However, some days after the signature it was already obvious that the big headlines were empty. Not only Israel does not care about it (the surprise would be otherwise), but it has been known that the PA failed to defend the rights of the hunger strikers and ensure their demands were included in the final ‘deal’. Moreover, the PA has actively ignored the families of the strikers. It has just briefly acnowledged them for the journalists to have time to take the front page picture for the next day newspapers. This attitude, in a country in which most of the families have or have had some of their members in prison, is not only not responsible but highly unwise.
Israel is once more not respecting the agreement, however decaffeinated it was, and PA is softly criticising it without any power or interest to fight for the prisoners’ rights and hold Israel accountable of its human rights violations. Many administrative detentions have been renewed, prisoners from Gaza are still not allowed to receive family visits, solitary confinement has not ended and the right to study is not yet respected. There are a number of prisoners who renewed their hunger strikes, some of them children. Akram Rikhawi, the one who has fasted longer (today 75 days), is seriously ill and is not receiving appropriate medical attention.
But the PA keeps silent. Well, the prisoners have always been such an uncomfortable issue for them…
A month after prisoners signed a deal to end their mass hunger strike in Israeli jails, prisoners groups warn Israeli authorities are not upholding their side of the bargain.Mourad Jadallah, legal researcher for prisoners rights group Addameer, told Ma’an that the problem goes back to the Palestinian Authority’s role in the deal, and its attitude to prisoners in general.
(···) Jadallah said the deal fell short in two ways — the language it used, and by not including the issue of administrative detention in the written agreement.
(···) Prisoners attribute the problem to a hasty and incomplete deal that ended their strike, Jadallah said.
“One prisoner said that what the Palestinian Authority did was like the Oslo agreement. The PA was looking for any victory or any role in the deal so it went fast and accepted this language. Prisoners say this is on the shoulders of the PA.”
“Israel also does not want Palestinians to feel they reached something with the hunger strike or let the prisoners movement feel like they reached their demands. They want to say: We can control everything.”
The 1993 Oslo Accords which established the PA are widely-regarded as a negotiations failure, splitting the Palestinian territory into spheres of Israeli and Palestinian control as a 5-year interim measure, but two decades on simply cementing Israel’s military and settlement reach into Palestinian lands and the PA’s impotence.
According to Jadallah, official indifference to prisoners dates back to this time. The first Oslo agreement did not mention prisoners, and only after angry letters did the second agreement include just five pages on the issue.
(···) authorities are unable to set a coherent strategy for freeing prisoners, Jadallah continued.(···) “We are paying millions for our occupation. In Oslo we agreed to play inside the system, but this is a way to corrupt the prisoners movement.”
(···) “The PA uses the prisoners issue to reach credibility, but they are not really interested. They use it as a way to buy loyalty and not for liberation.”
“They say they have confidence in the prisoners movement and then on the ground the security forces threaten prisoners on hunger strike and arrest supporters of the hunger strikers in Ramallah, Jenin and elsewhere. There are two agendas – the political discourse and security forces policy.”
But Jadallah said the hunger strikers were able to overcome serious obstacles to unite the prisoners movement in a single non-violent action for the first time.
(···) “Fatah prisoners were told if they participate in the hunger strike they will lose their salaries from the security forces. Some prisoners then played the counter-revolutionary.”
[من فلسطين] 