On 29 March 2009, Adalah sent an urgent letter to Israeli Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann following recommendations made by the minister and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to impose additional restrictions on Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers. According to the recommendations, which were made at a cabinet meeting held on the same day, Israel should prevent Palestinian political prisoners from receiving visits from their families, exercising their right to an academic education and to take school matriculation examinations, watching the television and reading newspapers. The letter demanded that Friedmann halt all attempts to impose these additional restrictions.
In the letter, Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker argued that statements attributed to Friedmann in the media indicate that the only goal behind Israel’s desire to harm Palestinian prisoners is revenge for the breakdown of talks between Israel and Hamas over the release of captured Israeli soldier Gil’ad Shalit. During the cabinet meeting Friedmann reportedly stated that, “It is true that we are the only democracy in the Middle East, but we can’t let ourselves become the only suckers and we mustn’t show weakness.”
Adalah argued that imposing additional restrictions on Palestinian prisoners as a reprisal for the failure of the prisoner release deal was immoral and illegal. Turning the prisoners into hostages and taking revenge on them in order to secure the release of Shalit is illegal and constitutes collective punishment, prohibited under international law.
It should be emphasized that this attempt comes in the context of a series of restrictions that have been imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian prisoners since the capture of Shalit on 25 June 2006, most significantly the ban imposed on family visits to prisoners from Gaza.
There are approximately 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers who are classified by the Israel Prison Service as “security prisoners”. They are deprived of their rights in prison on a daily basis, in particular prisoners from Gaza. Moreover, Palestinian prisoners have been transferred from their places of residence to within the borders of the State of Israel in violation of international law.