Fear God Regarding the Feelings of Palestinian Prisoners

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Today, 17 April 2007, is Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, which the Palestinian people mark in solidarity with the prisoners and in renewal of the pledge to work for their liberation. This occasion falls this year while the Palestinians hold the card of the captured Zionist soldier, which can be used to pressure the Zionists. There is great hope that a prisoner exchange will take place and that a considerable number of detainees will be freed.

But ever since the Zionist soldier was captured in the Gaza Strip, statements from politicians and faction leaders about a prisoner exchange deal have not stopped. The President of the Authority makes a statement one day about the exchange, and so does the Prime Minister. Statements are issued by the Deputy Prime Minister, faction leaders, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Information, official spokesmen, former detainees, and many others besides. Most of these statements are reassuring and speak of the deal being close to completion. They mention names like Barghouti and Sa’adat, and numbers in the hundreds that include women and children.

It seems that some of us find in this matter a pleasant game that can put one’s name on a television screen or broadcast one’s voice over the airwaves. I find this rush to speak an expression of immaturity, a disruption of the calm that negotiations over such a matter require — as if the prisoners needed fathers and mothers to adopt their cause on their behalf.

…whenever he senses an opportunity to get out of detention, and it is affected negatively whenever the news brings something unwelcome. There are Palestinian statements released over the course of several months giving prisoners hope of release, and against them are Zionist statements insisting the deal is far from being implemented. And between the one and the other, it is the Palestinian prisoner who pays the price. I myself was once a prisoner, and I know full well that this rising and falling poses a real danger to a prisoner’s psychological integrity.

It would have been far better for the Palestinian captors to entrust a single body alone with negotiating the prisoner exchange in complete secrecy — not for the sake of secrecy itself, but for the sake of preserving calm for the detainees — and for that body to retain the right to speak about the matter in whatever way it saw fit. An exchange took place before, in 1985, led by the Popular Front - General Command under Ahmad Jibril, and it was a calm and successful exchange that produced a genuine Palestinian celebration. And there are the well-known experiences of Hezbollah, which reflect masterful performance in carrying out exchanges.

It is important that the matter of prisoner exchange be a central pillar of Palestinian security strategy. What benefits us, and benefits the detainees, is tireless work toward freeing our prisoners — not using the prisoners’ card to achieve personal gains. And instead of the many speeches we deliver on Prisoner’s Day, we ought to be thinking about the means and methods that would deprive Israel of the ability to keep our sons locked behind closed doors for decades on end.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “اتقوا الله بمشاعر الأسرى الفلسطينيين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.