Palestinian prisoners: No more than bargaining chips for Israel

A Palestinian woman wipes her tears during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah April 17, 2008, marking Palestinian Prisoners Day.

REUTERS/Fadi Arouri (WEST BANK)

Women and children carrying pictures of their loved ones imprisoned in Israeli jails filled the streets of Palestinian towns and cities today as they marked Palestinian Prisoners Day. The question of prisoners is a burning issue that touches the hearts and lives of all Palestinian families, who have at least one member that has been arrested and imprisoned by the Israeli military.

Since the beginning of its occupation of Palestine in 1967, Israel has detained more than 700,000 Palestinians. This is over 24% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, making Palestinians one of the populations most subjected to incarceration in the world.

The launching of the Annapolis peace process in November 2007 represented a small glimmer of hope for prisoners and their families that their situation may start to improve. Yet since Israel declared its ’good intentions’ at the Annapolis meeting, a further 2,437 Palestinians have been arrested – three times more than the number released in the same time period.

This brings the total number of Palestinians in Israeli jails today to 9,087, including 786 in administrative detention and 88 women. Some 49 are members of the Palestinian parliament, jailed without charge for having been democratically elected. Inside Israel’s prisons, Palestinians are separated from other prisoners, similar to the racial segregation between blacks and whites in South Africa during Apartheid.

Arrest campaigns also target children

There are now 327 Palestinian children in Israeli jails. The number of children arrested in 2007 and in the first three months of 2008 has brought the total number of Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli military since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 to over 6,000.

Like the majority of other Palestinian prisoners, Palestinian child prisoners routinely face violations of their human rights during arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. They are exposed to physical and psychological abuse, amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and sometimes torture. They are denied prompt access to a lawyer and often denied contact with their families and the outside world.

This is a clear breach of international law, which makes special provisions for the protection of child prisoners, specifically forbidding the use of physical and psychological torture.

But more generally, the simple fact that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners are held in jails inside Israel is in itself illegal under international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids the occupying power from detaining prisoners outside the territory it occupies, and states that if convicted, these prisoners should serve their sentences within the occupied territory.

A burning issue for Palestinians, a convenient media stunt for Israel

One of the main shortcomings of the Oslo process was the failure to set free all prisoners. Israel held on to a large number of Palestinian prisoners and was able to make political gestures at will by releasing token number of prisoners.

This strategy, which continues to this day, has two advantages for the Israeli government.

Firstly, there are always Palestinian prisoners to release. The Israeli military carries out continuous arrest campaigns across the West Bank and is always refilling its jails with Palestinians. Walking along a settler-only road is enough to be incarcerated. And arbitrary detention is used widely. The Israeli military has become an expert at “fabricating” prisoners.

Secondly, these gestures look good. Each liberation is widely covered. TV crews broadcast footage worldwide of Palestinian families rejoicing at the reunion with their loved ones, and Israeli politicians can easily play on this to paint themselves as peacemakers. But more importantly, these gestures have no genuine impact on the ground. While the world is watching images of joy and celebration, in the background, settlements are expanding, checkpoints are increasing, and the Wall’s construction is advancing.

The whole drama is livened up by the preliminary “debate” among the Israeli establishment about who can or cannot be released, giving one more opportunity for an Israeli Prime minister to pose as “courageous” and as “taking bold steps towards peace”.

For the Israeli government, releasing prisoners is a win-win decision, making them look committed to peace whilst never addressing the core issues of the conflict.

But just like the farce of removing non-existent checkpoints, these empty gestures mislead world public opinion because of the dominant Israeli narrative which overplays any Israeli act while never confronting it with reality.

It is time to put a stop to this sham, and to deal with the question of Palestinian prisoners from the perspective of human rights and international law, with an aim to bring about a just and lasting peace for all, not cheap political haggling and short-lived media stunts.