Today’s deal between the Israel Prison Service and Palestinian hunger strikers draws mixed reviews from around the web:
The right-wing, national-religious Arutz Sheva keeps it classy by suggesting that this deal makes Israel look good… when compared with Hamas:
Israel agreed to allow prisoners to call relatives, to pursue academic studies, and to allow prisoners from Gaza as well as from Judea and Samaria to receive visits from family members…Hamas-allied terrorists blocked kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from receiving any visitors whatsoever—including even a representative from the International Committee of the Red Cross in order to determine his health status—while holding him hostage for more than five years in Gaza.
+972 focuses on the lack of international media attention:
A positive outcome of the hunger strikes has been renewed international focus on the issue of administrative detention and Palestinian prisoners in general. However, despite the dramatic effort made by the prisoners, there was very little international media attention given to the issue, considering its scale and potential impact. For many Palestinians, this may represent one more time in which they have initiated wide scale acts of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, without eliciting a counter response internationally—a prospect that further fuels Palestinian disillusionment.
No word yet from Commentary (which has devoted a grand total of one screed to the hunger strikers thus far).