After having promised for a long time the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees, Israel has announced the release of 250 prisoners whose terms had almost expired —some members of Fatah and none of Hamas. Prime Minister Olmert defined the gesture as “a generous attempt to reinforce the moderate part of the Palestinian Authority,” but thousands of political detainees and hundreds of others without any charge still remain in Israeli jails. The selection of names to inscribe on the list of the fortunate was made maintaining the criterion formulated by Sharon to exclude those “with bloody hands.”

Reactions. The negotiator of the ANP, Saeb Erekat, expressed appreciation for the liberation of Palestinian detainees, while the prime minister of the emergency government, Salam Fayyad, indicated that among those who will be released there are no political detainees, implicitly refering to the lack of freedom for Marwan Barghouti, the popular and charismatic leader of Fatah. The liberation of those 250 detainees is “an insult to the Palestinian people and to President Abu Mazen,” the spokesman of Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhr, commented: “Israel arrests ten people a day, sometimes dozens,” he declared. “Therefore, the release of 250 prisoners close to their release date changes nothing and certainly doesn’t improve the image of the occupation.” “A decision scorning Palestinian public opinion and institutions,” the minister of information of the former national unity government, Mustafa Barghouti, defines it. He reminds that there are 11,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, of whom 376 are children and 105 women, while on average 100 are arrested every month.

Car thiefs. A few days ago a noted Israeli journalist, Uri Avnery, anticipated the release of the 250 Palestinian prisoners, describing it ironically as “the generous gift lavished by Olmert, like that of a sultan who throws coins to the poor. Israeli jails are full and Israel needs to make space for new detainees,” he wrote, underlining that in the past Israel has always released only prisoners at the end of their sentences and “car thiefs.” The choice of Olmert to free only Fatah detainees, according to Avnery, will have the effect of sabotaging the attempts of reuniting the two major Palestinian parties: “It will end with stigmatizing the men of Fatah as collaborators and Abu Mazen as the president to whom only his own men matter. Avnery also recalls that the document of the prisoners of Hamas and Fatah that led to the birth of the now ended government of national unity was born in Israeli prisons. In recent weeks Israeli soldiers have made daily raids in the West Bank and Gaza in order to arrest fighters in the armed Palestinian groups. Between Sunday and Monday Israel arrested 17 Palestinians—the majority bound to Hamas—and killed one of them. In this case, too, Israel seems to be acting in concert with President Mazen, who last week ordered the disarming of all the fighters in the West Bank in order to obtain in exchange the end of the embargo of the emergency government established by Fatah in the West Bank.

Gilad Shalit. Last weekend Ofer Dekel, the former director of Shin Bet, went to Cairo to give Egyptian negotiators another list of prisoners that Israel would be disposed to release in exchange for the liberation of Corporal Shalit, a prisoner of Hamas since June of 2006. The Islamic party has immediately published its disappointment in learning that in this list, too, no names bound to Hamas or to the Committees of Popular Resistence figure. The negotiation, however, seems more complex than in the past, given that the same Egyptian negotiator, Omar Suleiman, announced that he will not return to Gaza until Gaza is under the control of the Islamic party. In June, 2006, the day after the capture of Shalit, Hamas asked for the release of all women and children in Israeli prisons, but then Israel did not want to mediate and preferred to invade Gaza with the bloody operation Summer Rain--that did not lead to the liberation of the young soldier.

 

Naoki Tomasini