Israel touts itself, and its supporters claim, it to be a democracy - with all that entails. Due process, equal rights for all, etc. etc.
Well, notwithstanding all the "noise", Israel's actions, certainly in many material respects, are not those of a country which applies the rule of law and due process.
Time reports in "Visiting Daddy in Prison: A Palestinian Ordeal" on just one case of a Palestinian - in breach of the Geneva Convention for an occupying power - imprisoned in an Israeli jail for 2 years now and not having been charged with any offence. He is one of over 10,000 prisoners!
"Spending time with her dad requires that six-year-old Jinan undertake a bizarre and arduous odyssey. Usually, she travels alone, but last Monday, the Palestinian girl with the rosebud smile and bouncing energy was accompanied by her younger sisters, Dania, 4, and Noor, 2, on the journey to the Israeli prison that holds her father.
At home in the beleaguered West Bank town of Qalqilya, as her mother dressed her before dawn in an almond-green blouse and jeans, Jinan asks the same question she always does: "Mommy, why does Daddy have to sleep on the Israeli side?" And her mother, Salam Nazal, comforts her by saying: "Because that's where the best Palestinian men go to sleep, and your father is one of them." The town, which has elected a Hamas mayor, is known as a center of Palestinian militancy, and Israeli security forces conduct raids there on average five times a week. (See photographs of conflict in the Middle East)
Salam Nazal cannot accompany her daughters because she is an on Israeli security watch list, although she has never learned why. Her immediate family lives in Jordan, so she must put the girls on a bus bound for Chattah-Gilboa prison inside Israel and hope that one of the many Palestinian women on board will help Jinan wrangle her sisters. "I'm so worried about having them go without me," says Salam, as she hoists her girls onto the bus, organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (I.C.R.C.) "But what can I do? This is their only chance to see their father."
Well, notwithstanding all the "noise", Israel's actions, certainly in many material respects, are not those of a country which applies the rule of law and due process.
Time reports in "Visiting Daddy in Prison: A Palestinian Ordeal" on just one case of a Palestinian - in breach of the Geneva Convention for an occupying power - imprisoned in an Israeli jail for 2 years now and not having been charged with any offence. He is one of over 10,000 prisoners!
"Spending time with her dad requires that six-year-old Jinan undertake a bizarre and arduous odyssey. Usually, she travels alone, but last Monday, the Palestinian girl with the rosebud smile and bouncing energy was accompanied by her younger sisters, Dania, 4, and Noor, 2, on the journey to the Israeli prison that holds her father.
At home in the beleaguered West Bank town of Qalqilya, as her mother dressed her before dawn in an almond-green blouse and jeans, Jinan asks the same question she always does: "Mommy, why does Daddy have to sleep on the Israeli side?" And her mother, Salam Nazal, comforts her by saying: "Because that's where the best Palestinian men go to sleep, and your father is one of them." The town, which has elected a Hamas mayor, is known as a center of Palestinian militancy, and Israeli security forces conduct raids there on average five times a week. (See photographs of conflict in the Middle East)
Salam Nazal cannot accompany her daughters because she is an on Israeli security watch list, although she has never learned why. Her immediate family lives in Jordan, so she must put the girls on a bus bound for Chattah-Gilboa prison inside Israel and hope that one of the many Palestinian women on board will help Jinan wrangle her sisters. "I'm so worried about having them go without me," says Salam, as she hoists her girls onto the bus, organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (I.C.R.C.) "But what can I do? This is their only chance to see their father."
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