Terrorists as 'Prisoners of Freedom'

From Birzeit Univeristy comes a recent poll.

Lots of items of interest. One of them is the response to following issue:

Releasing Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails

Yes
West Bank %: 18.1
Gaza Strip %: 34.5
Total: 24.3

To some extent
West Bank %: 17.7
Gaza Strip %: 23.8
Total: 20.1

No
West Bank %: 59.9
Gaza Strip %: 38.8
Total: 51.9

Don't know
West Bank %: 4.3
Gaza Strip %: 2.9
Total: 3.8

So what is a "political prisoner"?

American Heritage Dictionary: A person who has been imprisoned for holding or advocating dissenting political views.

Meanwhile, Abbas at the White House this past week also talks about "a very important sensitive issue, which is the release of prisoners of freedom from Israeli jails"

Who are these prisoners of freedom, these political prisoners being held by Israel because of their views?

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal (and formerly of Jerusalem Post) gives some examples:

Who are some of these prisoners? One is Ibrahim Ighnamat, a Hamas leader arrested last week by Israel in connection to his role in organizing a March 1997 suicide bombing at the Apropos cafe in Tel Aviv, which killed three and wounded 48. Another is Jamal Tirawi of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Mr. Tirawi had bullied a 14-year-old boy into becoming a suicide bomber by threatening to denounce him as a "collaborator," which in Palestinian society frequently amounts to a death sentence.

And then there is 21-year-old Wafa Samir al-Bis, who was detained in June after the explosives she was carrying failed to detonate at an Israeli checkpoint on the border with Gaza. As Ms. Bis later testified, her target was an Israeli hospital where she had previously been treated--as a humanitarian gesture--for burns suffered in a kitchen accident. "I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews," she explained at a press conference after her arraignment.

This might explain why nearly twice as many Palestinian Arabs in Gaza favor the release of these 'political prisoners' than those in the West Bank.

Stephens goes further, attempting to account for the culture of violence of Palestinian Arabs. He starts off with an admission and then proceeds with a clarification:

there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.

Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.

This is a point that has been made elsewhere, that the peace process in general and allowing Arafat into the area only led to an increase in terrorism, and may have inexorably led to the disengagement from Gaza.

After the Disengagement, the culture of violence is now devouring its own:

In the first nine months of 2005 more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israelis--219 to 218, according to the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Interior, although the former figure is probably in truth much higher. In the Gaza Strip, the departure of Israeli troops and settlers has brought anarchy, not freedom. Members of Hamas routinely fight gun battles with members of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas's ruling political party. Just as often, the killing takes place between clans, or hamullas. So-called collaborators are put to the gun by street mobs, their "guilt" sometimes nothing more than being the object of a neighbor's spite. Palestinian social outsiders are also at mortal risk: Honor killings of "loose" women are common, as is the torture and murder of homosexuals.

And it is in the context of this barbarism and chaos that Bush says to Abbas at last week's press conference, "I strongly support your rejection of terror and your commitment to what you have called one authority, one law, and one gun."

Sure. One authority. One law. One gun.

For each Palestinian.

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