THE Palestinian Authority civil affairs minister said late Tuesday that Israel will return the bodies of 91 Palestinians buried in an Israeli cemetery on Thursday. Hussein al-Sheikh released a list of names agreed with Israel, whose remains will now be handed to the PA in what the minister described as the first stage of the return of 100 Palestinians.
The hand-over of Palestinian remains was promised on May 14 by Ofir Gendelman, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a ‘gesture’ to President Mahmoud Abbas.
The decision was announced two days after a meeting between Abbas and Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho in Ramallah, but Gendelman said it was part of a deal to end a mass hunger strike by prisoners. Al-Sheikh did not specify when a second stage of the deal to hand over bodies would take place, but said an official ceremony will be held in the presidential compound in Ramallah to honor the fallen Palestinians on Thursday.
Last July, Israel agreed to release the remains of 84 Palestinians killed since 1967, and the PA civil affairs ministry released a list naming those who would be returned. But Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak intervened and blocked the transfer hours after Israel’s military confirmed that Netanyahu had approved the return of the bodies.
Hundreds of Palestinians are currently interred in numbered, rather than named, graves in Israel.
Others have been forced to live in Gaza and liken it to a big prison.
‘Gaza is a big prison, but some prisons are better than others,’ admits Nihad Abu Kishk, a former detainee from the West Bank who was exiled by Israel to the Gaza Strip. ‘I feel uprooted and it is difficult to adapt,’ says the 34-year-old who was sentenced to life in an Israeli prison but freed and sent to Gaza under terms of a prisoner swap deal with Israel late last year.
The deal saw the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for the freeing of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held in captivity by Gaza’s Hamas rulers for more than five years.
Most were allowed to go home, but 163 of them were exiled from their homes in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, and sent to live in Gaza.
‘We have to make do with the situation of exile,’ says Abu Kishk with a sigh. ‘I suffer when I see the trouble my family has to go through to visit me, travelling through Jordan and Egypt, the exorbitant expense, and that’s if Israel lets them travel,’ he said.
Since his release, Abu Kishk, a Hamas member from the northern town of Tulkarem, has married a woman who also comes from the West Bank and moved to Gaza to be with him. But, with the extremely tight Israeli travel restrictions in place, which all but bar West Bankers from going to Gaza, there were few guests. ‘There were hardly any guests except my mother and my sister-in-law, who were the only ones who could come to Gaza,’ he says.
Ibrahim Elian, another former prisoner who comes from east Jerusalem, says that despite its isolation, the Gaza Strip remains ‘an integral part of the Palestinian nation. It’s painful for my family, but I was imprisoned for 25 years,’ says Elian, who was also serving life when he was freed as part of the Shalit deal. It’s better to be in Gaza than in the occupier’s prisons.’
Before the Shalit deal, there were already another 26 Palestinians living in exile in Gaza following the Israeli siege on Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002, as well as another dozen who were banished there in recent years.
‘Life in Gaza is similar to life in the West Bank, but we remain separated from our families,’ admits Fahmi Knaan, spokesman for the Bethlehem deportees. ‘When an exile loses a relative, the Israelis forbid him from attending the funeral,’ he said, explaining Israel treats Gaza as an entirely separate entity from the West Bank.
One recent arrival who has adapted slightly better is Hanaa Shalabi, a former prisoner from the radical Islamic Jihad movement who was sent to Gaza in April for three years in exchange for halting a 43-day hunger strike. She was also one of the prisoners freed in the Shalit swap, but was rearrested in mid-February and held without trial, prompting her to begin an open-ended hunger strike in protest.
Shalabi, whose family moved from a village near Jenin in the northern West Bank to be with her following her release, says she feels neither ‘uprooted or imprisoned. I live with my mother and father in an apartment in Gaza and I communicate with the rest of my family in the West Bank by phone and on Facebook,’ she said.
But she does miss her home village and says the shortage of petrol and electricity makes life hard in the blockaded Gaza Strip. ‘No place is dearer to me than the house and the area where I was born and where I grew up,’ she admits. ‘I miss the Jenin countryside.’
Aside from the emotional cost of living in exile, the former prisoners also struggle with financial problems in Gaza, which has been languishing under an Israeli blockade since 2006.
Abu Kishk says his monthly allowance of 320 euros ($420) from the Palestinian ministry of prisoner affairs is not enough to make ends meet in Gaza, where unemployment is around 45 percent. ‘I still don’t have work and I can’t set up any business enterprise,’ he said.
But Knaan says such difficulties are faced by everyone living in the Strip and not just those exiled from the West Bank. ‘Even people from Gaza struggle to find work,’ he said.
Despite the difficulties, the ex-prisoners were managing to get by, he said, adding many had finished their studies in Gaza, some had found jobs and others were working as taxi drivers to improve their living conditions.
Meanwhile, the United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process warned a session of the UN Security Council on Tuesday of the continuing diplomatic impasse between Israel and the PLO. Robert Serry told the council ‘If the parties do not grasp the current opportunity, they should realize the implication is not merely slowing progress toward a two-state solution. ‘Instead, we could be moving down the path toward a one-state reality, which would also move us further away from regional peace in the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative’.
Serry was expressing disagreement with those arguing that the time was not right for diplomatic progress due to the Arab Spring uprisings in neighbouring countries like Egypt and Syria. ‘On the contrary,’ Serry said, according to a transcript of his remarks; ‘The search for a lasting peace that ends the Arab-Israeli conflict and resolves all claims is in my view more urgent than ever.’
The special coordinator also noted a number of what he considered positive trends, such as the exchange of letters between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. He also briefed the Council on the latest developments regarding Palestinian reconciliation and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expanded coalition. But he said: ‘The current situation remains fragile and uncertain.’
Israeli forces detained four Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning, witnesses said. Israeli warships surrounded two fishing boats off Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, forcing the fishermen off the vessels and taking them to an unknown destination, a Ma’an correspondent said.
The fishermen were identified as Nour al-Sultan, 49 and his brother Hasan 39, as well as Jihad al-Sultan, 38 and his brother Zahir, 22.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said a Palestinian fishing boat ‘deviated from the designated fishing area,’ and failed to respond to calls to return, prompting forces to detain its crew.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed on a 20-nautical-mile fishing zone off Gaza’s coast under the Oslo Accords, but Israel unilaterally imposes a 3-mile limit. Israeli warships frequently open fire at boats that allegedly stray from the permitted area.
Fishermen say the limits have destroyed their livelihood and that it is impossible to trawl a large catch within the designated area.
Israel has controlled Gaza waters since its occupation of the area in 1967, and has kept several warships stationed off the coast since 2008.
