Gilad Shalit: four years of isolation must end

As regular readers of this blog will know – both of them! – the topic of Israel and Palestine has a marked tendency to polarise opinion (see Sebastian and Alex’s epic, Wimbledon tennis-like exchange in the comment thread for a recent Gaza post for example).

Merely mention Israel/Palestine and human rights and … bang, people start arguing and throwing out accusations. “You’re biased” is among the milder of these charges – but one Amnesty itself gets from time to time.

One specific accusation is “You never say anything about Gilad Shalit”, the young Israeli soldier detained four years ago today. Not true. In fact Amnesty has mentioned his case numerous times (see, for example, posts from me here and here) and we’re currently calling for him to be treated humanely and for the Red Cross to be allowed access to him (please support our call here).

Amnesty has repeatedly called on Hamas to abide by its obligations to Gilad under international humanitarian law, including when we’ve confronted Hamas people face-to-face. We hope they start listening.