Al Jazeera Discovers 'Prisoner Exchanges' Involve Palestinians, Too
Al Jazeera reports that 'Hamas and Israel begin prisoner exchange before Gaza summit,' with 'celebrations in Israel as living captives held by Hamas freed' and 'Israel’s release of about 2,000 Palestinians under way.' What goes unmentioned is the systematic, decades-long detention of thousands of Palestinians, many without trial, under Israel's administrative detention policy. According to human
rights groups like Addameer, Israel holds hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention; some of these 'prisoners' have been held for years without charge, a tactic that human rights organizations consistently condemn as a violation of international law. This isn't an 'exchange' as much as it is Israel releasing some of its political hostages. This convenient framing sanitizes a brutal
reality: Israel's 'prisoners' are often families snatched from their beds, subject to a military justice system with a 99.7% conviction rate for Palestinians in the West Bank. How many 'summits' before the world acknowledges that the 'exchange' implies a false moral equivalency when one side runs a perennial detention machine?