The Role of Universities in Aiding Prisoners

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Supporting Palestinian prisoners and working to secure their release from detention is a sacred national duty, and various public and private efforts must be mobilized to achieve their release. Nations care a great deal about their prisoners, considering them pioneers of the struggle for freedom and independence, a source of pride and honor for everyone, and it is toward helping them that the various sectors and segments of the people turn, considering the matter of their liberation a priority whether in conditions of peace or war. They are a fundamental banner in the struggle against invaders, occupiers, and colonizers, and they are the ones who bring the dawn of freedom ever closer. Nations that do not care about their fighters and prisoners are ones from which feelings of honor and dignity have vanished, fragmented into factions and private interests that often feed on the public interest.

Among the signs of Palestinian dignity, testifying to the people’s pulsing life, is the insistence on pursuing various paths so that the Palestinian prisoner’s time in Zionist jails is not prolonged. These signs constitute symbols of the extent of the people’s and the Palestinian parties’ and factions’ concern for the sons of the homeland, and of freeing them from the yoke of captivity and detention, and demonstrate the extent of commitment to national causes and insistence on wresting rights. If an observer wishes to assess the extent of Palestinians’ commitment to their causes, the variable of the prisoners stands before him as one of the most important subjects of study and research yielding important results about this commitment.

Universities are not separate from national efforts to liberate prisoners, and to work to care for them even while in captivity. Every national institution, every party and faction, has duties toward the prisoners, and scholarly institutions have not been slow to play their role in this regard in countries that suffered oppression, enslavement, and colonialism. Like other universities, Palestinian universities have played a role toward the prisoners, and it is important to work to develop it, so it becomes an important factor toward their liberation from behind bars as quickly as possible.

Tasks Before the Universities

Universities can help prisoners along several fronts, toward achieving the goals of academically advancing them and securing their swift release. I summarize these tasks as follows:

First: providing prisoners academic support while in captivity, by educating them on the importance of obtaining a genuine Tawjihi (general secondary) certificate, and warning them against cheating. Universities must make clear to all prisoners that they will not accept students who obtained their Tawjihi certificate while in prison unless the education departments confirm the integrity of the examination process.

At the same time, universities support efforts to deliver necessary books to prisoners, and press for arranging periodic educational visits by teachers to help prisoners understand their lessons. In other words, each university is required to form a special committee to support prisoners academically, and to search for ways to expand this support in a manner that adheres to academic standards and advances the prisoners’ academic level.

Second: a university preparatory program. Universities could contribute to helping prisoners through a special preparatory program they develop, aimed at placing the released in a new environment suited to academic achievement, in order to develop the capabilities of those who need it before enrolling in university. It is well known in psychology that it is not easy for a person to move suddenly from one set of circumstances to new ones, and it is better for them to go through a preparatory phase to avoid psychological, social, or academic shock. Such a preparatory program helps released prisoners gradually adjust to the new phase.

But universities must be entirely clear, both to themselves and to others, about the academic, scholarly, and moral values they hold. In other words, a university whose teachers favor their relatives, friends, and fellow faction members with grades is unfit to set standards for anyone, and unfit to develop integration programs. This requires universities to bring about a fundamental change in their administrative and academic structures, to become a role model worthy of emulation.

Third: pressing the factions. The Palestinian factions have fallen far short regarding serious work toward liberating prisoners, to the point that one Palestinian leader once described the prisoners as “martyrs with a suspended sentence,” on the grounds that it is not possible to force Israel to release them. Surveying the policy of the Palestinian factions and the policy of the PLO, we do not find that liberating prisoners is part of the Palestinian resistance’s strategy of action, nor the following of field methods to strike at Israel and force it to release prisoners. With the exception of the Hamas movement, we still do not find, among the Palestinian resistance factions, a tight, coherent policy aimed at liberating prisoners, and even Hamas’s policy faces many setbacks.

Prisoner exchanges between the factions and Israel occurred in years such as 1979, 1983, and 1985; and prisoners were released following the signing of the Taba Agreement, and so on. But these releases were never part of a strategy the factions followed — they were always on the margins of resistance military action. Now there is a Zionist prisoner in Hamas’s hands, and Israel ultimately has no choice but to agree to the exchange.

It is among universities’ functions to follow the concerns of the communities in which they exist, and Palestinian universities are supposed to be at the forefront of institutions examining Palestinian affairs and the methods and means of liberating the land and recovering rights. Universities are supposed to conduct strategic studies illustrating the people’s points of strength and weakness, and the enemy’s points of strength and weakness, and to set forth appropriate recommendations and solutions for the disgrace and problems afflicting the people, and the tasks and goals it wants to achieve.

Our universities have not adopted scholarly strategies to clarify the path before decision-makers regarding the prisoners, and the number of teachers capable of carrying out the task of raising awareness and clarification has fallen short in their work, preferring instead to withdraw. It is true the matter carries security risks, but it was never necessary to carry out these tasks publicly, or to present studies on television screens. Nations living under the yoke of occupation or colonialism prefer to attend to their needs discreetly.

Some university teachers have conducted studies on security matters and methods of work in confronting the occupation, but it was clear the factions were not fond of reading, and that the leaderships were not concerned with scholarly research or scholarly thinking. But this does not preclude continuing, and offering the academic material that could help the Palestinian factions follow the field steps necessary to pressure Israel toward liberating the prisoners.

Fourth: explaining matters at the global level. Palestinian universities are fully qualified to confront the world with the truth of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation, and bear the responsibility of explaining Palestinian suffering and clarifying the reasons driving Palestinians to resist the occupation. Universities must not submit to accusations of terrorism, or to the claim that Palestinians are terrorists who must be pursued — they must defend people’s rights, explain the various conditions to the world, and never surrender to others’ will in crafting the meanings of concepts and terms. It is the work of universities and university professors to demonstrate the facts about the various Palestinian causes, including the cause of the prisoners, and to clarify that the prisoners are prisoners of freedom, not criminals and saboteurs as the Zionists and their Western and Arab supporters claim.

There are prisoners at the global level who enjoy the support of states and human rights associations, and who find advocates working for their freedom, and Palestinian universities can contribute in this field to increase pressure on Israel. It is unfortunate that a Zionist soldier who assaults and carries out occupation and killing enjoys support and endorsement on the international stage, while thousands of Palestinian detainees rarely find anyone to carry their causes boldly and courageously at the international level.

In this field, universities can dedicate a wing of their buildings as a museum for the prisoners’ movement, displaying the prisoners’ artistic and cultural creations, and showing the civilized face that distinguishes Palestinian strugglers. Al-Quds University established a museum for such works, but this does not mean other universities should not do the same, especially since visitors from various parts of the world flock to Palestinian universities.

Documenting the Prisoners’ Suffering

Palestinian universities possess the various academic energies to follow the suffering and pain of Palestinian prisoners with scholarly rigor, in order to publicize Zionist practices against them, whether during interrogation or afterward. Israel carries out extremely hideous practices against prisoners of various ages, against men and women, and it is important for universities to adopt the classification and documentation of these practices, and publish them at the global level through various media outlets.

Our universities have fallen short regarding many matters related to the Palestinian cause, remaining, to a great extent, neutral regarding the rights of the Palestinian prisoner and the Zionists’ crimes against him. Some Palestinian universities teach a human rights course, but it seems to escape many, even partially, that the rights of the Palestinian prisoner sit at the top of priorities, and that these rights are violated by those who claim to defend human rights.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “دور الجامعات في نجدة الأسرى” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.