GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has presented a “clear roadmap” for a prisoner swap with the Zionist regime, Hamas Political Bureau member Zaher Jabareen says, stressing that the “ball is now in the occupying regime’s court.”
The Hamas leadership and the movement’s military wing, said Jabareen, pay special attention to the prisoners’ file, especially those who are serving long sentences. He noted that the occupying regime has been trying to link the reconstruction of Gaza with the Zionist troops held in the besieged enclave.
“Hamas and the resistance leadership reject such a link. The movement has told all of the mediators that it is impossible to link the two issues. Moreover, the intentions of the Israeli occupation authorities are not clear.”
Sometimes, he pointed out, it feels as if the occupying regime takes two steps forward and three steps back. “It wants information about its soldiers but isn’t prepared to pay any price for it.”
The release of prisoners re-arrested and imprisoned after being released in the 2011 prisoner swap is a precondition for any new deal, said Jabareen. He told the New Arab that the conditions for a swap “get more difficult through time”. He said that Hamas has added to the freedom list the six prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison only to be recaptured recently.
Meanwhile, nearly 200 human rights organizations have held the Zionist regime fully responsible for the lives and safety of six prisoners who tunneled their way out of a maximum security detention center earlier this month and were arrested later.
A total of 199 organizations, in a joint statement released on Monday, called for the formation of an independent international investigation committee to immediately look into the conditions of their detention.
“According to the testimony of lawyers, Israeli occupation forces assaulted them harshly from the moment of arrest, causing multiple bodily injuries. The injuries necessitated hospitalization of some of them as they had been subjected to unjustified violence and torture,” the statement read.
“They are deprived of sleep, and have been interrogated after complete sleep deprivation, according to available information. Interrogators have made death threats against some of them, and their relatives have also been arbitrarily arrested for the purposes of revenge.”
The human rights organizations stressed that the mistreatment of the prisoners amounts to a violation of international and humanitarian principles.
The organizations called upon Arab nations and expatriates to advocate for Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the Zionist regime’s jails, and to raise their cause through social media platforms.