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An Occupier's Generous Gesture: Israel's Prisoner Swap Deal Is Neither
Historic Nor Generous
Dr. Aref Assaf
October 17, 2011
First published in the Star ledgers NJ Voices
 Astoundingly, the prisoner swap deal struck between
Hamas and Israel is being marketed as an unprecedented act and a generous offer
by Israel when on Tuesday it will release (albeit in stages) 1027 Palestinians
in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured almost six years ago. Pro-Israel
pundits are racing to illuminate Israel’s high price for its citizens. This
facet is so out of context as it completely ignores the 43 years occupation of
Palestinian lands and the inhumane treatment Palestinians have endured.
Everyone knows the name of the Israeli soldier
and we have all seen his picture, but the world knows little about the story of
the nameless, faceless Palestinians who will be set free in addition to the
almost 6000 more still languishing in Israeli jails. Depicted en masse as
terrorists, the great majority of the Palestinian prisoner population never
engaged in military or criminal activity against Israel. Their crime is that
they engaged or were accused of resistance to the military occupation. Unlike
the Israel soldier who was trained to kill, most jailed Palestinians never
trained or used a gun against anyone. Far from providing justice for
Palestinians, the Israeli military legal system functions as a foundational
control mechanism over Palestinian life in all realms. Jailing Palestinians,
among other punitive measures, is a systematic tool used to further the aims of
the military regime, which seeks to subdue an entire population of five million
Palestinians. A lawyer who defended Palestinian prisoners in Israel described
the military as a comprehensive structure that can only be understood in the
light of the real Israeli goal ". . . gradually to drive out the local
Palestinian population and to annex the territory."
It is a sad commentary on the occasion when even
Jewish religious leaders exalt the nobility of Israel’s action so as to suggest
that Palestinians are either cowards ready surrender in large numbers or that a
Jewish life is more valuable than that of a Palestinian. In reports of how much
Israelis care about their soldier, there is somehow the inference that
Palestinians do not cherish their loved ones in the same way.
It is similarly distressing to see how even mainstream
media continues to malign the humanity of the Palestinians.
One example is an article in the New York
Times on October 12, “Deal With Hamas Will Free Israeli
Held Since 2006” (the online version’s
title is different), that was illustrated with a picture of Israeli women
celebrating the soldiers’ release. The article focused on the impact of
soldier's release on Israelis, while largely ignoring the individual Palestinian
prisoners involved in the prisoner swap, as if Palestinians lack the same human
emotions.
I spent several weeks this summer in the West
Bank. It requires little effort to meet a freed Palestinian prisoner or a family
of one still inside the Israeli military jails. With more than 6,000
Palestinians incarcerated by Israel right now and more than 700,000 jailed since
Israel's 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories, those stories soon come
into the frame - mention of a father, a brother taken away; a swallowing of
pain; a distant gaze determined to bring a beloved, absent face into focus.
According to recent data, close
to 6000 Palestinians are in 28 Israel military jails. Prison experience is an
expected right of passage for Palestinians. It is a common feature of
Palestinian life under occupation. From the routine night raids that drag family
members away, to the opaque military trials, the detention of children (7,000
since the year 2000) and the torture reported by
Amnesty to take
place in Israeli prisons, it all adds up to a system of control and subjugation.
The Fourth Geneva Convention
establishes the right of an occupying force to legislate military orders and
amend existing legal structures to ensure ‘security and public order’. However,
according to sociologist Lisa Hajjar in her excellent book “Courting Conflict: The Israeli
Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza,” Israel has tended to emphasize that the convention is
not binding on the state in the occupied territories on a de jure basis.
Therefore, Hajjar argues, the Fourth Geneva Convention has been drawn upon to
justify the making of the law but has been rejected as a framework for the
content of the law.
Israel adheres to the script of
countries that try to crush national struggle: criminalize protest; use
widespread arrests to show who is in charge and categorically refuse to count
any prisoners as political. Those Palestinian detention figures are shockingly
high - but then, the Israeli occupation has been shockingly long, and its
permeation into Palestinian life just as deep. According to Amnesty
International’s 2011
Annual Report: “Palestinians in the [occupied territories] subject to
Israel’s military justice system continued to face a wide range of abuses of
their right to a fair trial. They are routinely interrogated without a lawyer
and, although they are civilians, are tried before military not ordinary
courts.”
The same Amnesty report states: “Consistent
allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, including of children, were
frequently reported. Among the most commonly cited methods were beatings,
threats to the detainee or their family, sleep deprivation, and being subjected
to painful stress positions for long periods. Confessions allegedly obtained
under duress were accepted as evidence in Israeli military and civilian courts.”
One of the most inhumane procedures Israel uses
is known as administrative detention to imprison Palestinians without charge or
trial. There are currently about 270 Palestinians being held in administrative
detention. One Palestinian served six years under such a law before he was
released.
But it is not only adults who
must suffer under Israel military rule. Children are also subjected to Israeli
military tribunals. As of August 2011, there were 180 Palestinian minors being
held in Israeli prisons. Of those, 34 were between the ages of 12-15.
Palestinian children are
frequently arrested in the middle
of the night by
Israeli soldiers, taken away without their parents, and roughly interrogated
without a guardian or lawyer present.
According to a recent report by the Israeli NGO “No Legal Frontiers,” which followed the cases of 71 Palestinian children
as they made their way through the Israeli military court system: “The most
common offense was throwing stones and Molotov cocktails? In most cases, the
object was not actually thrown, did not hit a target, or cause any damage. In no
case was serious harm caused. In 94% of cases, the children were held in
pre-trial detention and not released on bail. In 100% of cases, the children
were convicted of an offense. 87% of them were subjected to some form of
physical violence while in custody.”
Therefore, it is not Israel’s
generosity or concern for the lives of its own citizens but rather the military
regime that best explains the apparent asymmetry in the prisoner swap. The moral
equivalency argument is misplaced because Israel has the capacity to arrest and
jail far more Palestinians than the occupied Palestinian population. Israel has
built a regime of military occupation where the Palestinians are its natural
enemy, where every Palestinian is ‘a security threat’ and where the legal system
is designed not to serve justice but to further the aims of suppression of a
restless and disenfranchised population. While the families of the Israel
soldier and the Palestinians will rejoice at being reunited with loved ones, the
Palestinians tragedy will persist until they are also seen as humans.
Related:
For details data and coverage of
Palestinian prisoners in Israel, go to the website of the Israel’s based human
rights organization, Btselem:
http://www.btselem.org/statistics/detainees_and_prisoners . See also “No Legal Frontiers,
http://nolegalfrontiers.org/en/general-information/military-prisons
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