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original article
PNA urges Israel to drop controversial prisoners law
RAMALLAH, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian National Authority(PNA) on
Saturday called on Israel to cancel a controversial law it uses to hold prisoners without a trial or keep them jailed after
their terms were over.
Taking and holding people without cause is kidnapping.
The PNA "has raised this issue before international circles and human rights
groups and resorted to the Israeli courts to drop the law but the results
were fruitless," Eissa Qaraqe', Palestinian minister of prisoners affairs,
told Xinhua.
This law "violates the Palestinian prisoners' rights and the human values,"
he added.
Israel has ratified the "illegal warrior law" in 2002 and applied it to
Palestinians arrested in the Gaza Strip during its three-week military
operation in the Hamas-controlled territory that ended on January 18, 2009.
Creating a law to cover an otherwise illegal action is called using the
color of law. This sort of thing is useful for fooling the ignorant as
propaganda but is profoundly contrary to law. For example the Palestinians
could pass a law requiring the murder of Zionists and then claim they were
lawful killings. That would be no different.
Israel also used the law to keep two Lebanese prisoners until it gets
information on the whereabouts of Ron Arad, a fighter pilot who went missing
since his jet crashed over Lebanon in 1986.Later, in 2008, Israel freed the
two hostages in a prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah.
Holding people to force the actions of other people is taking hostages.
In 2007, Hamas seized control in Gaza after it routed security forces loyal
to President Mahmoud Abbas and a year after it had captured an Israeli
soldier in a cross-border raid near the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel deals
with Gaza as a hostile entity.
According to Qaraqe', Israel still holds some Gazans without trial and
refused to release others whose imprisonment terms were over.
"Those prisoners are deprived of getting any aid from rights organizations
and their families are not allowed to visit them," he said.
During last winter offensive in Gaza, Israel arrested
about 1,000 Palestinians, said Abdul Nasser Ferwana, a prisoner
rights activist. He said Israel refuses to reveal too much information about
those prisoners "and most of them might have been held under the illegal
warrior law, or killed during the assault but Israel kept their bodies."
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