The Last Exile

There is not much to recommend Palestinian society or culture when the young willing opt out for a stint in an Israeli jail rather than live at home with their parents. Jerusalem Post.

Amaro, whose trial will begin later this month at the Ofer Military Court near Jerusalem, wanted so badly to get arrested that he sent a death threat to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and then when he wasn’t arrested, asked a soldier at a roadblock to lie and say that he had tried to stab him.

The motive? Amaro told police that he wanted to be arrested since he didn’t get along with his father and brother, didn’t have a job and missed his friends who were already in Israeli prisons.

The story began in late June when Amaro went to the Hebron Public Library and sent a fax to the Prime Minister’s Office in which he threatened Netanyahu that his days “are numbered” and that soon he would be killed. Amaro signed the letter with his name and ID number.

But several days later, after no one came to his house to arrest him, Amaro became impatient. “I waited for the Shin Bet to come and arrest me and several days went by, but they didn’t come,” Amaro said in a signed affidavit presented to the Ofer Military Court. “So I thought that I had no choice but to take a knife and go stab a settler so the Shin Bet would have to pay attention to me.”

On July 17, Amaro left his home in Hebron armed with a 10-cm. knife and traveled to the Gush Etzion junction with the aim of stabbing a settler. He spotted a female civilian standing next to two soldiers, so instead he approached one of the soldiers.

“I told the soldier to call his commanders and say that he captured a Palestinian armed with a knife,” Amaro said in his signed confession. “The soldier refused to lie and said that he would tell the police what really happened.”

Kudos for the soldier who refused to lie and while it is easy to blame the ‘Israelis’ for the ‘occupation’; the fact remains this young man, (and I am sure there are many just like him) willing chose to live confined in an Israeli jail rather than live free within the constricts of Palestinian society. If this is not time to do a little soul Palestinian soul searching; when is it?

And I really think the Israelis need to do a little of their own soul searching of their own regarding the nature of prison life in Israel jails. Furthermore, Israelis really should be asking why Palestinian prisoners get a free university education while those who serve their country in the IDF still have to pay tuition?