Israeli Tanks Attack Palestinian Jail

I must admit to feeling a tinge of cynicism when I witness Israeli tanks attacking a Palestinian jail on the orders of an acting Israeli Prime Minister facing an election in which he might be percieved as being soft on security. Especially as it's an election that he himself has conceded that he has no chance of losing.

Not surprisingly, the result of this Israeli action has been chaos across the Palestinian Territories.

In the wave of Palestinian unrest that followed the Israeli raid in Jericho:

The director of International Red Cross in Gaza was kidnapped by gunmen.

Two French citizens and a Korean were seized from a hotel in Gaza City by gunmen, one of whom was shot dead by security forces.

A British Council cultural centre in Gaza was set ablaze and an EU compound stormed.

All of this chaos was to arrest Ahmed Sa'adat. A man who was already under custody in a Jericho jail.

Sa'adat was arrested by Palestinian security services on 15 January 2002. He was detained in the Palestinian presidential compound in Ramallah, together with 5 other Palestinians, who were wanted by Israel.

No charges were presented against him.

On 1 May 2002, Sa'adat and the other five detainees were transferred to Jericho Prison in accordance with an agreement in this regard, in which the US administration played a major role. Contrary to the case concerning 4 of the other detainees, who were convicted by a Palestinian military court of assassinating the late Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, in Jerusalem in October 2001, no charges have been presented against Sa'adat, nor has he been brought to trial.

The Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, who founded the right-wing nationalist Moledet party, was himself killed in retribution for the assasination, by Israel, of Abu Ali Mustafa.

Ze'evi made it quite clear during his entire political career that he supported ethnic cleansing or forced transfer. He famously compared Palestinians to "lice" and "cancer". On different occasions, Ze'evi also called for Israel to lay claim to Jordan. It should be noted that Jordan had already signed a formal peace treaty with Israel at the time. More often than not, other Moledet party members had to follow up on these declarations with apologetic explanations that he was misunderstood and, in fact, Moledet supports only "voluntary transfer".

The Israeli Press Spokesman is making a great deal of the fact that Sa'adat is accused - and we should remember that no evidence has ever been given nor any trial held - of "killing an Israeli cabinet minister".

The shame on Israel is that a man who held such extreme views could ever have held a cabinet post in the first place. Only in a Sharon government would such a thing have been possible.