By Khalid Amayreh

When Israeli President Shimon President was pressed by some human rights organizations to stop the practice of "administrative detention" of Palestinian intellectuals, he claimed that "Palestinians who don't hurl fire bombs and who don't shoot have nothing to fear." Peres were lying through his teeth as usual because nearly all victims of administrative detention have not indulged in any illegal activity.

Administrative detention is very much like taking hostages. One is snatched from his home and family by the Israeli occupation army (and now by the Palestinian Authority-PA- forces) and kept behind bars for months or years without charge or trial). I remember one of these seemingly perpetual detainees, Mustafa Shawar of Hebron telling me that he begged the Israeli military judge to inform him why he was being kept in jail.

"I told him I need to know the violation I committed so that I won't do it again after I am released from here. But the Judge wouldn't tell me because of unspecified security reasons."

The truth of the matter is that there are no real violations and no security reasons barring the so-called judge from revealing the reasons for a given Palestinian's arrest and incarceration.

The real reason is the sadistic Israeli urge to torment and harm Palestinians. Israelis do feel good watching Palestinians suffer, just as the Nazis felt good watching Jews suffer and die throughout Europe during and prior to the Second World War.

Israelis often like to brag about having a country of "law and order" But the question that begs itself is what sort of law and order does Israel have and according to which it acts and behaves?

Even the Third Reich, from its beginning to end, was in a certain sense based on law and order.

In light, Israel commits every conceivable crime under the sun and claims that everything is done according to the law. Thus they rain down White Phosphorus in Gaza to incinerate as many children as possible according to the law! They murder babies and children by the thousands also according the rule of law! They even murder Arab youths to snatch their vital organs for transplanting in Jewish recipients, all according to the law, as disclosed by a Swedish journalist last year!

In fact, there are a thousand forms of Israeli criminality meted out to the Palestinian people by this hateful state which claims to be civilized and democratic. The criminal detention of Palestinian intellectuals is just one of these forms.

A few years ago, Israel arrested nearly sixty democratically-elected members of the Palestinian legislative Council for no reason other than appeasing the Israeli Jewish public opinion. These Palestinians committed no felony or misdemeanor or any other violation apart from taking part in democratic elections which Israel and its guardian ally, the United States, okayed.

However, when these Islamist candidates won the elections, Israel and the US and nearly the bulk of the western world rejected the results, not because they were marred with some irregularities or vote rigging, but rather because the US and Israel didn't like the identity and ideology of the winners.

And when an Israeli occupation soldier was taken prisoner by some resistance fighters in Gaza, Israel abducted all these lawmakers in one fell swoop, as if we were living in the American wild west.

Now, what is the difference between this kind of behavior and the behavior of gangsters, hoodlums and common criminals? Well, in Israel's case there seems to be no difference whatsoever.

Eventually, these 60 MPs had to serve up to 50 months for nothing, again in accordance with the law!!

According to sources within the Israeli "justice system," Israel has taken an "informal" decision whereby hundreds of Palestinian Islamists are kept in jail 8 months every year. This means that they are released for 4 months and then rearrested and dumped behind bars for eight months every year.

In recent weeks, the Israeli occupation army has rearrested four MPs of the sixty MPs abducted in 2006 in connection with the Shalit affair.

One of them is Sheikh Nayef Rajoub from Dura, who is also brother to the former PA security official Jebril Rajoub. Nayef Rajoub languished one fifth of his life in Israeli dungeons and detention camps. In June, 2010, he was released after spending 51 months in an Israeli concentration camp for being a "threat to Israel and the Jewish people." Such flimsy and frivolous charges are leveled against anyone the racist Israeli justice system views non-conformist.

Rajoub was rearrested a few weeks ago. He reportedly was sentenced to six months of administrative detention. Whether this unjust imprisonment will be extended or not depends on the whims of a junior Israeli officer.

Three other MPs have also been rearrested, including Khalil Rabei, Muhammed al-Till, and Hatem Qafeesha and most recently Omar Abdul Razzaq, an American-educated professor of economics and finance.

Needless to say, the purpose of these arrests is obviously to punish these dignified Palestinians who reject capitulation to the Zionist fait accompli, preferring imprisonment over disgraced surrender.

The Zionist behavior vis-à-vis the Palestinian people differ very little from the treatment meted out to Jews when they were underdogs.

This criminal treatment, which is devoid of justice and fairness, shows that Jews are like all underdogs, when they get on the top they become as brutal and oppressive as their former oppressors were to them when they were underneath.

This is certainly one of the main reasons why Israel is an illegitimate state that must go sooner or later. States that don't practice justice won't live long.

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By Khalid Amayreh Source: The Palestinian Information Center http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s72lmvXFodQG9bnbI%2bmfBoxaM1y50mTNgFbeBY3DPHuiSE%2fVOdAhJ1N9IhbOoYcG6j392iESRBhJEIPxrmQdYhyfD9ICkYS9PY6emkHfPJUds%3d