The head of the Commission of Detainees' Affairs, Qadri Abu Baker, called on the Palestinian Bar Association and the institutions of this field to shed light upon the international legal status of the four detainees who escaped from Gilboa prison, and have been rearrested in the occupied territories.

Abu Baker confirmed that the international agreements, treaties and covenants have discussed this issue, and that there are many articles and texts stipulated the legal treatment of detainees in such case. These articles prevents taking revenge of them, where article (28) Brussels Declaration of 1874, named "draft of the International Declaration on the Laws and Customs of War", stipulated that "weapons should be used against any war prisoner that try to escape, and if he has been rearrested during trying to escape he shall be only subjected to disciplinary punishment or more stringent monitoring, but if he succeeds in escaping and is caught later, he should not be punished.”

In 1907, the special agreement on respecting the laws of field war by Hague Convention, which had a worldwide consensus, and today it is a part of customary international law. Article (8) of the same convention stipulated that "the clause in Brussels Declaration which talks about using a weapon against a prisoner who tries to escape has been deleted. The convention also confirmed that "any prisoner who tries to escape and got caught before escaping should be subjected to disciplinary punishment, while if he succeeded escaping and got rearrested, he should not be punished for the act of escaping".

Moreover, Geneva Convention of 1929 reaffirmed in article (50) on the same text, which was also mentioned in Hague Convention, and amended article 91-94 from the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which has been approved and ratified by more than 190 states, including Israel and the United States of America.

Abu Baker recalls on all Palestinians of official and local institutions to work hard to support our detainees, and practice pressure against international organizations to protect our detainees by applying the international agreements, being prisoners of liberation movements.

It is worthy to mention that the escaped detainees who got rearrested are: Zakaria Zbaidy, Muhammad Arda, Mahmoud Arda, Yaqub Qadri.