PALESTINE-ISRAEL: Penitent Husseini Joins Prisoners’ Hunger Strike

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Deborah Horan

JERUSALEM, Jun 28 1995 (IPS) - East Jerusalem Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini, Wednesday took major responsibility for the suffering of political prisoners who have launched a hunger strike in a bid to force Israel to release them as part of the peace process deal.

And in a show of solidarity, the former negotiator in the peace talks with Israel, joined the ten-day-old hunger strike which is daily gaining public support ahead of an upcoming agreement on the implementation of the second stage of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

“I am one of the people who pushed this peace process forward and I have the feeling that what I did and my partnership in the peace process is causing suffering of Palestinians in the prison,” Husseini told reporters at a press conference in East Jerusalem.

“They did nothing but to comply with our orders during the Intifada and before the Intifada,” he said, referring to the seven-year uprising against Israeli occupation in which thousands of Palestinians obeyed orders from the Palestinian leadership in Tunis to rise up and fight.

Husseini went on: “After we reached…this agreement, we are finding that the picture is not like it must be.”

Israel released some 4,500 prisoners of as estimated 12,000 in a goodwill gesture when the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho came under Palestinian self-rule in May 1994.

Husseini’s statements apparently allude to his wish that he had done more to secure the release of the remaining prisoners while he was still a negotiator.

He has since taken a position with the Palestinian government as the unofficial “minister” of Jerusalem affairs. His official title is “minister without portfolio” because the agreement with Israel specifically states that the Palestinian governing bodies be set up in Gaza and Jericho only.

Some 5,800 prisoners are still in Israeli prisons, 2,000 of which belong to Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Party. About 3,500 belong to the fundamentalist opposition Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Since the signing of the Oslo accord ushering in self-rule, 2,887 Palestinians have been arrested, most belonging to parties opposing the peace agreement, according to an Israeli army spokeswoman.

Negotiators are aiming for July 1 to complete a detailed agreement outlining Israeli army re deployment in the West Bank and Palestinian elections. Israel has offered to re deploy away from four northern West Bank towns first, postponing further re deployment until after Palestinians hold elections.

Palestinians counter that they want re deployment from all seven major West Bank towns before elections are held and negotiators are pressing for a timetable for the release of prisoners in the agreement.

“We believe it is not fair that we are enjoying the start of our freedom, enjoying the struggle to build our state, while they continue to pay the price for our freedom,” said Mohammed Waheidi, spokesman to top Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath. “It’s strange that people who support Arafat and who struggled according to orders of Arafat…remain in jail.”

However, Palestinians say they want a timetable for the release of all prisoners regardless of political affiliation and not just those belonging to Arafat’s Fatah party.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the ministerial committee overseeing the release of Palestinian prisoners would make an announcement on prisoner releases before July 1, but he declined to give an exact number.

Israel has made a distinction in the past between prisoners who support the peace process and those who don’t, agreeing only to release the former. They also have refused to release prisoners who have “Jewish blood on their hands”.

Arafat kicked off the hunger strike by fasting for one day in solidarity with the prisoners. Since then, Palestinians throughout the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem have held general commercial strikes and demonstrations for their release.

Some of the demonstrations have turned violent, especially in the cities of Ramallah and Nablus, with Israeli soldiers dispersing crowds with tear gas, rubber bullets and possibly live fire.

Earlier this week, Israeli soldiers shot three 23-year-old university students during one demonstration. One died immediately and two died later in hospital from wounds doctors at the hospital said could only have been sustained from live fire.