Image source, Getty Images photo caption, Most of the Palestinian prisoners released on the first day of the truce were women and teenagers, many of them detained without charge. Item information 30 Palestinian prisoners for every living Israeli hostage and 50 for every female soldier. It is the crude arithmetic of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, which provides for the release of Israeli hostages held by the Islamist militia in exchange for a yet-to-be-defined total number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons. In the first phase, Hamas must release 33 kidnapped people and Israel 1,900 prisoners. The first exchange took place on Sunday and allowed 3 hostages – Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari – and 90 Palestinians held captive in Israel (the majority without having undergone a trial), to regain freedom and be reunited with their families. The next exchange is expected to take place on Saturday, January 25. Hamas captured 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, mostly civilians, when it attacked Israel by surprise, killing about 1,200 people. Of them, about 90 remain in the hands of the Islamist militia, although it is not clear how many have died. The Israeli retaliation on Gaza has left almost 47,000 Palestinians dead in 15 months of war, many of them women and children. It is not the first time that Israel agrees to release detainees and prisoners in exchange for hostages. In a truce agreed to in November 2023, the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to release 240 prisoners, mostly teenagers detained without charge, while Hamas released 105 hostages. In the past, the price that Palestinian militias have placed on kidnapped people has been much higher. In 2011, for example, Israel agreed to release more than 1,000 prisoners in exchange for a soldier who had been held captive by Hamas in Gaza for 5 years, Gilad Shalit. The numbers are high and, on occasion, Israel has agreed to release prisoners who were serving long sentences for organizing terrorist attacks that caused numerous deaths. But many others of those released in the exchanges are people who are in what is known as “administrative detention”, for which they have not been accused of any specific crime and who are in prison without a trial date. These detentions, which can last for months or even years, add to the lists of the Palestinian prison population in Israel, which has doubled since the beginning of the war, according to various human rights organizations. Currently, some 10,200 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli prisons, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Former Detainees Affairs. More than a third of them have not been tried and almost all have been subjected to the authority of military courts. Over the years, the UN has been highly critical of Israel for its treatment of Palestinian prisoners, stating that entire generations have endured “arbitrary, widespread and systematic deprivations of liberty under Israeli occupation.” Image source, Getty Images photo caption, Jalida Jarrar, from the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was one of the prisoners released in the first exchange. She had been arrested at the start of the war in Gaza and was in administrative detention. Arrest campaigns Before the start of the war, the UN put the number of Palestinian prisoners at around 5,000, including 160 children, according to the report presented in June 2023 by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. , Francesca Albanese. Of those 5,000, about 1,100 were detained without charge or without having been tried. However, since October 7, these numbers grew exponentially to exceed 10,000, according to human rights organizations. Addameer, an organization that supports Palestinian prisoners and their families, puts the number of Palestinian prisoners at 10,221 “following the extensive arrest campaigns carried out by the occupation authorities against various segments of the Palestinian population.” Among them there are 88 women and 320 children. Israel assures that these arrests are part of anti-terrorist operations that target members of Hamas in the West Bank. Of the total figure, “the current number of administrative detainees exceeds 3,400, along with more than 3,464 detainees from the Gaza Strip, among whom there are more than 1,886 detainees under the law on ‘unlawful combatants’,” adds Addameer. , which means “consciousness” in Arabic. The NGO uses data from the Israeli Prison Service, which manages Israeli prisons, and from prisoners’ families. These statistics do not include all Gaza detainees who have been subjected to forced disappearance, lawyer Tala Nasir, who works with the organization, tells BBC Mundo. The law on illegal combatants was passed in Israel in 2002 and defines this figure as “any person who has participated directly or indirectly in hostile activities against the State of Israel, or who is a member of a force that perpetrates hostile acts against the State of Israel.” “, but that he is not entitled to the status of prisoner of war contemplated in international humanitarian law. For Addameer and other human rights organizations, the fact that the number of prisoners has doubled since the start of the war shows that Israel “uses detention as a tool of repression and control against Palestinians, as well as a form of collective punishment.” aimed at putting pressure on Palestinian political parties during prisoner exchange negotiations,” the organization says. Israel classified Addameer as a “terrorist” organization in 2021 along with five other Palestinian human rights groups, a designation that both the UN and other international human rights bodies rejected. Image source, Getty Images photo caption, Different human rights organizations denounce that Israel uses arrests as a “tool of repression and control against Palestinians.” administrative detention Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli army to hold prisoners “without charge, without trial, indefinitely, under a secret summary, so there is no fair trial, no guarantee and sometimes no trial at all.” explains the Palestinian lawyer. Israel relies on three different laws … Read more
