Palestinian prisoners in Zionist jails
With media reports increasing recently about the conclusion of the on-again, off-again prisoner exchange between Hamas and the Zionist entity, Addameer’s monthly statistics on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are a good reminder of the disparity between colonizer and colonized, occupier and occupied, oppressor and oppressed.
It is pathetic that the Israeli
army tank gunner who was pulled out of his tank by Palestinian freedom fighters with the aim of exchanging his freedom for that of hundreds of illegally detained Palestinians has become one of the most famous prisoners in the world. The Israeli corporal was involved in the indiscriminate shelling of the Gaza Strip that had left dozens of innocent Palestinians dead in the preceding weeks, yet since his capture on June 25th, 2006, he has been portrayed sympathetically in the Western press.
No sympathy is reserved for the two Palestinians abducted by Israel from Gaza the day before. Their names and fate are not known, and the indifferent reaction to their fate would’ve been the same had 200 Palestinians been abducted that day.
The October statistics are startling; while world leaders lobby for the release of one soldier involved in the shelling of refugees, more than 7,000 Palestinians languish in Israeli jails. Of these, 350 are children held with adults rather than in their own wings. 335 prisoners are held in administrative detention-imprisoned for consecutively renewable six month periods without trial, without charge and without ever being allowed to access the evidence held against them.
Israel runs a network of notorious prisons and interrogation/torture centers within the Green Line, such as Petah Tikva, Megiddo, Hadarim and the notorious Nafha desert prison, where Palestinian prisoners are held in tents. It is a violation of international law for prisoners from an occupied territory (such as the West Bank and Gaza) to be transferred outside these territories for detention. The families of prisoners must face torturous labyrinthine bureaucracy for the chance to visit their loved ones for a few minutes every few months, and many are regularly denied permission to do so. Prisoners from Gaza have been banned from family visits for over two years now.
And while most media reports of this issue parrot the Israeli party line by describing those that may be freed in any prisoner swap as ‘terrorists’, the plight of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel without charge or trial and in violation of international law receives no comparable coverage. The entire world knows the name and life story of the Israeli tank gunner-but not many people think the fate of Mohammad Othman is of any importance. Othman is a human rights defender and a member of the grassroots Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine. He was arrested on his way back into Palestine from a speaking tour in Norway where he was advocating non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation. He has been in jail and under interrogation for two months, and was recently given a six month administrative detention order.
In the end, it’s the grassroots activism of Othman that will eventually change the biases that deem the fate of a colonial soldier more important than that of a human rights defender. And until then, its only the capture of these colonial soldiers that will win the freedom of people like Othman.
