Zionist Organisation of America Press Release, February 4, 1999
Hamas terrorists who are supposed to be “imprisoned” in
Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority jails are actually allowed to leave
the prison each day and merely have to check in at night.
The Israeli news service Middle East News Line, edited by prominent
Israeli journalists Mohammed Najib and Steve Rodan, reports (February 2,
1999): “Palestinian sources said the PA has allowed dozens of Hamas
members detained last year to leave prison every morning on condition they
return that night. The sources said the PA has instituted daily furloughs
for some Hamas detainees last year in an attempt to dampen pressure for
their release.”
There have been many similar reports in recent months about PA
prisons allowing Hamas terrorists to leave at will or being used as a means
of protecting terrorists from Israel capture:
- Two Hamas terror suspects jailed by the PA have been given
permission “to leave their cells for studies at Bir Zeit University” each
day. (Jerusalem Post, April 22, 1998) - In February 1998, the head of the PA’s secret police
brought a representative of the CIA to a prison in Jericho, to show him
that Youssef Ra’i and Shaher Ra’i, two terrorists who murdered Israelis,
were imprisoned. But according to an investigative report by the Jerusalem
Report (March 5, 1998), “the visit was an elaborate ruse to placate the
Americans…the Ra’is living normal lives outside the prison
walls…Eyewitnesses have seen them at coffee shops and markets in the
town, in the company of family members and friends.” - Peace Watch, a non-partisan Israeli organization that
monitors violations of the Oslo accords, reported in May 1996 that Abd
al-Majid Dudin, who was involved in a 1996 Jerusalem bus bombing in which
four people were killed (including Connecticut schoolteacher Joan Davenny),
was sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Palestinian Authority but,
instead of being behind bars, was hired as a guard in the PA’s Jericho
jail. - The Israeli government revealed in September 1997 that four of
the five terrorists who carried out bombings in Jerusalem that year, in
which 20 Jews were murdered, came from an Arab village near the
PLO-controlled city of Nablus. According to the Associated Press (Sept.23,
1997), after a previous wave of Hamas bombings in 1996, “the four knew they
were wanted by Israel and felt they would be safer in Palestinian custody.”
At their own request, they were “imprisoned” in the PA’s jail in Nablus.
The Associated Press quoted a PLO security official as saying that
“security was lax and inmates often were allowed to spend several hours a
day in town.” In September 1996, “the four did not return from such an
outing.” - Associated Press correspondent Laura King visited the PLO’s
Jneid Prison, in Nablus, on September 15, 1997 and found extraordinarily
lax conditions:
The prison’s door was wide open. So was the barred
door leading to the small cellblock. So was each cell door.Mingling with their captors or chatting among
themselves were 15 members of the Islamic group Hamas,
spending another day in Palestinian custody
rounded by recently by Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority
in response to Israeli and U.S. demands that he crack down
on Islamic militants who have staged terrorist attacks.Yesterday, however, security at Jneid was so casual
that journalists strolled unescorted through the main
entrance and walked straight into the common area where
Hamas detainees were wandering about outside their cells,
smoking and talking.The Hamas detainees said they had been told their
detention was temporary, and mean to shield them from
covert Israeli action. - The New York Times, on Aug. 22, 1997, quoted the Israeli
government spokesman as revealing that “Rather than arrest the militants
named on lists provided by Israel, the Palestinian Authority appears in
some cases to have provided them with bodyguards to protect them from a
possible Israeli snatch.”
Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of
America, said: “Arafat is not putting terrorists in jail–he’s giving them
free nights in what is essentially a Palestinian Authority hotel. This
makes a mockery of Arafat’s commitment to combat terror. The Clinton
administration, which explicitly promised Israel that it would protest
Arafat’s releases of terrorists, should speak out.”
