Israel bows to pressure to end mass hunger strikes by Palestinians
Israel yesterday agreed to relax significant elements of the regime
for Palestinian prisoners in an eleventh hour deal which ended a mass
hunger strike that had threatened to unleash widespread unrest across
the West Bank.
The Egyptian and Jordanian brokered deal came on the eve of today’s
highly sensitive annual commemoration of the” Nakba”—the loss by 700,000
Palestinians of their homes in the war of 1948 –and just in time to
avert any deaths among around 2000 prisoners taking part in the
strike.
While inmates held under administrative detention – a
system which allows the imprisonment of Palestinians on secret evidence
and without charge or trial – will continue to serve their terms,
officials acknowledged that the deal provides for such sentences to be
renewable only on the basis of new evidence.
The Israeli
authorities also made a substantive concession by agreeing to return
prisoners held in solitary confinement to normal cells. They also lifted
a ban on family visits to prisoners from Gaza held in Israeli jails, a
major source of grievance since the prohibition was imposed after the
capture of the now-freed Israeli Army sergeant Gilad Shalit in 2006.
With
one senior Israeli official saying the government had gone "the extra
mile" to negotiate a deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
administration sought to project the agreement in the wider context of
the frozen peace process. "In response to a request by Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas Israel has negotiated an end to the hunger
strike," Mr Netanyahu's office said in a short statement. "It is our
hope that this gesture by Israel will start to build confidence between
the parties and further peace."
At the same time, a separate
statement by the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet laid heavy
emphasis on a "green light" by the Palestinian factions that the
prisoners' leaders should sign "a commitment to completely halt
terrorist activity inside Israeli prisons".
The statement said
that, under the agreement, prisoners would "refrain from all activity
that constitutes practical support for terrorism, including recruiting
people for terrorist activity, guidance, financing, coordinating among
recruits, aiding recruits, etc." While it not specify the methods or
current scope of such activities, the stipulation is assumed to apply,
for example, to the use of prison visits to further them. The deal,
signed in the presence of a senior Egyptian official at the Ashkelon
prison, came amid rapidly-increasing fears for the condition of a number
of hunger strikers, including Tha'er Halaleh and Bilal Diab. The
administrative detainees were said by Israel to be members of Islamic
Jihad and had been on hunger strike for a life-threatening 77 days.
Although
full details of the agreement were not immediately clear, it appears
that the deal on administrative detention extends to all detainees on
the terms which ended the hunger strike earlier this year by the
now-released Islamic Jihad activist Khadr Adnan. These said his sentence
would not be renewed unless fresh evidence was found to justify it.
There
were celebratory cries outside in support of the hunger strikers in
central Gaza City, as demonstrators absorbed the news that visits to
Gazan prisoners would now be allowed. Meanwhile, in Ramallah,
Palestinian Liberation Organisation executive member Hanan Ashrawi said
it was a victory "for millions of Palestinians". She added: "The hunger
strikers' courage is magnificently inspiring and their selflessness
deeply humbling. They have truly demonstrated that non-violent
resistance is an essential tool in our struggle for freedom."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-bows-to-pressure-to-end-mass-hunger-strikes-by-palestinians-7746816.html
No comments:
Post a Comment