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On Jerusalem's Jabotinsky Street, opposite
the President's Residence, a medium-sized plaque is fixed on
a locked gate, enclosing a broad building and a lovely garden:
"This building was the location of the British Mandate Government's
High Military Court, which held the trials of the Hebrew resistance
fighters from the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi." The sign bears
the emblems of the Jerusalem municipality and the three resistance
organizations. It further notes: "The resistance fighters
refused to acknowledge the authority of the court to judge them,
and asked to be recognized as prisoners of war."
The speaker of the Palestinian
Authority's parliament, who was arrested two weeks ago by the
Israel Defense Forces, also refused to acknowledge the authority
of the Military Court to judge him. Obviously the two latest
detainees, whose arrest was deemed by Israel to be the appropriate
solution to its shortcomings in releasing kidnapped soldier Gilad
Shalit, will make the same declaration. Nasser A-Shaer, the Palestinian
education minister and deputy prime minister, and Mahmoud Ramahi,
chief whip of the Palestinian Legislative Council, were arrested
on Saturday and Sunday. Incidentally, the Palestinians have lately
ceased using the verb "arrested" in regards to the
arrests of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. Instead they use
the verb "abducted."
These three detainees/abducted
join about 10,000 other Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
As with the prisoners of the Hebrew resistance, who saw themselves
as POWs regardless of their actions (killing British soldiers
or Arab civilians), some Palestinians request that their prisoners
be declared POWs. Others prefer the definition of political prisoners.
Let's let the definitions rest. In any case, from the offense
to the jailing, Israel, as an occupying force, plays around with
the definitions as it sees fit.
On Sunday, at 4:30 A.M., IDF
soldiers shot and killed a worker, Jalal Uda, 26, and injured
three other Palestinian civilians. This happened not far from
the Hawara checkpoint, south of Nablus. Palestinian newspapers
referred to it as the "crime scene." The young men
rode a taxi in a road bypassing the checkpoints. For the last
several weeks the army has again forbidden young men under age
32 from leaving Nablus. But people have to make a living, and
thousands are looking for hidden routes. An offense punishable
by death, so it seems. The soldiers acted as prosecutor, judge
and executioner. According to the rules of occupation, when soldiers
kill Palestinian civilians, they and those who sent them are
never criminals, suspects, accused or convicts. The brigadier
general who limits the age of those who exit the Nablus compound,
by virtue of his belonging to the "Defense Army" can
also not be considered a criminal, suspect or convict.
When a Palestinian kills an
Israeli--soldier or civilian--his name, picture and details of
his indictment will be published. He will automatically be condemned
to life in jail, and his prime minister or the leader of his
organization will be considered responsible and hence a target
for arrest or assassination. The soldiers who kill Palestinian
civilians are sheltering under the wide apron of the occupation
army. Their names will not be known in public, and their prime
minister and commanders will not be deemed accountable.
The Palestinian detainees are
led to a military court: The same military establishment that
occupies and destroys and suppresses the civilian population
is the one that determines that to resist occupation--even by
popular demonstrations and waving flags, not only by killing
and bearing arms--is a crime. It is the one to prosecute, and
it is the one to judge. Its judges are loyal to the interest
of defending the occupier and the settler.
Allegedly every Palestinian
is tried, convicted and jailed as a private person who committed
a criminal offense. But a sharp discrimination in the conditions
of imprisonment proves that the Palestinian security prisoner
is punished not as an individual, but as a representative of
a group, as part of its overall suppression. Contrary to international
law, the majority of Palestinian prisoners and detainees are
not held in the occupied territory, but rather inside Israel.
Contrary to popular myth, Israel does not respect the right to
regular family visits.
The army does its best to disrupt
the visitation schedule, using various security and technical
excuses. Only relations of the first degree (parents, siblings
and children) are allowed to visit the prisoners, but hundreds
of them have not had the privilege of any visits for several
years. The right to make daily use of a telephone is given to
the most dangerous of criminal prisoners, and is denied from
Palestinian security prisoners, among them citizens and residents
of Israel. This is done via a weak and unconvincing excuse of
a security establishment that has advanced and effective surveillance
devices. The path of sentence reduction and clemency is open
to the Jew (especially when he is a settler) and is almost hermetically
shut to the Palestinian.
It is no wonder that the Palestinians
support every action--such as kidnapping soldiers--that tries
to break the rules of this discrimination game. Every Palestinian
prisoner's personal history is an expression of the freedom Israel
allows itself in the implanting of an extreme subculture of double
standard, discriminating blood from blood, human being from human
being, nation from nation.
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