Palestinian Prisoners' Day

Many of us often express frustration over too comfortable conditions of prisoners who serve their sentences in jails (I am talking about well-developed countries, with a high level of respect for a human). Cells equipped with satellite TV sets, playrooms, libraries and other facilities; full nourishment meals, frequent passes to the outside world etc. We object to the fact that criminals enjoy relatively good quality/standard of leaving, what on top of it is being financed from taxpayers’ money.

 
And however there is a ground to dispute this situation, the image of penitentiary system in Western democracies is radically more favourable for the inmates in comparison to the plight of some 11000 Palestinian prisoners who are stack in Israeli jails. Palestinian civilians are being regularly arrested in their own land by the occupying forces and put to the military controlled prisons; subjected to torture and deprived of health care; deprived of their right to contact a lawyer and their families; and kept in administrative detention without charge. This is an element of a wide range of instruments, which have been serving the cruel and racist occupation for over 40 years.

Nonetheless, we see Palestinian prisoners as the same sort of criminals as in the Western world. For us a criminal is a criminal. Even worse, we believe that all of these Palestinian “criminals” held in Israeli jails are terrorists. Perhaps if we were less vulnerable to the propaganda and keen to perceive and judge the reality based on facts, we would be more sympathetic.

 
One would have to come and see the demonstration in one of the West Bank cities on the 17 April to feel what it means to have 2 sons lost to the Israeli administrative detention or to feel what means to know a father only from a photograph.

17 April marks the anniversary of the release of Palestinian prisoners in the first prisoner swap deal of 17 April 1974. This year I could witness for myself how emotional and, above all, how important day it is for all Palestinian people. By the way, have you ever thought of an idea of a Prisoner’s Day in your country? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it…? Palestinian people also have the Ministry of the Prisoners Affairs…No other government in the World has got a separate department of this nature.

Anyhow, as every other society, also Palestinians are divided because of many unresolved political issues. But the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is the day of unity, when even the most conflicted factions speak with one voice. Everyone who gets a chance to speak to the crowds at a demonstration or to give TV or radio interview on this day, will call for unity. Because if yesterday their local rival was arrested, tomorrow it may be himself. The Palestinian National Authority (an acting government in the occupied West Bank) is the only government in the world with a separate Ministry dealing with Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. This shows a magnitude of the problem for the society collectively, and every local community and family individually. Since the beginning of the occupation, in 1967, more than 650 thousands Palestinians have been arrested and detained. This figure constitutes 25% of the entire population. It must be understood that arrests and detention are not security measures, as Israeli government claims, but a cold-blooded and calculated policy to Palestinian civilians' obedience and to prevent all forms of resistance. Everyone who has spent some time in the occupied West Bank knows very well, that the sophisticated system of registration and invigilation of all Palestinian nationals used by Israel, almost excludes the possibility of possessing weapons. Additionally, meticulous checks conducted at the military checkpoints, which are the only points of entry for the permitted Palestinian citizens to Israel, make any insurgency intrusion to Israeli land almost impossible (however it is quite hypocritical to build a 6 meters tall Wall separating Occupied Territories from Israel and only randomly check the cars passing through). Thus tens of arrests carried out during the night raids on Palestinian controlled towns and villages are simply unjustified and serve only to break the spirit of the nation. Testimonies and affidavits show that most of the arrested have never had any connections with the resistant fighters groups.
Conditions and treatment of the detainees in Israeli jails is an extension of the racist policy aiming in ethnically cleansing of the Holy Land. Current violations committed by Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinian prisoners and their rights include:
• Torture and other forms inhuman and degrading treatment
• Poor detention conditions
• Denying rights to visits and contact with lawyer
• Medical negligence and denial of healthcare
• Administrative detention

The last routine means holding Palestinian detainees for long periods without bringing them to trial or informing them of the reasons for their detention. These periods of administrative detention may be renewed indefinitely. This is a blatant violation of detainees’ rights according to all international treaties ratified by the State of Israel as well as its own domestic law!
The difference in the approach towards life and human rights is best portrayed by the case of an Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit, who was taken captive by Hamas forces in Gaza 3 years ago and has been held at unknown location. His case became a diplomatic issue and a bargaining card for Palestinians. Only one life of an Israeli citizen has got a dimension of a national importance for Israeli people. 11 000 lives of the Palestinians kept often illegally in Israeli jails don’t deserve a fraction of this concern.

On Friday, 1 May, Palestinian Nael Barghouthi became the world’s record-holder as the longest-held political prisoner.

Barghouthi has completed more than 31 years in Israeli custody and broke the Guinness World Record, which was held by Sa'id Al-Ataba…ironically another Palestinian who was also in Israeli custody. Barghouthi was born in 1957 in Ramallah in the central West Bank. He was detained on 4 April 1978 at the age of 21, and an Israeli military court later sentenced him to life imprisonment. He has already been in prison ten years longer than he was free. This is only one story out of many, affecting lives of entire families. Those families live in hope, that one day their relatives will come back thanks to a prisoner swap; like the one from 17 April 1974.

Already in the second week of my stay in Ramallah, I was lucky to witness such a release. The swap covered 198 Palestinians, who came in an escorted convoy from notorious Ofra prison (in the occupied West Bank), straight to presidential residence in Muqata, in the center of de facto Palestinian capital city of Ramallah. National flags waved from the buses carrying the released prisoners, from the following cars and from the buildings along the route of the procession. The overwhelming atmosphere of joy, national unity and happiness affected me so strongly that on my arrival back to the office where I worked at that time (Palestinian NGO dedicated to building civil society for the Palestinians) I shouted: Palestinian freedom fighters are free!! My colleagues, one of whom himself spent many years in Israeli jails (and a few more on exile in Lebanon), for his journalistic work, looked at me with mercy. The other guy just laughed. I thought: what’s wrong? Not only they didn’t join me to celebrate the “happy” day, but they seamed indifferent to the whole story. The answer was very short and prosaic:

What benefit do we draw from the fact of a release of 200 men, whose by the way most serious offense was stones throwing, if twice this number of new ones is being arrested every month?