If there is one issue in Palestinian society that transcends any organizational or geographical affiliation and constitutes a broad national consensus bridging any disagreement between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it is the issue of security prisoners held in Israeli jails.
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There is not a single Palestinian family without a son or relatives who have not served time in Israeli prisons. The cynics among the Palestinians jokingly say that even if one Palestinian family can is found without a relative who is a current or former inmate, sooner or later they, too, will join the club of security prisoner families.
In Palestinian society, the issue of security prisoners is taboo. The "freedom fighters held captive in the prisons of the Zionist occupation" can do no wrong.
The Palestinians don't care if these prisoners carried out gruesome terrorist attacks; if their hands are stained with the blood of men, women, and children; if they are terrorists who abducted and murdered Israeli soldiers, or if they targeted settlers in Judea and Samaria.
For 99% of the Palestinians these prisoners are heroes, and any harm that comes to them – be is Israel Prison Service sanctions against inmates or Palestinian banks in Ramallah that refuse to open accounts for jailed terrorists – is enough to trigger a violent response by security prisoners in Israel and on the Palestinian street as well. There have been times when Palestinian gunmen opened fire at financial institutions that denied terrorists and their families service for fear of being penalized under anti-terror financing laws.
This is such a volatile issue that even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – faced with the Israeli demand that taxes Israel collects on behalf of the PA funds not be used to pay stipends to terrorist and their families – refused to accept the funds.
Abbas has often stated that even if the PA's coffers "only had a few million shekels left, we would rather pay the prisoners and their families than accept Israel's terms on the matter."
Ramallah and Gaza know well that any attempted to undermine the sacred status of security prisoners would spell big trouble for whoever allows it.
Palestinians I meet – officials and average citizens on the street – often argue that for the Palestinians, the issue of the security prisoners is akin to the way Israelis see the issue of bereaved families. This, of course, is a horrific juxtaposition as the two cannot be compared in any way and nothing about bereaved families is even remotely similar to heinous killers held in jail.
However, when one sees the celebrations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over the fact that six prisoners escaped the Gilboa Prison, and the coordinated threats against Israel by the leaders of the Palestinian factions, warning that no harm can come to the six fugitives or any of the other thousands of security prisoners jailed in Israel or else – it is clear that the issue of security prisoners is indeed a consensus in Palestinian society.
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