Israel’s Insidious Narrative About Palestinian Prisoners – The Intercept

Palestinians reunite with their relatives as they are released from Israel's Ofer prison as a part of a prisoner swap, in Al Bireh, West Bank, on Nov. 26, 2023.

The Israeli government narrative surrounding the Palestinian prisoners being released during this temporary ceasefire is both insidious and dishonest.

Interior Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has banned Palestinians from celebrating their release.

Who is making these allegations? A military that acts as a brutal occupation force against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The vast majority of the 300 Palestinian prisoners proposed for release by Israel are teenage boys.

According to the definitions laid out in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, these Palestinians were children when they were arrested by Israel.

The Israeli narrative promotes the fiction that these Palestinians are in the middle of some sort of fair judicial proceeding in which they will eventually be tried in a fair and impartial process.

Palestinians are not prosecuted in civil courts; they are tried in military courts.

If, as Israel alleges, these people have committed violent crimes, particularly against civilians, then Israel should give them full rights to due process, to see the alleged evidence against them, and they should be tried in civilian courts with the same rights afforded Israeli defendants.

Israel is asking the world to believe that these 300 people are all dangerous terrorists, yet it has built a kangaroo military court system for Palestinians that magically churns out a nearly 100 percent conviction rate.

Palestinians taken by Israel, including some on the list of prisoners proposed for release, have certainly committed violent acts.

Contrast this to the widespread impunity that governs the actions of violent Israeli settlers who mercilessly target Palestinians in an effort to expel them from their homes.