Bag’s Take-Away:
You couldn’t have two more complimentary and self-serving pictures: the jubilant Hamas number one One, Haniyeh, with one of his released trophy-prisoners, and Netanyahu with his. ‘It’s all about me’ — AND showing-up Abbas. (photo 1: Israeli Government Press Office/Associated Press caption: Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit saluted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at the Tel Nof Air base in southern Israel..photo 2: Tara Todras-Whitehill/Associated Press caption: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (left) stood with released Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Al Hasani during a welcoming ceremony in Gaza City on Oct. 18.)—————
Topping LIFE.com’s 2011 list of Best Photo Blogs, follow us at: BagNewsNotes; BAG Twitter; BAG Facebook; Bag by Email.
Why is an Israeli soldier worth more than a Palestinian child?
ht.ly
Not one Palestinian child detainee in Israeli jails was released during the prisoner swap last month. More than 160 remain behind bars.
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I have read countless articles and watched numerous videos about Gilad Shalit being reunited with his family five years after his abduction. One typical report noted he was “just 19 years old in 2006 when he was cruelly and illegally abducted by Hamas.” I have been hearing of him for the past five years. I know Gilad Shalit’s name better than I know the names of my classmates.
What I have already forgotten, however, is the names of the 477 Palestinians that were freed. What I will never know are the stories of the thousands of Palestinians who are spending their entire lives behind bars away from their family and friends. The thousands of children, women and men still captivated unjustly in Israeli jails. The children that grew up in cages. The parents that watched their children seized out of their hands and taken away without their consent, forced to watch from afar awaiting news on their child’s whereabouts, praying that their child wouldn’t be tortured — too much. Those are the things, the stories the world has never learned and will never learn. Those are the nameless, faceless heroes that were freed in this exchange, while thousands more continue to languish in Israeli jail.
Ashraf Baluji, Imad Abu Rayyan, Imad al-Masri and Yusuf al-Khalis were only 18 and 19 years old when they were arrested back in 1991. They were part of the first 477 prisoners of war to be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit after spending over 20 years in Israeli jails. Crazily, 1991 was the year I was born. Every breath I have ever taken, every moment I have known of life, they were locked up and tortured.
In every article I’ve read referring to Shalit by his name and the 1,027 Palestinians being released in exchange as a number or as “militants,” the journalist has forgotten to mention that Shalit was an armed and trained soldier that was “kidnapped” from a military occupation vehicle, that the majority of Palestinian prisoners never engaged in military or criminal acts against Israel, and were only accused of resistance to the Israeli military occupation. They have conveniently left out the numerous Palestinian children abducted from their homes and taken far away, usually denied even visits from their parents or lawyers.
In 2009, Time magazine published a story about Walid Abu Obeida, a Palestinian farm boy who was only 13 years old when he was stopped on his way home by two Israeli soldiers aiming their rifles at him. They punched, beat, and arrested him while his parents wondered where he was and why their son wasn’t home yet (“Does Israel mistreat Palestinian child prisoners?,” 30 June 2009).
Alas, Abu Obeida’s treatment was far from an isolated incident. As of the latest figures recorded by Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, as of October 2011, 164 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 years old are behind bars, including 35 aged between 12 and 15 years old (Child detainees, accessed 7 November 2011).
Many are being held without trial or conviction, while others are — often falsely — convicted of throwing rocks at Israeli tanks occupying their land and demolishing their homes.
Key facts forgotten
Israel has arrested more than 650,000 Palestinians, a number equal to about 20 percent of the population, since the occupation of the West Bank began in 1967. We tend to forget that Israel is occupying Palestine when we speak of the two. Palestinians are killed and arrested every day under the pretext of “protecting Israeli security.” Palestinians are kidnapped from their homes and stand trial in Israeli courts, where even Palestinian witnesses have no right to testify, while others are jailed, without trial or charge, under“administrative detention”.
Looking through the list of released prisoners, I found the name of Akram Mansour, who was arrested at the age of 18. He has spent over three torturous decades languishing in Israeli jails for resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. At 51, he finally gets to taste a bit of freedom — although without his mother, father or sister who died while he was in Israeli custody — before the brain tumor he developed in Israeli jails takes life itself from him. In an online Arabic-languge interview with Mansour, he says he currently suffers from paralyzed fingers, missing teeth and blackouts because of the torture he was subjected to, which varied from hammering his fingers to a nail in his forehead to having urine spilled over him and, after filing a complaint, being forced to strip naked in the cold as buckets of freezing water were spilled over him (“The suffering of the liberated prisoner Akram Mansour,” 24 October 2011 [Arabic]).
Robbed of childhood
Twelve-year-old Palestinian boys are robbed of their innocence and childhood behind bars. Sixteen-year-old Palestinian children are tried as adults by Israel, even though the legal age under international and even Israeli law (for Israelis) is 18. Mothers and sisters are arrested and convicted of terrorism for standing up to the occupation. Children are forced to grow up without parents. Men are convicted and sentenced to as many as 36 life sentences for resisting their genocide. In total, 1,027 will be freed while 5,000 remain captive.
Gilad Shalit will be remembered as a hero that endured five years of kidnapping, during which he had regular medical checkups and was placed in as good a condition as Gaza could provide under the Israeli blockade. This is more than I can say for the Palestinian prisoners, who have often been deprived of basic services, including medical attention when needed.
Today, Shalit is a free man with no conditions on his freedom. However, the 477 Palestinians freed in the first part of this exchange were either allowed home, provided they report to Israel monthly and not travel between Palestinians cities; or exiled to Gaza where they may not see their families in the West Bank (who are not allowed into Gaza); or even exiled outside the entire country and banned from ever returning home. Through preventing released prisoners from returning home, Israel violates the most basic of human rights. Article 12 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights states: “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”
A life is a life, and a human being is a human being. So, many now ask why Gilad Shalit’s life is worth 1,027 Palestinian lives. To ask that is to not understand Israel. An Israeli life’s value cannot be estimated, whereas a Palestinian life is of very little to no value. I think I speak for most Palestinians when I say, I’m glad Gilad Shalit is home, safe and with his family, that Palestinians more than anyone understand what it’s like to lose a father, mother, brother, sister, daughter and son. More than anyone, Palestinians understand the joy he and his family must feel now that his back.
Personally, I believe a fair exchange would have been to release all Palestinian prisoners for all Israeli prisoners, namely just Gilad Shalit, rather than making one life worth 1,027 lives. However, knowing that Israel would never agree to that, I congratulate Hamas and the Palestinian people on their victory. And I pray for the remaining 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody, and many more currently being arrested to fill the cells being emptied of 1,027 prisoners.
Dana Halawa is a twenty-year-old American-Palestinian medical student at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan
Activists in Israel arrested for calling for release of prisoners
electronicintifada.netOn Thursday 20 October, a group of approximately forty political activists based in Israel held a protest outside HaSharon prison in Kfar Saba to demand the release of all Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, particularly the female prisoners who were excluded from the prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas.
According to the detainees and to a press released published by Adalah - the Legal Centre for Palestinian Minority Rights in Israel, when the protesters arrived at the prison, a representative of the Israeli police and a representative of the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) ordered them to hold the demonstration in an adjacent area and not on the grounds of the prison. The protesters were also ordered to end the protest at 5pm, less than hour after its start. However, at 4:55pm — shortly before the deadline given by the police had passed — a group of policemen ordered the demonstrators to stop the demonstration immediately on the grounds that it was “illegal.”
Although the protesters informed the officers that a prior agreement had been made with the IPS and the police representatives who had been present earlier, the police insisted that the protesters disperse immediately. Just as the demonstrators were making their way back to the bus and preparing to leave, the police assaulted those who were outside the bus without warning and violently arrested sixteen activists, including two minors, merely for being on the grounds.
On Wednesday 26 October, the Kfar Saba Magistrates Court transferred seven HaSharon protesters to house arrest for four to six days after the police had raided their houses, searched their computers and confiscated their mobile phones. The court also extended the detention of seven other protesters until Sunday, 30 October as well and extended the detention of a 17-year-old Palestinian who was released on 20 October and arrested again on 25 October, until Friday, 28 October.
Political arrests
Orna Kohn, an attorney with the rights group Adalah and a member of the legal defense team representing the detainees, told The Electronic Intifada: “This is clearly a political arrest; the arrest of the sixteen nonviolent protesters was illegal from the beginning and all the motions for extension are legally void.”
Kohn added that the demonstrators were charged with participating in non-permitted demonstration, yet the demonstration didn’t warrant a permit under Israeli law because of its small size. According to Israeli law, a protest of less than fifty participants doesn’t require permit.
The arrest motion that was submitted by the police to the court included the charge of calling for the capture of more Israeli soldiers in order to release all Palestinian political prisoners, which the police considered as incitement to violence and terror. The protesters, however, have vehemently denied voicing such slogans and the police admitted before the court that they had not yet managed to retrieve video recording which they claim prove that the demonstrators called for capturing more soldiers.
The defense team argues that even if some of the protesters had chanted such slogans, it would not constitute a legal offense, as it falls within the threshold of the constitutional right to freedom of expression, and doesn’t meet the criteria of “imminent, clear and present danger” test set by Israeli penal code.
Silencing dissent
Long-time pro-Palestinian activist Yoav Bar, who was among the detainees transferred to house arrest on Wednesday along with his wife Irys and son Adam, told The Electronic Intifada: “The arrest and all that has transpired during the interrogations and court hearings is an attempt by the fascist, undemocratic State of Israel to intimidate Palestinians and silence dissent.”
“The speech that the prosecutor gave before the court on Sunday had nothing to do with legal claims; it was imbued with mantras of patriotism, loyalty to the state and vile anti-Palestinian sentiments,” Bar added. “For a moment, I thought I was listening to Avigdor Lieberman [the extreme right-wing Israeli foreign minister].”
Furthermore, Bar claims that the decision of the court to extend the arrest of the activists was influenced by the pressure from the right wing.
“When we were arrested, we were almost certain we would be released the next day. But the following day, we noticed a change in the attitude towards us,” Bar said. “The treatment got much harsher. We were treated like traitors; and in his decision to extend our detention on Sunday by two days, the judge mentioned that we posed a danger to public safety. During the interrogation, we weren’t asked about the charges submitted against us; instead, we were asked irrelevant questions about the slogans written on our t-shirts. We were even accused of causing a car accident.”
Double standards
Yoav Bar pointed out that while the freedom of expression of Palestinians is shackled, Israeli fascists get away with their incitement and hate-mongering against Palestinians.
“When thousands of settlers chanted ‘Death to Arabs’ on Jerusalem Day, none of them were arrested, while we are being charged of incitement even though there is no evidence we called for the capture of more soldiers,” Bar said.
The case of HaSharon detainees is not closed yet as seven individuals are to appear for a court hearing on Sunday, 30 October to decide whether they will be released. But regardless of the outcome, the prolonged detention of nonviolent protesters proves that any remaining shreds of Palestinians’ freedom of expression are quickly disappearing.
Budour Youssef Hassan, originally from Nazareth, is a Palestinian socialist activist and fourth-year law student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Follow her on Twitter at: twitter.com/Budouroddick.
Michael Treiger is a pro-Palestinian communist activist from Haifa.
“I live down the road from where the Shalit protest tent is, and for the last year each day I have walked past and seen the sad, withdrawn eyes of Noam Shalit. It may be difficult for the world to understand why we can exchange one Jewish life for over 1,000 terrorists. There are two important principles behind this. Firstly, it's not that Gilad could have been our son. It is that he is our son, or brother. The Jewish people are one family. Secondly, save a life and you save the whole world. The deal is dangerous, disproportionate and probably a mistake, yet it is understandable. You take risks to save your family.”
—Ruth, JerusalemAli, released after 23 years in Israeli jails: “I have to learn life”
Israel locks up Palestinian political prisoners with Israeli citizenship, including Ameer Makhoul, in Gilboa jail. On 18 October, three fellow prisoners of Ameer were released in the prisoner exchange deal. Ahmad Amera, who is 44 years old and was held in the same cell as Ameer, spent more than 23 years in Israeli jails. Twenty-two-year-old Husam Khalil was released a few months before his 2.5-year sentence ended. Ali Amaria was released at the age of 46 after spending half of his life in Israeli prisons. The three men could not say goodbye to Ameer because of his transfer to Megiddo prison during the hunger strike. Recently the three men visited the Makhoul family to share memories. The photo was taken on that occasion.
Released fellow prisoners of Ameer Makhoul
I have been corresponding with Ali for some weeks – since being introduced to him by Ameer. In his letters, Ali sheds light on life in an Israeli prison. One letter inspired me to write about Netanyahu’s harsh policy towards political prisoners. After spending 23 years in prison, Ali was released in the exchange deal.
Last week I spoke with him about his “new” life. Although he is disappointed that Israel did not release all the Palestinian prisoners with Israeli citizenship who spent over 20 years in prison, he enjoys his freedom. Assisted by his niece, he is learning how to use a computer. He takes driving lessons and loves the feeling, “All the time in prison I was the baggage, now I am the driver! I went to the seashore and I felt like a kid, playing in the water.” His face is beaming while he freely talks about his feelings. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast to what he wrote from prison a few weeks earlier:
“It is really hard for me to express feelings, just like all the veteran prisoners. We deal with our feelings with the perception of the ‘others’, inside and outside the prison. For example, if I say that I am strong, I am afraid that the ‘others’ will explain it as exaggeration. If I say I a am tired, the ‘others’ will explain it as broken spirit. If I say I am happy, no one will believe me. So I prefer to keep my feelings to myself.”
While we talk his mobile phone rings. He shows it to me saying, “This is the modern technology. We had it in prison too. We smuggled it in and used it.”
After his release, Ali went home to live with his mother. Sadly, his father died four years ago while Ali was still in prison. “I like to help, sweep the floor, wash the dishes. But the women they don’t want me to do so. I told them, no, I am living with my mother, she is ill. I must take care of her. I like it very much. I am learning the life.”
Prison did not break him or his friends, says Ali. “The relationship with our community, with our family makes us stronger. Every two weeks they came to visit me. They make us who we really are. We should do something to stay stable. We have to feel alive. When we are on hunger strike, we feel alive because we are still fighting for our rights.”
Although Ali has been released from jail, he is not really free. The Israeli Internal Security Service - Shin Bet - ordered him not to leave the country for 17 years.
Blogger: Palestinains claim getting a 100,000% return on investment is a bum deal
The normally astute analysis at the Camel’s Nose Blog has instead left me baffled today with a post on the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange:
Wait, wait, wait. First of all, who is making the claim that Israel is forcing the Palestinians to devalue themselves with these deals? I have never heard such a ridiculous idea in my life. The post’s rebuttal of this claim is equally off the mark:Outside of Israel, including here in Washington, there are those who have made the argument that the deal is indicative of a double-standard on Israel’s part. The argument is that Israel devalues Palestinian life as evidenced by the 1027:1 ratio of prisoners involved in the swap. For a single Israeli life, Israel is willing to trade 1027 Palestinian lives, a gaping disparity between its valuation of the two sides of the equation. This argument is controversial but also powerful. More importantly, it raises the question of morality in policymaking, an often-ignored but important facet of the field.
In some ways, the argument is valid. States do consistently value the lives of their own citizens over the lives of non-citizens. Analysts may attribute racial or cultural differences to the disparity, and such attributions may be legitimate. Israel’s valuation of Israeli life above Palestinian life is evident in the conditions imposed on Palestinians through land blockades on the Gaza Strip, checkpoints and arbitrary detention in the West Bank, and disregard for historical land claims along the route of the Separation Barrier.
These points are not untrue, but they are mostly irrelevant. The number 1,027 was arrived at not by Israel, but by the Palestinians. They knew the singular objective of the Israeli government — to return Shalit — and maximized the gain they could extract from the deal. If Israel could have traded away only one Palestinian to get Shalit, don’t you think they would have?Firstly, those in the Palestinian leadership making the argument are themselves benefitting from the prisoner release. This point does not undermine the internal validity of the argument. However, it does undermine the credibility of some of its major advocates. It would be akin to someone attending a protest on oil dependence driving an SUV 6 hours to get there. The action alone doesn’t delegitimize the argument but it should call into question the credibility of the actor making it.
Secondly, the argument implies that the morally superior decision for Israel would have been not to negotiate at all. Since negotiating a 1027:1 prisoner swap devalues Palestinian life, the argument implies that given Israel’s choice between the asymmetric 1027:1 or the symmetric 0:0, the latter would be the optimal (more moral) choice. It bears mention that this has in fact been Israel’s choice for the past five years. Thus, while the final terms may be asymmetrical, they are hardly the result of spurious action by Israel. 1027 after over 5 years of political ramifications is not the same as 1027 a week after the kidnapping. Truly demonstrating the swap is immoral requires accounting for many other variables over the 5-plus year period. If the swap is immoral, it is not only on these grounds.
The unbearable ease of the kidnapping
A lot of distortion of reality and other rubbish in this article but Israel is clearly very embarrassed by how seemingly ”easy” Hizbullah’s abduction of the two IDF soldiers in July 2006 was. See full Haaretz article here and below:
The video clip released by Hezbollah on Friday, which documents the kidnapping of Israel Defense Forces reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, and during which soldiers Shani Turgeman, Eyal Benin, and Vasim Nazel were killed, gives goose bumps to anyone that was there on the Lebanese border, during that forlorn summer of 2006.
The bend in the road near report line 105, east of the northern settlement of Zarit is well known, from multiple visits to the scene of the attack during the months and years that followed.
For the first time, that bend in the road is seen from the other side of the Lebanese border, from a viewpoint hidden in an overgrown wadi, which concealed the ambush that Hezbollah had laid in wait of IDF hummers.
Most importantly, the Hezbollah militants had the camera rolling from the moment the border was breached, and it documented every stage of the incident, up until the point that Goldwasser and Regevwere extracted from their hummer, either dead, or critically injured.
Apparently, there are details regarding the attack that Hezbollah prefers to keep to itself, and whether or not the two soldiers were alive as they were kidnapped and taken to Lebanon is at the top of the list.
Why did Hezbollah decide to release the video now, of all times? Roughly two weeks after the sixth anniversary of the start of the Second Lebanon War, with the world focus in London on eve of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games?
The explanation apparently has much to do with the internal situation in Lebanon, where calls to disarm Hezbollah have been renewed as of late.
On Saturday morning, a Lebanese website, known for its disdain for Hezbollah, quoted a senior official from within the anti-Syria camp, who called the coming elections an “operation to displace Hezbollah’s sovereignty from Lebanon.”
Lebanese parliamentary elections are expected to be held June 2013, and the Shi’ite organization’s situation is a rather uncomfortable one. The video clip is a reminder of Hezbollah’s might, as the true military defender of the Lebanese people.
“We are the only ones who can stand against the Israeli enemy,” says Hezbollah, to the Lebanese people, who are currently focusing their attention on the murders being carried out by Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.
On Friday night as well, clashes took place in Tripoli in northern Lebanon, between militants supporting Assad, and militants supporting the opposition, in which 12 people were injured.
No less interesting is the method Hezbollah chose to release the clip. The clip was released through the relatively new television channel al-Midian, founded by the analyst Rasan Ben Gado, former al-Jazeera office chief in Lebanon, who has close ties to Hezbollah. Ben Gado quit al-Jazeera over the channel’s anti-Syria policy, and founded, apparently with the help of Hezbollah, al-Midian. The release of the video bolsters the new channel, not just Hezbollah.
A few more interesting insights arise from viewing the video:
1.The unbearable ease of the kidnapping – contrary to some of the earlier estimations, that the fence was breached at night, under cover of darkness, the video reveals that the Hezbollah forces crossed the border in broad daylight, a minute or two (unless the video was edited at this point) before opening fire on the IDF hummers.
Hezbollah forces apparently watched the eastward movement of the patrol on the winding road and timed their attack. Hezbollah knew that it was a “dead area” in terms of visibility for IDF observation posts. (Division 91 had requested a camera be erected at the spot, but the request was turned down due to budgeting concerns. The camera was erected a week after the kidnapping.) The Livne bunker, located on report line 105, was not regularly manned at the time, and other posts and observation points were attacked during the kidnapping, to make it difficult for IDF forces to respond.
2. The patrol didn’t return fire – from the video clip, it was a completely one-sided fight. The ambush took the soldiers in both hummers by surprise. Some were killed on the spot by anti-tank missiles, before they could respond. Two soldiers, including the driver of one of the hummers, escaped, wounded, and hid in the bushes. The video clip does not show the arrival of other IDF forces. The first additional IDF arrived at 9:45 A.M., roughly 40 minutes after the incident began.
3. The negligence was all encompassing – Days before the end of the war, IDF forces conducted a search of the area north of the border fence, and found a Hezbollah bunker on a hill overlooking the scene of the kidnapping (apparently very close to the point where the clip was filmed). Hezbollah forces had managed to carry out extensive preparations for the operation under Israel’s nose.
IDF activity on the Lebanese border between 2000 and 2006 was low on the list of priorities, because of budget problems, and lack of availability of equipment and manpower. Israel also gave up demonstrating sovereignty, and other aggressive military activities in the area, in efforts not to start a conflict with Hezbollah at a time when Palestinian terror was running rampant within the West Bank. The result: Hezbollah took the initiative, and its efforts led to war.
Apparently there is a hidden message here, for current times. The balance of power is clear: the IDF is immeasurably stronger than Hezbollah. Even though Israel did not win the Second Lebanon War, the blow dealt to the Shi’ite organization has proven strong enough to prevent it from starting a second round, to this day, in spite of Hassan Nasrallah’s frequent victory speeches.
It would be a terrible mistake however, to underestimate Hezbollah’s capabilities once again, regardless of whether the decision to act comes from Beirut or Teheran.
In 2006 we were surprised by the kidnapping, the attack on the navy vessel “Hanit,” the Battle of Bint Jbeil, and the rocket fire in the north. If another conflict were to start in the future, it must be taken into account that not only the IDF, but Hezbollah as well have been training and improving during the years of intermission.
Israel Offers Prisoners Release in Exchange for Palestinian UN Bid
imemc.orgThis is bullshit.
After years of reneging on prisoner release agreements - either by never releasing them or by releasing them then picking them up again later - Israel makes an incredibly piecemeal offer to release less than 50 prisoners if the UN bid is stopped.
Even if you restrict your attention just to administrative detainees, and only those from East Jerusalem and the West Bank, then that would still be (at most) fewer than one in five.
The offer to “come back to the table” is just adding insult to injury.
Fuck Zionism.
Al Jazeera: Support Grows for Palestinian's Prison Strike
english.aljazeera.net
At least 60 activists in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Israel have started an open-ended hunger strike in support of Palestinians already fasting in Israeli jails against allegedly worsening conditions.
A solidarity camp by youth was launched in the Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday in a “spontaneous response” to the detainees’ strike that was declared two weeks ago, organisers said.
“We mainly have two reasons: to support the prisoners and raise their morale [in continuing their hunger strike] and to raise awareness of the Palestinian political detainees,” Muhannad Abu-Gosh, an organiser of the Haifa camp, told Al Jazeera.
Some 50 Palestinian political prisoners began a ongoing hunger strike on September 27. Other prisoners have since joined in. As of Sunday, 234 inmates were fasting, Sivan Weizman, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Prison Service, said in a statement.
Weizman said the strikers, who are now on their 13th day of fast, are “under daily medical supervision and their situation is satisfactory”.
Voicing support
Thousands rallied last week in Haifa, Gaza City and the West Bank cities of Nablus and Ramallah against the “oppressive conditions” of Israeli prisons.
In Gaza City, hundreds rallied in support of the prisoners’ strike on Sunday and more such protests are planned.
Also on Sunday, a mother of a prisoner began a hunger strike in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices in Ramallah. Smaller gatherings and sit-ins took place in East Jerusalem.
The ICRC is the body responsible for monitoring and protecting detainees’ human rights and maintaining contact with them.
In Nablus, a tent set up on Tuesday to support the hunger strikers now recieves at least 1,500 visitors each day, Beesan Ramadan, a student at An Najah University, said.
“I’m hoping that it’ll carry on towards something more continuous in related to the prisoners’ issues in general,” Ramadan said.
Tougher restrictions
In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced tougher restrictions on Palestinians’ prison rights, as part of an effort to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas.
Shalit was seized outside the Gaza Strip in 2006. Hamas, the ruling power of the coastal territory, is seeking the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for his freedom.
Rights groups said the clampdown included preventing access to books, educational programmes and new clothing. It also expanded the use of solitary confinement, reduced family visits and forced detainees to meet their lawyers with their hands cuffed.
According to a March 2011 United Nations report, about 6,000 Palestinians are currently in 22 prisons in Israel and the West Bank.
Some have been denied contact with the outside world, including their families, for as long as five years, the report said.
