Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH – A jailed Hamas leader and his son celebrated the Eid Al-Fitr holiday in an Israeli jail for the first time since their imprisonment.
Om al-Abed said that her jailed husband Sheikh Jamal Abu Al-Haija (IPS) and their eldest son Abdulsalam celebrated the Eid holiday after the Israeli Prison Service agreed to place them in the same cell in the Ishel prison in southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva. The 55-year-old Jamal Abu Al-Haija is serving a is serving 9 life terms and additional 20 years for masterminding bombing attacks that left 10 Israelis killed. His son Abdulsalam is serving an eight years imprisonment term in Israeli jails for resisting Israeli occupation forces during the April 2002 invasion of West Bank refugee camp of Jenin. Om Al-Abed said that the IPS greed to place her son with his father in the same cell because the latter needs a special care. She added that the Israeli authorities refused several times to place them in the same prison under “lame excuses”. She added that the refusal was part of Israeli efforts “to break the spirit of my husband inside the jail.” The Palestinian researcher and expert in prisoners' affairs Abdulnasser Farwaneh said that Abu Al-Haija is in very bad health, as left hand was amputated during the massive Israeli assault against camp. Abu Al Haija is also suffering from a skin disease. The United Nations said after the invasion that the Israeli army killed 58 Palestinians, wounded hundreds of others and leveled at least 200 homes. Farwaneh says that the IPS also deprives male and female Palestinian prisoners from conjugal visits or vacations in accordance with the Israeli law which allows the prisoner to meet his jailed wife every six months. He added that the IPS also refuses to place Palestinian siblings in the same prison. The researcher said that Israel is holding 5,000 Palestinian prisoners in its in 17 prisons and detention camps in Israel and in the West Bank of whom 234 children, 15 females, 14 members of Palestine Legislative Council, 135 in administrative detention without trial and hundreds suffer from medical negligence.
He called on local, international human rights organizations and media agencies “highlight their issue.” The government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected on Sunday to approve the release of 26 of the 104 Palestinian prisoners, who were arrested before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, in order to facilitate the resumption of peace talks.
