Israel Released 198 Palestinian Prisoners

by IsraeliLawStudent | August 24, 2008 at 10:41 pm

535 views | 35 Recommendations | 13 comments

Update: PA President Mahmoud Abbas, along with other PA officials, did not accept Israel's goodwill gesture, and calls on Israel to release all prisoners "in order for there to be peace." The Palestinian Authority pointed to statistical data showing that Israel is imprisoning far more Palestinians than it is releasing.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asserted on Monday that there would not be peace with Israel until all Palestinian prisoners were freed, speaking shortly after Israel released 199 jailed Palestinians.

Officials in the Palestinian Authority do not appear overly enthused by the Israeli cabinet's recent decision to release 199 prisoners, including detainees with 'blood on their hands', as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to data provided by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the IDF has arrested 1,751 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, including 500 who have been detained since last month's Mediterranean summit in Paris, during which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to free more prisoners.

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As a further measure to show goodwill to Palestinians who respond to Israel's calls for peace, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to release 198 prisoners to the Palestinian Authority.

Regev said the prisoner release is "an important confidence-building measure" that Israel hopes will show the Palestinian people that Abbas' government "can, in fact, deliver much more for their own people than the extremists, than the terrorists ever can.

update: Prisoner release has been completed. 198 Palestinian prisoners (originally 199, however one was discovered to be pending criminal investigation) were released from the Ofer prison, and delivered to the Betunya checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Each released prisoner signed a written declaration to abstain from further terror activities.

The release of 198 Palestinian prisoners, including two convicted murderers, began Monday morning at Ofer Prison between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

The prisoners boarded a bus after signing a commitment to abstain from terror activity. They are set to be transported to Beitunya checkpoint north of Jerusalem and then on to a welcoming ceremony in Ramallah, attended by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other PA senior officials. They will then be reunited with their families in the West Bank.

According to last week's cabinet decision, 199 prisoners were due to be released as a goodwill gesture to Abbas. However, one of them was discovered to be under a pending criminal investigation and he was removed from the list.

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Albert Milliron

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 23:58 on August 24th, 2008

IsraeliLawStudent, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Heritage

at 04:46 on August 25th, 2008

Over the 40 years of Occupation more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained. Todays release of 200 smacks of PR opportunism.

“Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).”

Uwe Paschen

at 00:39 on August 25th, 2008

Politisite this is a copy, not intro nothing not even one single word! Why the flag?

Dave Keating

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 02:44 on August 25th, 2008

IsraeliLawStudent, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Rhonda J Mangus

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:26 on August 25th, 2008

IsraeliLawStudent, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Christina 123

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:35 on August 25th, 2008

IsraeliLawStudent, I like this story. It's good stuff. This is an important story.

Heritage

at 04:14 on August 25th, 2008

There are more than 11,000 (337 are children) Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody. Many of them are held without due process and almost all of them are tortured.

Releasing 2% of these prisoners while detaining another 1,751 (15%) in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, is nothing more than a PR stunt.

They are most likely releasing the prisoners because there is no more space to house them.

How many Israeli prisoners do the Palestinians have?

According to ifamericansknew.org only ONE.

11,000 to one...

Heritage

at 03:59 on August 25th, 2008

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel is an Israeli NGO whose reports give a very bleak view of life in Israeli custody.

"Each released prisoner signed a written declaration to abstain from further terror activities."

With torture being routine in Israeli prisons, I can't imagine that they will stop resisting Israel's brutal 40 year occupation. And so the cycle continues....

Zahalka: torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons is the rule, not the exception

June 2008

Nablus / Amin Abu Wardeh – Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, is using Thursday, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, to bring the issue of Israeli torture of Palestinian political prisoners to the table.

Zahalka is proposing a full discussion on the report issued by the People’s Committee against Torture in Israel which details the ways in which Israeli soldiers routinely mistreat Palestinians.

“The occupation soldiers are trained in the school of sadism; they torture Palestinian detainees and abuse them.”

The report referred to how the soldiers deal with the Palestinians after they are handcuffed, shackled and have had their eyes covered. It outlines 90 cases among thousands where political prisoners are subjected to brutal torture by Israeli soldiers.

In his speech Zahalka described this kind of treatment as sadistic, that torture is used just for tortures sake and that no matter what types of Israeli justifications they try to employ, there never can be.

He pointed to the fact that they do not pose a threat to the soldiers: not in their cells, during the interrogation or questioning, or during the process of being transferred to interrogation.

Zahalka said that the Israeli army's claim that there are no set procedures for dealing with the Palestinian prisoners is the “ugliest excuse for their guilt.” He asserts that there are procedures and rules, even if they are not written on paper.

As a small example in a sea of mistreatment, said Zahalka, are soldiers beating Palestinians, but before doing so throwing them onto the hot steel of the hoods of military jeeps. After that comes the kicking.

Finally Zahalka said that torture and ill-treatment is the rule rather than the exception.

IsraeliLawStudent

at 04:24 on August 25th, 2008

Israel has a right to carry out punishments against terrorists, and certainly has a right to imprison them at the very least. This point must not be neglected. The release of prisoners is a goodwill gesture - a PR stunt as you say - however Israel is still acting beyond its ethical duty and endangering its own population in doing so.

Christina 123

at 05:48 on August 25th, 2008

Good point, the BBC report that some of the prisoners had expected to serve life. We should remember the controversial releaseof Israel's Lebanese prisoner Samir Qantar (...sp?) in June this year. It is hard to keep all of this in context.

Uwe Paschen

at 06:02 on August 25th, 2008

I am not against Israel nor Palestine and yet I would advice some caution, the word terrorist is used a little to lightly by Israel especially since 911, and some of those prisoners are legitimate prisoners and should not be freed, others that are not being freed should be free, yet those are a political might that Israel does not want to see free.

Further if Israel has the right to imprison criminals of War, then so does Palestine with Israeli combatant and hate preachers. It always goes both ways.

This land was taken from the Palestinian by force and they are the one that are resisting same as the French resistance to the German invaders in WWII or the Polish Resistance.

Big difference. Should Israel wanting to keep on existing into the next generation or two, it will have to reform it self, give up the Apartheid like Politics and give the occupied territories back to Palestine as well as link Gaza and the rest of Palestine geographically again.

Heritage

at 06:38 on August 25th, 2008

Further if Israel has the right to imprison criminals of War, then so does Palestine with Israeli combatant and hate preachers. It always goes both ways.

Paschen, very true thanks for the context. This point must not be neglected.

This land was taken from the Palestinian by force and they are the one that are resisting same as the French resistance to the German invaders in WWII or the Polish Resistance.

Resistance to Occupation is legitimate. The cycle of violence will not end until the Occupation is ended. These points must also not be neglected.