by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

February 17, 2009

The political leaders of a future Palestinian state may be sitting among the 10,000 Palestinian inmates held in Israeli prisons.

Many of those prisoners are held in administrative detention without charges filed; others — “with blood on their hands” — are terrorists responsible for the deaths of innocent Israelis.

Whether they are political detainees or mass murderers, their imprisonment has bestowed something of a hero status on them.

“These prisoners have this prestige from being imprisoned for the cause,” said Dr. Eran Kaplan, visiting lecturer in Israel studies in the Judaic studies and history departments of Princeton University.

Kaplan spoke Feb. 7 at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth during a program devoted to the moral dilemmas and practical issues surrounding those detainees.

The program revolved around a 2006 Israeli documentary, HotHouse, by filmmaker Shimon Doton. The movie was filmed inside prisons where the inmates are being held and showcased their daily lives, including political discussions among them, personal interviews, family visits, and often congenial interactions with Israeli guards.

“I previewed this film and chose it because it shows the complexity and difficulty of the [Israeli] prison system,” said program cochair Leslie Fishbein, an associate professor of American and Jewish studies at Rutgers University.

“On one level it seeks to be humane and provide education for the inmates, and you see some possibility of political harmony,” she said. “On the second level, you have prisoners who remain committed to the Palestinian cause and terrorism, and the prison system seems to foster that.”

Labeled “de facto universities of Palestinian nationalism” by one Fatah leader, the prisons house each political faction in a separate dorm-style prison unit, where Fatah and Hamas adherents and others appoint leadership councils to negotiate with the guards for prisoners’ rights.

Inmates are dressed in street clothes — in the women’s section, all were wearing hijabs, or headscarves, as part of their traditional Muslim dress. The units have personal decorations, cooking facilities, and cabinets of food.

In the film some prisoners speak about how they’ve spent, in some cases, many decades learning about the cause. Now middle-aged men, they say they have come to understand what they were fighting for as young boys.

See Israelis as people

Fishbein said just as Nazi persecution of homosexuals in World War II had the unintended consequence of igniting what came to be known as the gay rights movement, so too might the Israeli prisons become a breeding ground for future activism.

Prison commanders and negotiators are seen laughing together and greeting each other warmly with handshakes and back slaps. One commander says the interaction gives Palestinians a chance perhaps for the first time to see Israelis as people “rather than through their gun-sights.”

Other inmates have used the time to pursue higher education. They are allowed to earn college degrees — classes are offered only in Hebrew.

Many students interviewed in the film say they are studying political science, international politics, and even Israeli politics, causing prisoner Samir Mashawari, a senior leader of Fatah, to remark, “The Palestinian prisoners have turned the Israeli jails into academies and universities.”

Kaplan said that once they are released, these now politically savvy inmates could follow the example of prestate members of the militant Irgun. Some of its members, after being deported by the British to detention camps in Kenya, Eritrea, and Sudan, studied law at British universities. After the establishment of the state, they returned to Israel and became political and governmental leaders.

One Palestinian prisoner who may one day fill such a role, said Kaplan, is Marwan Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a Fatah leader held since 2002.

Fluent in Hebrew and English, Barghouti has strong grassroots support among Palestinians; there is even a website devoted to gaining his freedom.

Although imprisoned, Barghouti continues to play an important role as a Palestinian political figure and has spoken out against suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians. He helped negotiate a unilateral truce in 2003 declared by the main Palestinian military groups.

Barghouti, said Kaplan, “is highly regarded by both Israelis and Palestinians, and I do not believe Israel would have serious objections to releasing him as part of a prisoner exchange.”

Kaplan said he believes, however, that the Israelis want his release to be “a symbolic gesture” as part of a prisoner swap, perhaps in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006.

Kaplan said that possibility could be imminent, given that ongoing talks calling for the exchange of 1,500 political prisoners for Shalit seem to have picked up in recent weeks.

“Things were very active just last week,” he said. “But there are a lot of smokescreens. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on.”

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