Opinion: Israel's 'administrative detension' is very much like taking hostages

PIC, Khalid Amayreh  - When Israeli President Shimon President was pressed by some human rights organizations to stop the practice of "administrative detention" of Palestinian intellectuals, he claimed that "Palestinians who don't hurl fire bombs and who don't shoot have nothing to fear." Peres were lying through his teeth as usual because nearly all victims of administrative detention have not indulged in any illegal activity.

Administrative detention is very much like taking hostages. One is snatched from his home and family by the Israeli occupation army (and now by the Palestinian Authority-PA- forces) and kept behind bars for months or years without charge or trial). I remember one of these seemingly perpetual detainees, Mustafa Shawar of Hebron telling me that he begged the Israeli military judge to inform him why he was being kept in jail.

……In recent weeks, the Israeli occupation army has rearrested four MPs of the sixty MPs abducted in 2006 in connection with the Shalit affair.

One of them is Sheikh Nayef Rajoub from Dura, who is also brother to the former PA security official Jebril Rajoub. Nayef Rajoub languished one fifth of his life in Israeli dungeons and detention camps. In June, 2010, he was released after spending 51 months in an Israeli concentration camp for being a "threat to Israel and the Jewish people." Such flimsy and frivolous charges are leveled against anyone the racist Israeli justice system views non-conformist.

Rajoub was rearrested a few weeks ago. He reportedly was sentenced to six months of administrative detention. Whether this unjust imprisonment will be extended or not depends on the whims of a junior Israeli officer.

Three other MPs have also been rearrested, including Khalil Rabei, Muhammed al-Till, and Hatem Qafeesha and most recently Omar Abdul Razzaq, an American-educated professor of economics and finance. Read more