By Nicolas Kabat

There are many lessons to learn from “distinguished speakers” such as Tony Blair, the current Mideast Quartet Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, who spoke at the University of Buffalo last Wednesday. One statement in particular by the former Prime Minster struck a chord: “you never solve these conflicts by taking one view and forgetting about the other.” Of course, he was referencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Later, he demanded that captured Israeli Soldier Gilad Shalit be released.  However, he seemed to have forgotten the Palestinian prisoner story.  So, I will tell the other side of the Gilad Shalit story.

In its 2007 annual report, B’tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, noted that Israeli military forces arbitrarily detained about 830 Palestinians a month. These “administrative detentions” amount to midnight kidnappings of Palestinians without any justification or proper legal proceeding. Detainees are rarely informed of the nature of their infraction, and they face a military, not civilian, tribunal. These detentions can last up to 6 months, but may be renewed as many times as the military deems them necessary. As a result, Israel often holds Palestinians indefinitely and without charge.

There have been many cases of minors being detained by Israeli forces, who seldom inform parents of the whereabouts of the children or about the nature of their supposed violations. In 2008, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli forces detained two Palestinian girls from a West Bank town near Bethlehem for unexplained reasons. Family members and friends said that the girls had avoided political matters. Four months after their detention, they were still in Israeli prisons. This was not reported in the American media. However, the story of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza by Hamas, has made international headlines for months.

This is an example of the unequal standards by which Palestinian and Israeli lives are judged internationally. No major media outlet has even questioned the ludicrous Israeli suggestion that only 500 Palestinian prisoners be released in return for captured soldier Gilad Shalit. Is the liberty of these 500 prisoners deemed equal to that of the captured soldier? Why were these prisoners detained if they are deemed innocuous enough to release? This double standard highlights the grave dehumanization of Palestinian life. Israeli lives are deemed more important and more deserving of liberty, free expression, and freedom of movement.

Regardless of the dehumanizing connotations of prisoner exchanges conducted by Israeli authorities and Hamas, the sheer number of Palestinian prisoners (over 5,000) goes to show the unfair nature of the political focus on Shalit. Why is Blair not demanding that Palestinian political prisoners be released? Wouldn’t that fit within his paradigm of even-handedness? But alas, I also learned another lesson from Mr. Blair: never trust a politician to walk the line of neutrality; there is no such thing in conflict.

The version of this article in the printed version of The Buffalo Activist was incorrect. The edits made to this electronic version have been accepted by the article's author.