Palestinian prisoner politics

The alienation of land and the exigencies of occupation dominate media attention, but Israeli detention policies and factional incarcerations lie at the heart of Palestinian concerns regarding reconciliation and peacemaking efforts, writes Dominic Moran for ISN Security Watch.

Significant attention is being paid in peace-promotion efforts to the impact of land alienation, security strictures and restrictions on free movement on Palestinians. The effect of ongoing Israeli and Palestinian detention policies has largely been ignored by the international community despite the crucial role they play in shaping the future of the Palestinian polity and its relations with Israel.

The surge in Palestinian incarcerations in the wake of both intifadas has inadvertently created an important and potentially formative point of contact between Israeli and Palestinian societies, playing a role in both feeding animosities and in developing mutual impressions.

The mass imprisonment and detention of a significant percentage of the Palestinian populace over the years has provided both an important rallying point for the Palestinian cause and an institutional basis for inter-movement contacts and solidarity and the politicization of fresh recruits.

According to higher estimates, over 650,000 Palestinians have been held in Israeli custody at some point since 1967. According to Palestinian sources, around 40,000 have been arrested since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000.

"Socially you can imagine the affect that occurs when fathers and mothers of prisoners don't see their relatives for so long, and the effect on the children," Shawan Jabarin, director of Ramallah-based human rights NGO al-Haq, told ISN Security Watch, adding that the incarcerations of family breadwinners was particularly damaging.

Tensions appear to be high within the Israeli prison system after the death of a Palestinian prisoner and the wounding of 15 Palestinian inmates and an equal number of prison guards in a major riot at Ketziot prison October 2007.

Torture claims


According to Reuters, around 11,000 Palestinians were in Israeli custody as of May, including around 750 administrative detainees. The number of Palestinians held in administrative detention tends to wax and wane in accordance with changes in the wider conflict, rising from four at the start of the second intifada to over 1,000 at the height of the uprising.

Detainees must be brought before a military judge within 10 days of their arrest, with detentions to be renewed after six months. The detentions are often based on classified intelligence briefings to presiding military magistrates. Palestinian groups claim that some detainees have been held for up to six years.

"The timing of the [detention] renewals even gets down to the last day and sometimes to the last hour of one administrative detention," Ala Jaradat, programs manager at the Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, told ISN Security Watch.

"This whole way of using administrative detention amounts to torture, psychological torture both for the detainees themselves and their families who never have an answer for how long their relatives will be detained," he said.

Both Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups continue to express concern at the alleged routine psychological and physical mistreatment of prisoners. A joint 2007 B'Tselem, HaMoked external pagereport found that Shin Bet interrogation methods, used in a minority of cases, amounted to "direct physical violence" constituting "torture" under international humanitarian law.

Israeli officials defend the use of enhanced physical measures in the case of "ticking bomb" suspects – allowed under a landmark 1999 Israeli Supreme Court ruling. Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan external pagedefended the practice of administrative detentions in 2006 saying internees were being held as a preventative action to keep them from committing future crimes.

According to Jaradat, once released, former detainees and prisoners find that they face significant limitations "in terms of restrictions on freedom of movement, difficulty in [gaining] access to work and so on."

"Once you have a [prisoner] file your life is affected until you die," he said, adding that Israeli detention policies promoted post-prison activism in most cases.

Disjuncture

With the outbreak of the second intifada, the Palestinian prisoner issue, always central to the Palestinian understanding of the resolution of the conflict – has largely dropped off the political radar of the greatly diminished Israeli center-left.

While other issues addressed in current negotiations with Israel are of major import, the prisoners' issue has potentially the greatest impact for changing domestic Palestinian popular opinion on the merits of ongoing talks and building trust in the implementation of peace deal commitments.

"The Palestinians look at the prisoners as the ideal and heroes," Jabarin said. "Because of that I think that any political negotiations that don't address the prisoners [issue]; the people look at those negotiations, agreements or understandings between both sides as nothing, or with a lack of confidence."

Recognizing this, the Palestinian negotiating team under Ahmed Qurei and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, in talks with outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have pushed hard for major prisoner releases as short-term confidence-building measures.

Under pressure from the defense establishment and domestic popular opposition to the release of prisoners with "blood on their hands," the Israeli government has been chary to respond but has conducted three releases of detainees and convicted prisoners, with 198 freed in August.

While many of those included in the latest release were viewed as "short-timers," with the inclusion of at least two prominent prisoners in the release raised popular and prisoner hopes, according to Jabarin.

"The prisoners now have hope and are willing to give the Palestinian side negotiating time. These are positive signals even for the prisoners themselves and maybe this is the first time they felt that there is light at the end of the tunnel," he said.

Olmert reportedly offered Abbas a further prisoner release by the end of the month in their latest meeting in Jerusalem this week, but may prove unable to push this through an Israeli cabinet currently in a state of practical dissolution.

With the future of the peace talks in doubt, a mass release of Palestinian prisoners remains extremely unlikely in the short to medium term, a fact that will only serve to encourage the politicization of the prisoners issue within the wider Fatah-Hamas struggle for control.

Political football

For Hamas and Fatah the stakes are clear, if the Fatah-controlled government in Ramallah succeeds in winning an Israeli commitment to the future mass release of prisoners within a comprehensive peace deal ahead of scheduled elections in January 2010, it may tip the balance against a second Hamas victory at the polls.

At present, a second successful Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) poll - Hamas did not compete in 1996 - appears a distant prospect in light of Hamas' Gaza takeover and tit-for-tat repressive measures by both the Gaza and Ramallah administrations.

"What kind of a stable political system can Palestinians have if everyone who is an opponent of the current government is being detained or rounded up?" Jarada asked, referring to the Ramallah government.

Israeli and Fatah concerns at the potential message that would be sent regarding the ongoing viability of armed struggle appears to be a factor preventing an Israeli-Hamas prisoner swap.

For its part, Hamas has accused Fatah of complicity in assuring Hamas members were not included in previous releases – a fact that undermines the current Gaza ceasefire and may encourage Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Gaza factions to conduct further kidnap attempts against Israeli border forces.

The emancipation of around 40 imprisoned West Bank legislators is an important, but likely unattainable, goal for Hamas as it seeks to undermine Premier Salam Fayyad's government through the revival of the Hamas-dominated PLC.

An Israeli release of the detained legislators could "activate the whole of the legislative council and I don't know if he'll [Abbas] like that," Jabarin said.

Abbas clarified in a recent interview that he is now seeking to postpone the PA presidential election from January 2009 to January 2010 - a move Hamas adamantly opposes and would seek to overturn through the reestablishment of its PLC majority.

Israel appears willing to use the prisoner issue to influence negotiations with the PA in a seeming carrot and stick approach, releasing one of the detained Hamas legislators, former Jerusalem Affairs minister Khaled Abu Arafa, this week.

Revenge

Both Hamas and Fatah have moved since the dissolution of the unity government to strike hard at the support base of the other. These parallel campaigns have included the imprisonment of activists on both sides – with tensions rising over the alleged use of torture by both the Gaza and Ramallah authorities.

"We are talking about hundreds of political prisoners on both sides, around 200 in the West Bank and 100-150 in Gaza, Jabarin said. "They arrested them for political reasons even if they claim that some of them committed crimes or were affiliated with a militant branch here or there."

It is already clear that the issue of mutual prisoner mistreatment poisons the waters between Fatah and Hamas and is a major impediment to future national reconciliation.

Retaliatory murders and the torture of Fatah supporters and associates in the immediate wake of Hamas' Gaza takeover appeared clearly linked to the mistreatment of Hamas members at the hands of Fatah forces over a number of years. Hamas fighters crushed the Fatah-allied Hilles clan in bloody fighting on 2 August.

In the West Bank, the Fayyad administration appears to be intensifying its campaign against allegedly Hamas-affiliated NGOs and charitable organizations. One of the targets has been the Nablus-based Nafha Society for the Protection of Human and Prisoners' Rights.

"There are a lot of breaches and violations committed by the security of the [PA] Interior Ministry," Jabarin said, describing the NGO campaign as "political revenge. Hamas acted against Fatah's organization in Gaza and here [West Bank] the PA is acting against organizations [known] as Hamas followers." 

The current PA organizational closures are creating significant popular resentment against the Fayyad government and bolstering the impression of US, Israeli and European manipulation, Jarada said.

"Instead of improving the performance of the Palestinian Authority, its institutions, or even pro-Fatah institutions, the corruption continues there […] and they suppress the groups that provide the services they fail to provide in the first place," Jarada said. He added that he has serious doubts that even those responsible for the PA crackdown believe it will work.

Limited cachet

The imprisoned leaderships of various militant movements have sought a moderating role in the internal Palestinian conflict, emerging as a crucial counter to hard-line elements in the occupied territories and Palestinian diaspora.

"The role of the Palestinian prisoners now is to act internally more than [toward] the Israeli side, by pushing for unity between the different political groups," Jabarin said. "They have a common understanding within the prisoners' community for that. And maybe this can play a positive role."

Crucially, Hamas and Islamic Jihad appeared to agree to a formulation for a future peace pact and national unity deal based on a tacit recognition of Israel's right to exist in the 2006 Prisoners' Document. The paper, written by five jailed faction leaders led directly to the 2007 Saudi-mediated Mecca Agreement and subsequent national unity government, demonstrating the political cachet of the prisoner leadership.

The subsequent collapse of the unity government and backlash from the eruption of civil war in Gaza has appeared to sideline the prisoners somewhat as a political force.

They "still have a certain power to influence this [reconciliation] discourse but, maybe at this point, what we see is that this division in the whole Palestinian political system is also within prisons as well, amongst Palestinian prisoners." Jaradat said.

Neither Hamas nor Fatah, "are ready to actually go for an agreement," he said. "The talk is one thing but what the actions show is that each side still believes that if they pressure a little bit more then they might be able to win."
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