Palestinian women say no to release from prison

All Palestinian women in prison must be freed, they said. The 21 refused to denounce terrorism.

By Marjorie Miller, Los Angeles Times

Palestinian women say no to release from prison — The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 October 1995 — The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · 9 October 1995

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — The Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement ran into further complications yesterday when 21 Palestinian women prisoners rejected freedom in solidarity with four others who were denied release.

The women prisoners who were to have been released yesterday morning announced to Israeli authorities that they would not sign a declaration renouncing terrorism — a requirement for their liberty — unless all of the Palestinian women being held were freed.

Israeli officials responded that no one would be forced to leave jail and returned the women to their cells, at least until tomorrow, after the first day of the seven-day Jewish Sukkoth festival. The women hung the red-green-black-and-white flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization from their cells.

PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat announced that he would send a delegation to the Sharon Prison in central Israel tomorrow to try to persuade the women to leave. One Palestinian who had been jailed apart from the other women did sign the commitment to refrain from terrorist attacks and was let out.

But when Bashaher abu Laban arrived home in East Jerusalem, she said that she, too, would have stayed behind bars had she known the rest of the women were doing so. Under the interim peace accord signed in Washington on Sept.

28, all Palestinian women prisoners were to be released along with men who have completed two-thirds of their terms and prisoners who are under 18, over 50 or ill. The women were to be let out first. But last week, President Ezer Weizman announced that, despite the accord, he would not pardon two of the women who, he said, had “blood on their hands.” Israeli Gen.

Ilan Biran, chief of the army's central command, then refused to allow the release of two others also involved in the killing of Israelis. Weizman was responsible for pardoning prisoners from Jerusalem or those tried in Israeli civilian courts. Military commanders are responsible for signing the release of those who were tried in military courts.

It was unclear whether the approximately 1,100 Palestinian men who are scheduled to be released tomorrow would take a stand similar to the women's. Israeli Police Minister Moshe Shahal said that no prisoners would be released who refused to sign the vow against further violence.

PLO officials have called the government's refusal to release the four women a grave violation of the peace accord, but they have not made the women's freedom a condition for continuing implementation of the accord.

The Israeli government has closed off the Gaza Strip and the West Bank until the end of the Sukkoth holiday for fear of another attack by Islamic extremists opposed to the peace accord.

Israeli and Palestinian military officials, meanwhile, met yesterday at the Erez checkpoint into the Gaza Strip to discuss details of the Israeli troop redeployment from Palestinian cities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the introduction of Palestinian police in their place.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said early yesterday after a meeting with Arafat that Israel would pull troops and close administrative offices in four Arab villages within two weeks.

Cite this item

"Palestinian women say no to release from prison," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 October 1995. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1995-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1995-005