Qassam Brigades: Pro-Shalit statement ignores suffering of Palestinian prisoners

[ 28/06/2011 – 05:06 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– The joint statement by Israeli and Palestinian rights groups urging Hamas to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit ignores the suffering of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement on Monday.

“The participation of Palestinian rights party in this statement is suspicious, anti-national, and immoral, and is a challenge to the image of this organization to its people, who agree on the prisoner exchange issue as they have agreed on no other issue,” said Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida.

“Such terms as ‘inhumane’ and ‘suffering’ and others should be directed correctly and used in support of our people’s prisoners, who die a thousand times a day in Israeli prisons,” Abu Obeida said.

He called on the rights groups to stop siding with Israel and the West and to fairly assess the situation.

The statements came after rights organizations released a joint statement titled “human beings are not bargaining chips”. The statement, marking five years since the capture of Shalit, was signed by Israeli groups and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. It calls on Hamas to immediately release Shalit, who was captured while inside an army tank stationed at the eastern border of Rafah city, without mention of the 7,000 war prisoners Israel has captured. It also called Shalit’s capture inhumane as the captors have not allowed the Red Cross to visit him.

Abu Mujahid, the spokesman for the Nasser Salahuddin Brigades, the armed wing of the resistance committees, assured that Shalit’s captors have been treating the soldier according to Islamic law “which is more merciful than the laws of your organizations which are based on the blood of the oppressed and vulnerable,” he said in a statement.

He accused the PCHR of renouncing support of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons by downplaying the fact that the capture of Israeli soldiers was the only way available to Palestinians to see the release of the Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Prison Service director, have recently announced plans to toughen conditions on Palestinian prisoners on the background of the Shalit capture, saying only international law would restrict the measures. Plans included tighter restrictions on education, food, and visits.

The position that Hamas should set the soldier free is “bias to the side of Israeli soldier Shalit, who came to kill the children of Gaza on his tank, which carried tons of weapons and explosives on the Gaza Strip itself,” the Palestinian center for the defense of detainees said in another statement.

The PCDD also said that it was the right of the resistance forces not to allow any party from visiting Shalit to prevent his whereabouts from being leaked to Israel.

The Gaza Prisoners’ Affairs Ministry blamed the continued suffering of Shalit on the Israeli government’s stance on the prisoner swap and its non-agreement to the conditions set by Palestinian resistance forces.

“Whoever wants Shalit to be free should pressure [Israel] and ask them to meet the demands of the Palestinian resistance, and not the other way around,” said a fresh statement by the ministry.

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