“This indicates, first of all, that there are a very significant number of Palestinians held in prison by Israel compared to the number of Israelis held hostage by Hamas or other Palestinian groups.”notes researcher Kheda Djanaralieva, doctoral student at ULB International Law Center. As for the ratio practiced in exchanges between Palestinian and Israeli detainees, it can give the impression that some lives are worth more than others. A point of view which can also arise from the toll of victims on both sides: at least 1,906 Israelis and 47,107 Palestinians were killed in just over fifteen months of war in Gaza. However, underlines the researcher, “under international law, no one life is worth more than another.
More or less expensive life
What can also give this impression of more or less expensive living is the fact that we are talking about hostages on one side and detainees on the other, she continues. “Taking hostages is prohibited under international law, so there is this idea that Hamas cannot take hostages and that they must all the more be released. While Israel, as the occupying power and under certain very strict conditions, can detain certain Palestinian civilians for imperative security reasons.distinguishes Ms. Djanaralieva.
Return to Israel of the first three Israeli hostages freed from the clutches of Hamas
Around 9,900 Palestinians were detained in Israeli prisons for “security” reasons as of September 6, 2024, estimates Amnesty International. Half of them are held in administrative detention without charge or trial, specifies the NGO. After the massacre of 1,210 people perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, Israeli authorities invoked the law on the incarceration of illegal combatants (considered abusive by the organization) to imprison alleged participants in the attacks stopped as part of field operations in Gaza.
A thousand liberations
The arrests of Palestinians have “always been a weapon in the service of Israel”, both to maintain its domination within the framework of its occupation and colonization policies, as “to have something to monetize in the event of a major crisis”explains Sébastien Boussois, researcher in international relations and founding director of the European Geopolitical Institute (IGE), based in Brussels. “Israel has for years locked up in its prisons many Palestinians, whom it considers to be a danger to its national security, and who can be used as bargaining chips when the time comes.. Since the start of the war, Israel has arrested and imprisoned (at least temporarily) around 6,000 Gazans. The Jewish state has undertaken, under the terms of the recent agreement, to release a thousand of them, on the condition that they were not involved in the events of October 7.
For its part, Hamas knows very well, to the extent that there are many more Palestinian prisoners than Israeli ones, that it will be able to free many Palestinians with a single Israeli. “It’s part of his strategy.”said Mr. Boussois, “he has no other way” of this magnitude to have them released. So, when he kidnaps 250 Israelis on October 7, 2023, he knows that he will be able to monetize them and thus replenish his ranks. The following November 30, at the end of the previous (and first) ceasefire, 81 Israelis (of the 105 hostages released) were exchanged for some 240 Palestinian detainees – a ratio of one to three. “The exchange ratio varies over time. It depends on the circumstances or configurations in place at a specific moment.”believes Ms. Djanaralieva.
-Ceasefire in Gaza: Hamas publishes the names of four Israeli “soldiers” to be released on Saturday
Symbolic value
Ultimately, it is less the “market” value of a Jewish life (which is supposedly worth several Palestinian lives) that matters than its symbolic value: “Hamas understands very well that Israel attaches particular importance to the life of every Jew and that it will do anything to save even one Jew. We saw this clearly in the Gilad Shalit exchange.”notes the director of the IGE. In 2011, this Israeli soldier captured five years earlier on the border of the Gaza Strip by a Hamas commando was exchanged for the record number of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners… Among them was the future leader (military, first, then political). ) of the Islamist group, Yahia Sinouar… The weapon turns out to be double-edged.
The State of Israel also takes care of “warn its citizens not to take any risks that could lead to kidnapping” (or a murder), underlines the doctoral student at the CID, since it would come to “failing to protect those he made it his mission to protect”. While on the Palestinian side, there is “in the collective imagination the idea of a martyr people who go so far as to give their lives for the independence of Palestine”.
After fifteen months of war against Israel, what remains of Hamas?
