Maher Younis is received in his hometown by relatives, neighbors and supporters. /
Maher and Karim Younis, convicted in the 1980s for the death of a soldier, are the inmates with the longest sentences
In just two weeks, Israel has released the two longest-serving Palestinian prisoners. Maher Younis followed in the footsteps of her cousin, Karim, and after serving a forty-year sentence she returned to Ara, an Arab village in the north of the country, where her mother, neighbors, friends and hundreds of admirers were waiting for her. . The Police had cordoned off the area and the day before she warned that she would not tolerate a massive reception or the presence of Palestinian flags, following the instructions of the current Minister of National Security, the Zionist ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir. The first thing Maher did when he arrived in her village was visit the grave of her father, who died in 2008.
“Terrorists” for the Israelis, “heroes” for the Palestinians, these cousins of Israeli nationality – Arabs whose village was incorporated into the Jewish state in 1948 – are two great symbols. Unlike other prisoners who were released thanks to exchanges, these prisoners with Israeli passports are treated as traitors, a rule that was only broken in 2011 when it was accepted to include five of them in the pact with Hamas to end kidnapping. of the soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel released 1,027 prisoners in exchange for its military.
The Younis were sentenced to life imprisonment after kidnapping and killing Avraham Bromberg, also in uniform, in 1980, but in 2012 -during the mandate of President Shimon Peres- the sentence was commuted to a sentence of 40 years after his lawyer appealed to the Court Supreme. They were able to make this appeal thanks to their Israeli nationality, since the Palestinians in the occupied territories are subject to military justice.
I’m Gvir
The two cousins, then in their twenties, were accused of picking up the soldier in his car when he was returning from the Golan Heights, an area of Syria occupied by Israel in 1967, stealing his weapon, shooting him in the head and leaving him lying in the ditch of the highway. Two years later they were arrested and in 1983 they entered prison.
Ben Gvir began his position as Security Minister with a visit to the Esplanade of the Mosques, one of his campaign promises, but later he has had to supervise the release of the Younis. The ultranationalist leader leads the most radical sector of Israeli politics that advocates imposing tougher punishments on Palestinians who commit attacks, such as revoking residence permits or nationality, and has stated on numerous occasions that he is in favor of applying the penalty of death to “terrorists”.
While the Palestinians have their eyes on Ara, the Israelis await Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s request to dismiss his Interior and Health Minister, Aryeh Deri, since in February 2022 he was convicted of tax fraud and this disqualified from office.
Deri, a Moroccan-born Jew, leads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which won eleven seats in the last elections, and upon learning of the decision declared that “when they close the door on us, we will enter through the window. When they close the window on us, we will go through the roof, with the help of God. This judicial decision comes in the middle of the plans of the new Executive to introduce reforms to limit its powers and strengthen Parliament.