Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Page 32

Special Report

Tension Builds Over 3,500 Palestinian Prisoners Israel Holds in Defiance of Its Oslo Commitments

By Stephen Sosebee

April 18 was Annual Palestinian Prisoners Day in Palestine. To mark the occasion, thousands of Palestinians both inside and outside of Israeli prisons marched, demonstrated and clashed with Israeli soldiers throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More than 3,000 Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli jails went on a one-day hunger strike to protest their continued detention, according to Hisham Abdel-Razek, the Palestinian Authority (PA) official in charge of prisoners’ affairs.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Palestine thousands of people carrying placards that read: “There can be no peace until prisoners are released,” and “Prisoners are the heart of the Palestinian Issue Now” demonstrated in solidarity with the striking prisoners. In East Jerusalem, Israeli troops broke up one such march with tear gas and clubs, injuring several civilians and arresting a half-dozen more.

In fact, a campaign is under way by various forces within the territories to confront the continued detention of more than 3,500 Palestinian political prisoners (3,648 according to Israeli government figures) in violation of the Oslo accords. Since the signing of the 1993 PLO-Israel accords, the Jewish state has freed more than 7,544 Palestinians in partial fulfillment of its Oslo pledge, but Palestinians are becoming increasingly outspoken in demanding that Israel fulfill its signed commitment to release the rest of the prisoners.

Israel was supposed to free Palestinian prisoners in three stages: after the 1995 West Bank deal was signed, before Palestinian elections in early 1996, and during final status talks. Under the original timetable the final status talks should already have begun, but now it seems unlikely that they will be completed so long as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remains in office.

“There can be no peace without the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails,” said Palestinian Minister of Social Affairs Um Jihad, wife of assassinated Palestinian leader Abu Jihad. She led a demonstration outside Gaza headquarters of the International Red Cross Committee on the eve of a visit by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Palestinians are not the only people suffering inside Israeli prisons. On April 20, an Israeli court extended for another six-month period detention orders against 21 Lebanese prisoners held as “bargaining cards” in negotiations over missing Israeli servicemen in Lebanon.

These hostages include Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid, the Hezbollah cleric who was abducted by IDF commandos in 1989, and Sheikh Mustafa Dirani, another Shi’i Muslim leader who was kidnapped from his home in Lebanon in 1994. Under Israeli law, so-called administrative detention orders are subject to judicial review every six months.

“Israel holds Lebanese nationals as hostages and no one says anything.”

“Iran and other Middle Eastern countries are called ‘terrorist states’ and suffer international sanctions for suspicion of supporting the taking of hostages,” says Lebanese journalist George Karim in Beirut. “Israel directly holds Lebanese nationals who have not committed any crime as hostages and no one says anything. It is this type of hypocrisy that breeds so much anger in the Arab world.”

On April 15, Ahmed Katamesh was released after spending more than five years in an Israeli prison under administrative detention. Katamesh, a journalist suspected of being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), expressed mixed feelings at his home in the West Bank town of el-Bireh following his release.

“I am torn between happiness at being home with my family and the painful memory of the deaths of my mother, father and brother—I have just come from the cemetery—and my anger at the policy of administrative detention.’’

Israel is not the only country holding people without charge or trial in prison. The PA continues to hold 31 suspected Hamas activists without charge following the killing of bombmaker Muhyiddin Sharif in Ramallah earlier in April. Dozens of other Palestinians remain in PA prisons without trial or charge for opposition to the Oslo accords. In a move that reflects Israeli measures in the West Bank during the intifada, the PA closed the Reuters Gaza office on April 9 for “distributing false news” relating to the assassination of Sharif.

A Growing Movement

While both Israeli and PA officials employ arbitrary measures to deal with opposition, a growing movement on the streets of Palestine is confronting the issue of political prisoners through an international campaign. On April 15, a Middle East prisoners aid group began collecting signatures of one million people in and outside of Palestine urging Israel to release the remaining 3,500 political prisoners.

Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi, a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was the first to sign the petition, which was organized by the Palestinian Society to Defend Prisoners in Israel.

“This campaign aims to approve the legitimacy of our cause, and to tell Israel that in the era of peace, there must be not one single Palestinian prisoner in its jails,’’ said Hisham Abdel Razek, the PA official and the head of the society who spent 19 years in Israeli prisons.

Political prisoners in both Israeli and PA jails continue to be rallying points for grassroots movements in Palestinian towns, camps and villages. The longer the Netanyahu government continues to hold its thousands of Palestinian prisoners in violation of the Oslo Accords, the greater the movement will grow. Without some evidence of Israeli good faith, the problem is contributing to the buildup of tensions that most observers predict will lead to renewed bloodshed and violence in the immediate future.