The Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex Detainees Affairs is refusing to accept any criterion for releasing political prisoners from Israeli jails based on geographical region.
Sunday's report comes as preparations are underway for a possible prisoner exchange for the Israeli soldier captured in Rafah.
“It does not matter if our brothers are registered as Arab or Palestinian, if they are from Syria’s occupied Golan Heights or from the West Bank or Gaza,” the Minister said Sunday.
During a meeting with political prisoner relatives in Syria’s Golan Heights, occupied by Israel for decades, the Minister assured them, “All prisoners are treated equally in these matters, they are all our sons.”
A similar sentiment was released in a statement from the Ministry offices in Ramallah, reading in part, “The prisoners from the Golan and Jerusalem, inside ’48 and Arab prisoners who are also being held for the Palestinian cause, who denounce the occupation that holds them, are not differentiated between when it comes to negotiating a prisoner release.”
The comment is in reference to the expected exchange of the Israeli soldier for political prisoners in Israeli jails.
During his meeting in the Golan, the Minister asked, “Is it not right to ask the occupiers to release them in exchange for their soldier?”
Those attending the meeting expressed “full confidence in the sincerity of his statements,” no longer fearing that their sons will be passed by in a group release as has happened in the past.
At the end of the meeting, the delegation prevented a shield engraved with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights family names of those who have spent more than 20 years in Israeli captivity.
There are several who have been imprisoned since 1985, before Oslo which stipulated their release but Israel ignored that tenet of the Accords, under 27 year sentences.
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