prisoners of conscience" who have been in detention without
charge or trial on the mere suspicion of encouraging or aiding resistance
fighters.
What the Palestinians fear
most is a repetition of the Israeli tactics during the "Oslo years", when
successive Israeli governments sought to keep thousands of Palestinian
prisoners as bargaining chips, ostensibly in order to blackmail the
Palestinian Authority and extract fundamental political concessions
pertaining to such central issues as Jerusalem, settlements, and the right
of return.
Such fears are reinforced by
the Israeli government's decision to adopt stringent criteria for
releasing Palestinian detainees, which would effectively keep more than 90
per cent of the detainees behind bars.
According to the Israeli
criteria, all prisoners who have killed or injured Israelis would not be
released. And it doesn't matter if the Israelis killed were soldiers
attacking Palestinians, or paramilitary Jewish terrorists, or civilians,
nor, indeed, if the killing was in self- defense or in the battlefield.
For Israel, all Palestinian
fighters are "terrorists" and all Israelis killed are "victims of terror".
Moreover, prisoners affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine are also to be doomed for open-ended
incarceration. This, said one PA official on condition of anonymity, is
the perfect prescription to provoke Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to break
the cease-fire and resume the armed Intifada.
Likewise, detainees whom
Israel deems might revert to active resistance in the future and those who
are still undergoing "legal" proceedings, would not be freed.
More to the point, the 350
prisoners Israel plans to release would be freed in trickles, depending on
the extent to which the Palestinian Authority fights "terror". Adding
insult to injury, Israeli Transportation Minister Avigdor Liberman urged
the Sharon government to drown Palestinian POWs in the Dead Sea rather
than release them. This is the same minister who last year urged the
Israeli army to bomb Palestinian markets, banks, schools, hospitals and
shopping centers for the purpose of driving them out of the country!
Interestingly, neither the
Israeli prime minister nor any of his cabinet ministers bothered to
criticise or even rebuke Liberman for these genocidal remarks.
The perceived Israeli
blackmail over the prisoners' issue has predictably provoked Palestinian
factions, particularly Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and outraged the
Palestinian public as a whole.
"We demand and insist that all
Palestinian prisoners and detainees be freed from Zionist jails. The
Zionist regime alone bears full responsibility for the consequences of not
freeing the prisoners," warned Islamic Jihad leader Abudllah Al-Shami.
Likewise, Hamas spokesmen in
Gaza and abroad also warned that the present truce would become "a thing
of the past" if Israel continued to refuse to release Palestinian
prisoners. To highlight their demands, Hamas and Islamic Jihad organised a
massive protest in Gaza on Sunday in solidarity with the prisoners. The
demonstration served as an unmistakable message to all those concerned,
particularly the Palestinian government.
The prisoners themselves are
also pressuring the Palestinian Authority to devote utmost attention to
their plight. As many as 900 political and resistance prisoners appealed
to the PA leadership on Monday to utterly reject the Israeli
categorisation of the prisoners into those who have "Jewish blood on their
hands" and those who don't.
"How about the thousands of
Israelis who murdered Palestinians, including children and women? Is
Jewish blood more precious than our blood," the prisoners asked in their
appeal. The prisoners further insisted that they all be recognised as
prisoners of war captured while defending their country, freedom and
dignity.
The issue of the prisoners
could be proven to be deal-maker or breaker depending on how the Israeli
government intends to deal with it. Indeed, it would be very difficult to
maintain the current cease-fire, let alone make genuine progress on the
roadmap, if a satisfactory solution to the prisoners' plight is not found.
Furthermore, continued Israeli
intransigence in this regard is likely to embarrass and weaken the Abu
Mazen government and create an incendiary situation throughout the
occupied territories that could lead to the resumption of the Intifada.
Meanwhile, the Israeli
government reportedly promised to "examine" the possibility of releasing
imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti who has been held in an Israeli
jail on suspicion of "leading the Intifada" and "masterminding terrorist
attacks".
The release of Barghouti would
serve as a temporary boost for the Abbas government which badly needs to
demonstrate to the Palestinian public that it is achieving something.
However, the emotions surrounding the prisoners' issue would continue to
hang over the implementation of the roadmap.
This week, PA Minister for
Internal Security Mohamed Dahlan met for the second time in less than a
week with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.
The two reportedly discussed
further Israeli army redeployment from more West Bank towns. Mofaz
described the meeting as "positive" while Dahlan dismissed the Israeli
decision to release only 350 Palestinian prisoners as "too little and
below our expectations."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian
premier paid a courtesy visit this week to Hamas founder and spiritual
leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the latter's home in downtown Gaza. The
"personal visit" reflected the new positive chemistry between the PA and
Hamas, something the United States and Israel deeply and openly scorn.
Abbas, whose popularity has
scored a certain rise in the past two weeks, was due to meet once again
with Sharon to discuss further implementation of the roadmap.
Abbas plans to ask Sharon to
withdraw Israeli forces from Hebron and Ramallah and lift Israeli
restrictions on Palestinian movement within the West Bank. He further
plans to ask Sharon to stop Israeli incursions and sweeping arrests in the
West Bank, something which Palestinian resistance groups view as a
provocative violation of the cease-fire.
This week, the Israeli army
arrested scores of Palestinians in Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin and Hebron,
prompting one Palestinian commentator to remark that "for every
Palestinian prisoner released, Israel arrests 10 Palestinians."
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Al-Ahram Weekly & Khalid Amayreh
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