Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“A new report on the conditions of Palestinians jailed in Israel says that since the Shalit prisoner transfer deal last month, the situation has improved little, leaving many to wonder if it was a bad bargain. A report recently published from the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners Affairs stated that improved conditions for Palestinians in Israeli jails agreed on in the swap deal freeing Israeli IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, are not being implemented. The report noted that 60 prisoners in Ashkelon jail have been banned from buying goods from the prison store for two months and have also been denied family visits for more than one month. The prisoners are withheld higher education, room raids are commonplace and beatings from prison administration often occur, the report said………..”

I don’t know: releasing over a thousand Palestinians for one scrawny Israeli soldier seems like a good deal for the Palestinians. It even almost seems like a good deal for the Israelis too, apparently since they had only one captive. An exchange rate of 1 : 1000 is steep, and it is not necessarily good for the Palestinians to exchange, say, 2000 of their own for one scrawny Israeli soldier. It has certain unfortunate implications of human valuation: if some think one scrawny Israeli is worth more than one thousand Palestinians, maybe two thousand. There is no way to go around this. On humanitarian grounds, both sides gained by getting their captive people back.
Cheers
mhg


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