{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint.}
RAMALLAH, West Bank - A Palestinian prisoner whose hunger strike had stoked weeks of protests in the West Bank ended his eight-month on-off fast on Tuesday in exchange for early release by Israel, Palestinian officials said.So let me see if I understand this correctly.
Israeli and Palestinian officials had feared that had Samer Essawi, 32, died because of refusing food, it might have led to mass unrest.
At least six Palestinian protesters were wounded in February in clashes with IDF soldiers after another Palestinian died while being interrogated in an Israeli jail. The clashes were fueled by the worsening health of Essawi and other prisoners.
Under a deal signed by Essawi and a military prosecutor, he will serve eight more months for violating bail conditions from an earlier release, the officials said, announcing he had ended the strike.
He will then be allowed to go to his Jerusalem home, Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoner organization, told Reuters.
Israel convicted Essawi of opening fire on an Israeli bus in 2002, but released him in 2011 along with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit.
In 2002 this maniac shot up a bus in an effort to kill a bunch of Jews. Since then he sat in prison until he was one of the five gazillion criminals and murders and Jihadis that Israel released for Gilad. And now he's back in prison for another eight months for violating bail conditions, but Israel is considering giving him an early release if he would eat?
Once again, how can anyone have writer's block when the pure stupidity piles up this high and this fast on a daily basis?
The guy shot up an Israeli bus, for crying out loud. I do not know about you guys, but where I come from if someone takes a gun and goes down to the road and shoots at a bus full of people (was it a school bus?) they pretty much go away forever. They don't get exchanged for kidnap victims. And if they refuse to eat that's basically their problem.
I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing. Israel is the most maligned country on the planet and, yet, it is constantly begging the world for some kind of pat on the head for noble little gestures like this. Israel gives up the Sinai and it gets back hatred. Israel gives up the Gaza and it gets back ten thousand Kassam and Katyusha rockets. People try to kill Jews in the Jewish State and they get released for diplomatic reasons.
Look, I was thrilled when Gilad Shalit was released from whatever Gazan hell-hole that they subjected him to, but there is no reason to release this maniac - and, yes, anyone who shoots a gun at a bus is a maniac.
It's as if Israel, if not the Jewish people more generally, are so desperate for some kind of acceptance by the world that they will do anything for a pat on the head, but it simply never works. Releasing criminals and murderers because they refuse to eat, and thereby potentially sparking riots by their misguided and heavily propagandized compatriots on the outside, is beyond foolish.
It is suicidal.
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