How can the Israeli government justify its recent inhuman attack, to use the most lenient term, in describing the military operation of storming the Negev prison? The attack resulted in one fatality and more than 250 injured prisoners during the condemned operation, carried out by a so-called commando unit which is routinely trained to fight regular armies.
This special unit was assigned with the task of storming into a prison where there were no regular soldiers. Rather, there were hundreds of armless prisoners who have no means to defend themselves except for their bare chests and their belief in the just cause and rights of their people.
It is only logical in all countries which implement the human rights conventions and civilians’ protection – especially the prisoners – not to resort to this behavior, historically attributed to the Middle Ages.
What really merits denunciation is that the Israeli government committed such a horrible atrocity while voicing its desire to revive the peace process, and the Israeli prime minister has been regularly negotiating with President Mahmoud ‘Abbas about the core issues and ways to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people.
The recent military operation at the Negev prison only serves to indicate the wide gap between Israel’s eloquent statements and the facts on the ground, taking into account the sensitivity of the prisoners’ plight and that their issue is a common concern to every Palestinian household.
Despite this, the Israeli authorities have always dealt with the prisoners’ file in a way that ignored the Palestinian demands on the one hand, and the historic examples of the right methods to close similar issues on the other.
These examples show that every time there were negotiations between a liberation movement and its adversary dominating power, the first step that usually built confidence between the two sides had been to release the prisoners. This happened in the aftermath of the Algerian and Vietnamese wars, to mention two examples.
The prisoners have every right to protest and demand an improvement in their confinement conditions and sufficient time allocated for their relatives’ visits.
If criminal prisoners in Israel are treated in a way that could be compared to their counterparts in advanced countries, why do the Israeli authorities insist on the backward treatment of those Palestinian and Arab detainees who sacrificed their freedom for the cause of their people?
The prisoners have protested and staged several hunger strikes in the past, yet the Israeli authorities turned a blind eye to their suffering and rejected their demands which are, as a matter of fact, the demands of the Palestinian people in general. Is it not a sufficient penalty for them that they are deprived the blessing of freedom for so many years?
What happened in the Negev prison should attract the attention of the Palestinian Authority to the importance of presenting the prisoners’ issue as a first priority on the agenda of any future negotiations with Israel, whether during current negotiations or during the upcoming Peace Conference next month in the U.S.
This issue should be carefully followed up until the file is finally closed in a way that facilitates the release of nearly 1,100 prisoners. This would be an achievement to which the Palestinian people aspire, and a gesture awaited for many years by the members of the imprisoned movement.
Mohammed Shaker Abdallah sits on the editorial board of the Palestinian daily Al-Quds.