PA has no reason to celebrate
By Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, January 26, 2004
Some Palestinians were happy on Saturday, on hearing the news that Israel and Hezbollah had signed the prisoner-exchange agreement. "The release of 400 Palestinian prisoners is a day of celebration for 400 families in the West Bank and Gaza," said, for example, Palestinian cabinet member Qadoura Fares, who has been dealing with the prisoner issue for years.
Fares and his colleagues are well aware of the fact that there are no big names among the prisoners slated for release. Israel refused in principle to release detainees defined as having "blood on their hands," despite the fact that, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, this is a definition lacking in legal or moral foundation - after all, in keeping with such a definition, those who did the planning and sent the murderers to their missions can be released.
Insofar as is known, neither does the list of Palestinians slated for release include well-known detainees such as Palestinian Legislative Council members Hussam Khader of Nablus or Marwan Barghouti, who is often named as a candidate to succeed Yasser Arafat. In Ramallah, there's a Popular Committee that is working very hard to secure Barghouti's release; and on Saturday, shortly before the news of the deal with Hezbollah was released, the members of the committee warned the Israeli authorities against harming the man, who is being held in solitary confinement.
The fact that Hezbollah of Lebanon managed to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is proof of the ineffectualness of the Palestinian Authority, whose efforts on the matter have yielded rather pathetic results. The deal, therefore, is expected to boost the prestige of Hezbollah in the eyes of the Palestinians, and to further undermine the status of the PA.
This was evident already during the course of the negotiations. In the initial stages, the PA gave Hezbollah a list of prisoners it wanted released. The list included the long-time detainees, most of whom were sentenced to life in prison for carrying out terror attacks, as well as the well-known ones, like Barghouti.
It wasn't long, however, before Hezbollah began to receive additional lists: The Arabs of East Jerusalem passed on to Beirut a list of prisoners from the city who are being held separate from the prisoners from the territories; Israel's Arabs sent a list of prisoners who are Israeli citizens; Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas's political bureau, gave Hezbollah a list of his people; and in their wake came lists from Islamic Jihad and the left-wing fronts. In fact, all the Palestinian factions sent lists of names to Hezbollah. Thereafter, lists of names were sent to Beirut from within Israeli jails - lists that were compiled by the prisoners committees. It eventually got to the point at which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinian families were approaching the Hezbollah leaders directly, with stories of their loved ones imprisoned in Israel.
The result was a complete lack of orderly and official coordination between Hezbollah and the PA. Up until yesterday morning, at least, the senior leadership in Ramallah had no idea of even who had been included in the list.
One of Arafat's close associates, who was caught by surprise by the release of the news about the deal on Saturday night, said the issue of the prisoners hadn't come up in any of the recent meetings in which he had participated. There had been no reports on the subject, and everyone had been busy with the day-to-day distresses, he said.
The meetings of the Palestinian leadership deal time and again with the separation fence and the roadblocks, with acts of abuse and the demolition of homes, and with the ever-increasing financial problems that are threatening to paralyze the PA's mechanisms.
Some 400 Palestinian families will indeed rejoice at the end of the week with the release of their sons; but it will not be a celebration for the Palestinian leadership, which, from a political point of view, is not gaining anything from the deal - and appears even to have been damaged by it.
