The Israeli government endorsed a new set of penal measures against the Palestinian prisoners especially those affiliated with Hamas following failure of the prisoners' exchange deal, the Israeli media reported on Sunday following the cabinet meeting.
Earlier, Ma'ariv daily said that the government was to prevent prisoners from watching TV and from following up education in addition to barring entry of newspapers, confiscating radios and reducing the amount of money allocated to each prisoner to buy needs from the prisons' cantinas. The outgoing Israeli justice minister Daniel Friedman tabled at the cabinet session on Sunday means of imposing those new penalties against the prisoners without violating the international law on prisoners' rights.
The government of outgoing premier Ehud Olmert had formed a special ministerial committee headed by Friedman to look into ways of pressuring Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners.
The penal measures hope to pressure Hamas into softening its conditions for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel refused Hamas' list of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in return for the release of Shalit and asked for a change in some of those names and for deporting others. Hamas refused to amend the list.
The incoming cabinet headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to adopt the new measures.
