Military tribunals. No public access to information from government sources about charges, trial proceedings, sentencing, incarceration or treatment of citizen and non-citizen Palestinians imprisoned by the State of Israel.

Imprisonment of half a million people, which includes men, women and children, among them those elected by Palestinians to serve as representative members of their government, and there is no data about them available to the public from the State of Israel.

In fact, hundreds if not thousands of those, as well as many of the Lebanese prisoners held for years and years by Israel are by definition, and sometimes by Israel’s own admission, hostages. Israel has not made much of a secret of its common practice of taking civilians as hostages in order to use them as “bargaining chips” to obtain some political concession or other – a clear war crime. Also very well-known is Israel’s habit of imprisoning the relatives, including but not limited to wives, elderly parents, and young children, of “wanted persons” in order to induce them to turn themselves in – another war crime, which by the way the United States has also used quite generously.

As for Samir Kuntar getting a degree while imprisoned in Israel, he was a 17 year old boy at the time of his imprisonment in 1979, and he and his representatives fought for around 15 years before he was allowed to continue his education by correspondence. There is also good reason to believe that the charges against Samir Kuntar were trumped up.

I wonder if some of the prisoners under negotiations for release are Hamas’ parliament.