Politic?: Heroes of the Palestinian 'Resistance'

"Palestinian society views its prisoners in Israeli jails as soldiers on the frontlines of the violent rejectionism that has characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than a century.

Palestinian terrorists sitting in Israeli jails are lionized and paid handsomely for their 'sacrifice'. The so-called "pay for slay" stipends to prisoners and their families are seen as vital for the Palestinian Authority."

Palestinian society views prisoners in Israeli jails as soldiers on the front lines.

"As Palestinian Authority leaders have repeatedly said, the prisoners are at the forefront of their conflict against the Jewish state. P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas has stated repeatedly: 'If we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners'."
"In July, at a ceremony honoring terrorists in Israeli prisons, he called them 'pioneers' and 'stars in the firmament of the Palestinian people's struggle'."
Gregg Roman, Middle East Forum

Israel too mourns its dead; civilians targeted for death and those in the military who fight for Israel's right to exist, challenged continually by the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas where the agenda of the former is to 'persuade' Israel to disappear and that of the latter which is to violently destroy it. Both pursue their agendas with vigour and determination, inciting their followers to 'resist' the 'occupiers' by employing any means at hand to maim and kill and terrorize Israelis.

While Israelis mourns their dead as victims of violence, the Palestinians mourn theirs as martyrs for the cause, that cause being the elimination of Israel and the triumphant conquest of 'Palestine' which Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinian claim has been theirs in perpetuity. That would be the very same 'Palestine' of historical, Biblical inheritance, the home of Judeans, ancestors of the present-day Jewish Israelis. Palestinian Arabs have co-opted Jewish history as their own.

A year ago Israeli forces shot dead a young Palestinian man who had deliberately driven his car at speed into a military checkpoint. Ahmed Erekat plowed his vehicle with intent toward the Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint. A not uncommon occurrence, one the military responds to with lethal force themselves to halt an ongoing attack. The dead man's father, Mustafa Erekat, claims his son was innocent, shot in cold blood for no reason whatever.

He was, in fact, following in the incitement-footsteps of his late uncle Saeb Erekat a vehement spokesman for the Palestinian Authority.

A Palestinian rights group, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (Palestinians love the sound of legitimacy the use of 'human rights' in a title gives them) claims that Israel holds bodies of Palestinians who were killed while in the act of committing attacks against Israelis as an unfair cudgel of authority against innocent Palestinians. Israel, on the other hand, does so as ammunition to enable them to make exchanges with Fatah and Hamas of Israeli dead kept by Hamas and Fatah as bargaining chips.

Which often sees lopsided agreements take place, with Israel agreeing to release hundreds of Palestinians both dead and those who are prisoners to secure the release of a single Israeli civilian or soldier. Close to 200 Lebanese and Palestinians killed in fighting were released in 2008 for the remains of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years earlier. That trade included five Lebanese prisoners, one of whom was a notorious terrorist.

"They have no right to keep my son and it is my right for my son to have a good funeral", Mustafa Erekat insists. His son Ahmed was to be married shortly. "He had a house that was ready for him." His grievance includes that he has no idea where his son is buried. There is a reason for that. Israel keeps the details of where it buries the corpses of those killed while attempting to or succeeding in murdering Israelis, to prevent them from becoming shrines to the 'martyrs' they are claimed to be.

When the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) or Hamas has possession of Israeli bodies they don't divulge where they are and they are mourned in absentia, their families awaiting closure with the release of the body for proper burial. They have no appeal to a lawful authority at their command. Whereas Palestinians can appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court for a judgement in their case which may or may not result in upholding their appeal or rejecting it. In the case of rejection, as in Mustafa Erekat's son's case, he plans to appeal the Supreme Court decision.