THE PALESTINIAN Centre for Human Rights has denounced a local media campaign against an appeal issued by Palestinian and Israeli advocacy organisations for an end to the “inhumane and illegal treatment” of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit held in Gaza since 2006.
Local media claimed the centre – funded by Irish Aid – had joined with “Zionist human rights organisations” to demand the release of Staff Sgt Shalit “with total disregard . . . for the suffering of Palestinian prisoners and war crimes committed by the [Israeli] occupation against them.”
The appeal, entitled “Human beings are not bargaining chips”, was issued on the fifth anniversary of his capture by Palestinian fighters in a cross-border raid.
He has been detained since without contact with his family and has been denied visits by the Red Cross. No information has been given on conditions of his detention.
The only confirmation that he was alive was a video handed over to the Israeli authorities in 2009 in exchange for the release of 20 Palestinian female prisoners.
The dozen signatories of the appeal also included Amnesty International, Rabbis for Human Rights and the International Federation for Human Rights. They argued that his detention under such circumstances was “inhumane and a violation of international humanitarian law.” They called on Hamas, which rules Gaza, to end his “cruel and inhuman treatment . . . until he is released.”
In retaliation for his treatment, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has withdrawn privileges enjoyed by the 6,800 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails.
Several Hamas prisoners are reported to have been moved to solitary confinement and Palestinian prisoners held a one-day hunger strike yesterday in protest.
In German-brokered negotiations on a prisoner exchange, Israel has agreed to free 1,000 Palestinians, including 450 who have killed Israelis, but only if some can be exiled, a condition Hamas has refused to accept.
The centre’s deputy director Jaber Wishah, who served 14 years, three months and 10 days in prison himself, told The Irish Times that the withdrawal of privileges marked a “new era of sanctions on our prisoners” by reversing “privileges we achieved through hunger strikes”. These included “education, family visits and medical treatment as well as improvements in daily life . . . ”.
Mr Wishah, a member of the leftist Popular Front, who was convicted of “political and military resistance against occupying forces”, said the Israeli action “reminded me that when I was in prison I was asked by Fatah to write an appeal to Hamas not to hurt but to keep for a prisoner exchange Nachon Waxman”, an Israeli soldier captured by the movement’s followers in the West Bank in 1994.
This was in retaliation for the murder of 29 Palestinians in the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein.
The Israeli soldier was killed.
“Suffering has no passports,” Mr Wishah said. “The suffering of the mother of Gilad Shalit is the same as the suffering of the mothers of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners.”