UN Urges Israel to Reach Solution for Hunger Strikers

An article in www.israelnationalnews.com  written by Elad Benari informs the readers about the attempts of key members of the international community to pressure Israel to resolve the crisis of hunger striking of four Palestinian prisoners. Concerned about the deteriorating health of the prisoners, the United Nations Secretary-General urged Israel to respect the rights of the detainees and offer them a fair trial without a delay or release them. The pro-Palestinian foreign policy chief of the European Union urged Israel to respect the human rights of all Palestinian detainees and prisoners.  Meanwhile, The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asked the international community to intervene on behalf of the hunger striking prisoners. At the same time, hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners (terrorists according to the article) expressed their support for the hunger striking prisoners by refusing all food during a one-day strike. The article makes it clear that the hunger strikers are also terrorists. One of them was released in 2011 as a result of a prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas but was rearrested later, when he violated the terms of the agreement.

The author’s point of view is that past Israeli decisions to cave to pressure and release hunger strikers have created an expectation among the terrorist prisoners that they can use hunger strikes to gather public support and gain their freedom. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the article, it seems that the author is against any compromise that will free more terrorists. The author consistently uses the word “terrorist” to describe the Palestinian prisoners. He also tries to discredit the EU chief of foreign policy by presenting her as an irrational person who supports the right of Palestinians to throw stones at Israeli soldiers during “non-violent” demonstrations. The author presents a picture where Israel “caved to the pressure” and released terrorists in the past giving them a second chance, which they refused to exploit. All these lead the reader to the conclusion that compromise with terrorists cannot work.

Although the quotes and facts presented in the article are mostly accurate and can be easily verified by other sources, there is an issue of reliability in my opinion. The problem is not simply the rights of captive terrorists (although it is certainly a serious one). The most critical question is if the detainees or prisoners are indeed terrorists “beyond reasonable doubt.” Do the Israeli legal procedures protect as much as it is humanely possible innocent Palestinians, or do they simply put to prison any suspect following a policy of “better safe than sorry?” And what if the legal procedures are not used only to imprison dangerous terrorists, but they also serve as a tool to eliminate Palestinian peaceful political activists?

 Reading a few sources on the subject of the Israeli legal procedures, we can see that there is plenty of room  to use the legal system for purposes other than national security. Haaretz for example reveals that Israeli prosecutors cited “classified evidence” to argue that one of the rearrested hunger strikers should serve the remainder of his original sentence. As The New York Times shows, the problem is wide-spread since all four hunger-strikes are detained without formal charges. It is certainly possible that the Israeli prosecutors may want to conceal the identity of informers inside terrorist organizations who may have provided valuable incriminating intelligence against the Palestinian hunger strikers. But when nobody, including the lawyers of the Palestinian suspects, know about the nature of these pieces of evidence, it is hard to tell which of these cases are about Palestinian terrorists, which are about incompetent or over jealous Israeli prosecutors or which cases are about the elimination of political activists in West Bank to suppress Palestinian opposition against the expansion of Israeli settlements.

The chief of foreign policy of the European Union expressed concerns on similar grounds, and the author has actually misrepresented the EU official’s position. The careful reading of the article on this subject by israelnationalnews itself shows that the concern expressed by the EU official was not about the conviction per se of the Palestinian who threw stones at the Israeli security forces. It was about the way Israeli prosecutors gathered evidence. Specifically, the Israeli prosecutors used as evidence the testimony of a minor who was “interrogated in violation of his rights.” This means most probably that the minor was interrogated without the presence of his lawyer. In this situation, the minor could be easily manipulated to testify anything the prosecutor wanted.

The legal practices mentioned above undermine the credibility of the article’s broad generalization that the Palestinian prisoners are terrorists. Many of these prisoners may be terrorists, but there is a reasonable concern that these controversial legal  practices can be used by the Israeli authorities to promote their interests at the expense of any Palestinian political opponent, terrorist or not.