The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) has been approached by the “Movement to Save the Prisoners” with an urgent request to highlight the current crisis faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Under the directive of the Kahanist illegal settler Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Israeli prisons and detention centers holding Palestinian prisoners have been transformed into torture centers. In the last few months, seven Palestinian prisoners have been murdered by their jailers through torture and neglect.
Family members of the prisoners explain: “These crimes are continuing in light of Arab and international silence that gave the green light for the Israeli occupation to commit crime after crime against our prisoners. Moreover, these crimes occur with no punishments due to the absence of international accountability to those who ordered and committed them.”
Families of prisoners demonstrating in Ramallah. Credit: ISM.
Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have experienced brutal beatings, strip searches, threats of sexual assaults, denial of freedom to worship, pray and recite the Qur’an, deprivation of medical care, overcrowding, the reduction of already poor nutrition meals, starvation, the cutting of water and electricity, denial of warm clothes, and the deprivation of visits from family members, legal representatives, and humanitarian groups. Gaza prisoners face all these in addition to continuous torture where other prisoners hear their heart breaking screaming day and night. Some prisoners are missing and it is unknown if they are even still alive.
Family members of prisoners carry a banner that says. “The Movement to Save the Prisoners: Our prisoners are in danger. Let us be a light in their darkness!”
“While the world focuses on 136 Israelis held in Gaza they ignore 7,000 Palestinians held and abused by Israel. This discrimination is a grave injustice.” The ISM is passing the call of the families to you: “For all the free people, be the light of the prisoners’ darkness and their loud voice in all forums, they are addressing your consciences from the borders and edges of death.”
1st May 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil Team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On the morning of the 24th of March around 8:30 am two Palestinian youths, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, 21, and Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, also 21, were shot to death by Israeli forces after an alleged stabbing attempt in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida. The world became aware of the extra-judicial killing of al-Sharif by the Israeli-French army medic Elor Azaria through the footage shot by Imad Abu Shamsiya, resident of Tel Rumeida, co-founder of Hebron Human Rights Defenders and contributor to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Over the last month Imad has become something of a celebrity. He has appeared on Palestinian news, made appearances in international media and has even been interviewed by mainstream British newspaper The Independent. All of which has come at the same time as the settlers in Tel Rumeida and in wider Hebron have issued death threats and upped their campaign of persecution against him and his family.
Imad and his 3 sons, Awne (left), Soli (middle), Muhammed (right), who are all taking part in resistance against the occupation. Photo: Family photo
Last week ISM activists had the privilege of sitting down with Imad and talking about the impact of these events on his life, his family’s history in Hebron, his history of arrests by the Israeli Occupying Forces and his hopes and fears for his life both now and in the future.
Imad’s family have lived in Hebron for generations: “I was born here, my father was born here, my grandfather and my great-grandfather, all born here.” He can trace his family’s presence in Hebron back at least 218 years as the family had a house near to the Ibrahimi Mosque registered in their name from that time, in addition to the family home that they occupy to this day in Tel Rumeida.
Seven years ago in 2009, however, the family’s house in Tel Rumeida was standing empty. Imad knew that it would only be a matter of time before the settlers, by now established in Tel Rumeida and on Shuhada Street, would attempt to sieze the home. It was then that Imad decided to move from his home in H1 (Palestinian-controlled Hebron) to Tel Rumeida in H2. This extraordinary decision was supported by his entire extended family as well as his wife Faiza and his five children (then aged between 4 and 11). Imad himself felt confident in this choice: “At first we thought there was not a lot of difference, just that here there is a checkpoint when there was not one where we had lived before.”
But despite his initial downplaying of the situation, the decision had a huge impact on his family. From the get-go his children would go out to play in the street and they would be attacked by settlers or harassed by the army. However, this only served to strengthen Imad and his family’s desire to stay in Tel Rumeida. Even his youngest son – Salah, now 11 – knows that they are there to stop the settlers from stealing their home and their land.
Sadly this notion of resistance that runs through the whole family has, perhaps unsurprisingly, had some serious ramifications for all of them. No more so than for Imad’s oldest son – Aune, 17. Aune was shot in the foot with a ‘dum-dum’ bullet – live ammunition that splinters on entry – and Imad was further shocked when, at the checkpoint near his home, the local area commander of the Israeli Occupying Force told him that he would kill Aune if he saw him again. They decided it was best to send Aune away to live with relatives and so, a child of seventeen, he cannot live with his mother and father and never sees his four siblings. Moreover the other four children have all, at one time or other, been victims of abuse and attacks at the hands of the settlers. Although perhaps the worst that the family have lived through is the current situation and the death threats that Imad has experienced since his role in the video of the extra-judicial killing was made public. Imad, however, has been through extremely challenging times before and is undaunted by the situation he faces.
Imad in his house, which is regularly targeted by settlers and army
In the late eighties during the first Intifada a young Imad – sixteen years of age – would, like many young male Palestinians at that time, go to the demonstrations in protest of the Israeli occupation. The Israeli forces then, as now, would shut these demonstrations down with extreme measures. On one such occasion – on Friday 20th of January 1988 – Imad found himself hospitalised having been shot in the hand with live ammunition: “I was in hospital in Jerusalem for fifty days recovering and at that time the Israelis came and arrested me.” In prison Imad was questioned for eighteen days, accused of being a ringleader and organiser. Finally brought before the court he was sentenced to six months in prison for his role as a demonstrator: “then, thirteen days after I was released that first time, they arrested me again and sentenced me to another six months in prison.” He wasn’t to know it then but this was the first year of a total of four years and two months that he would spend in prison.
On the 16th of February 1991 Imad was arrested once again and this time he was kept in solitary confinement for 111 days: “Imagine it. You are alone, without water to wash with, you don’t see the sun, you are cold, it’s winter, you are in a t-shirt and shorts.” During this time he was tortured: beaten, subjected to stress positions and consistently interrogated. He was accused of throwing stones and molotov cocktails as well as being a leader within the Intifada. He denied all accusations and after 111 days, when they had nothing to charge him with, he was taken before the court and sentenced to another six months detention regardless.
Example of common stress-position (torture position) utilised in Israeli interrogation
Once again in 1992 he was arrested and again he was kept in solitary confinement, this time for a period of 75 days. Refusing to confess to the false accusations of violence that were leveled at him, Imad was sentenced to six more months of detention without charge.
In 1995 Imad, specifically due to his position as a citizen of the already divided town of Hebron, was part of a large group of Palestinians who objected to the terms of the Oslo Agreement. As such he was part of a mass-arrest and sent to the infamous Naqab Prison in the Negev Desert where he was detained for a further six months. Imad would be arrested twice more – in 1997 and 1999. On both occasions he was arrested in the middle of the night, taken from his family home, not questioned or interrogated, but sentenced to a further six months detention.
Taking this history of persecution and Imad’s lifelong resistance into account, it is perhaps less surprising to picture Imad and Faiza agreeing with their children to move to the front line of resistance when they moved to Tel Rumeida in 2009. Then two years ago he formed Hebron Human Rights Defenders with Badee Dwalik, and Imad’s journey towards infamy began. Having been trained in the use of video cameras by B’Tselem, Imad and Badee recruited others from Tel Rumeida and wider Hebron and trained them to use video cameras donated by anti-Zionist activists in the US. Imad even trained his wife and children to use the cameras: the whole family knows that if things get bad with soldiers and/or settlers then the first recourse is to pick up a camera and to document. Now Badee and Imad plan to teach the local children in Tel Rumeida how to use the cameras: they intend to resist the occupation by exposing it’s most inhumane and abusive elements.
Badia from Human Rights Defenders at a school in Tel Rumeida, teaching the kids how to film.
All of which leads us neatly back to the events of the 24th March this year (and you can read about the events of that day from Imad’s perspective here.) One would have thought that living with his wife and four of his children in occupied Hebron, with the constant threat of attack by settlers as well as harassment by soldiers out for revenge for him having made the video, Imad would feel some negativity about his life now, or at least have mixed feelings about having found fame in this way. Nothing could be further from the truth: “if I could go back in time and had the opportunity to maybe not shoot the film I wouldn’t take it. I would always want the world to see what Palestinians have always known goes on”. Still, one could forgive if he felt that perhaps it would be best if his family left Tel Rumeida: “we will never leave here. They can harass us and attack us but we will not let them have our family’s home and our land. This is something my wife and children agree with 100%. We will not leave.” And would he leave Hebron? “Never.”
The occupation could have ground Imad Abu Shamsiya down. They have tried everything that they can to ruin his spirit – from torture and arrest to death threats and harassment – but Imad is a man, supported by his extraordinary family, who personifies the strength and the generosity of spirit demonstrated by the Palestinian people in the face of such indignity and suffering. He certainly touched and moved the ISM activists that had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with him.
Lastly it is ISM’s pleasure to convey a message from Imad to the international community, to the political class and to all Palestinians:
“As Palestinians we always said that extra-judicial killings happened. Now people have seen my video I hope that the world will know that they do. Now people know what we live with and I hope we can work together to end the occupation so that we, the Palestinian people, can be free.”
22nd January 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Beit Ummar, Occupied Palestine
Early Tuesday morning January 20, 2015 at 3:00 AM, Israeli occupation forces invaded the home of the Abu Maria family in the village of Beit Ummar. The occupation army used explosives to open the front door, surprising the sleeping family. This is the second violent night raid the family has experienced this week. Israeli soldiers were looking for Nidal, Ghassan, and Mohammed Abu Maria, three brothers who were summoned by the Israeli intelligence for questioning.
Window broken during Israeli army nigh raid (photo by ISM).
The mother of the family, 42 years old, was attacked as soon as the invading soldiers entered the home. Her arms were violently jerked behind her back, and once she was tied up, she was beaten on her head, neck and arms. One of the family’s five sons, Mohye, 18 years old, was cut on his face, neck and fingers. The attacking soldiers demanded he tell them where his brothers were.
The family’s father, Ahmed Abu Maria, has been imprisoned by the Israeli occupation forces for four months. The morning of the attack, Ahmed was taken into interrogation where Israeli investigators informed him that his family would be targeted that night. Ahmed related that he was told: “Tonight we will go to your family’s home. We will hit your wife, your daughter and your kids.” He was not allowed to warn or communicate these threats in any way to his family. The next day, Ahmed was allowed to contact his family and hear what happened to them during the night raid. The family describes this as psychological torture, designed to put pressure on the imprisoned father.
Photo by ISM.
The occupation forces remained at the family’s home until nearly 7:00 AM. When they finally decided to depart the house, the invading soldiers left behind two official requests in Hebrew for the appearance of Nidal, Ghassan, and Mohammed the following morning at 8:30 AM at the prison in the nearby illegal settlement of Kfar Etzion. The family tried to explain to the occupation forces that two of the sons did not live in Beit Ummar, but farther north and it would be impossible for them to make the trip in time.
The summons for Nidal and Mohammed (photo by ISM).
During the violent invasion at the Abu Maria’s house, the occupation forces also searched the neighboring uncle’s home for the youths. When they did not find the boys there as expected, and the family refused to tell the authorities exactly where they were living, the occupation forces stole over 3000 NIS (approximately $760 USD) from the uncle. This money was his life savings; without it, he does not know how he will survive.
Next morning the 20-year-old middle brother Ghassan Ahmad Abu Maria presented himself at Kfar Etzion prison as requested and was arrested. He is currently being held without charges and the family has been unable to get any information on his condition.
24th July 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Duma, Occupied Palestine
The International Solidarity Movement had a conversation with Wael Dawabsheh, a clinical psychologist with the Torture Rehabilitation Centre in the West Bank. He told us about his work with torture victims.
Wael Dawabsheh, clinical psychologist for the TRC
International Solidarity Movement (ISM): What is the Torture Rehabilitation Centre and what work do you do?
Wael Dawabsheh (WD): Our centre started working in the West Bank in 1999, continued through the intifada in 2002 and until now. We are a group of psychiatrists, social workers and psychologists. We work with arrestees, people who have been in Israeli prisons and people who have been exposed to torture, as well as their families. We also work with injured people and the families of martyrs.
We have two programs – outreach and in-office, meaning some of the people we work with come to our offices whilst we see others in their own homes. We work in many places in the West Bank, from the north to the south including Jenin, Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah and around Jerusalem.
Our centre works with people because they have been exposed to torture in many different ways. I think our centre was the first working with the people of the West Bank who have suffered torture. We try to visit every case, but because of the large area and large number of people who have been in Israeli prisons it is just not possible to cover all. Because of this, we have to priorities the most difficult cases and those who are suffering the most.
We have a relationship with the Ministry of Prisoners and Ministry of Health and they sometimes refer to us these most difficult cases. We work with children’s groups and adults groups, both for women and men, but most of our work is with individuals. We also have a community awareness unit, who do workshops around the villages and in refugee camps. We explain our work in these workshops and then afterwards we start to work with anyone who has experienced the issues that we speak about and who need help.
ISM: What are the most common methods of torture used by Israel on Palestinians?
WD: The types of torture used by the Israelis are both physical and psychological. I think the main method of torture the Israelis use at the moment is solitary confinement of prisoners in a small dark dirty room for many days or weeks. During this time the guards and soldiers continually shout abuse and bad words at them. In the beginning when they first arrest them they tie or handcuff their hands and cover their faces with dirty sacks or blindfolds. This creates very bad psychological effects.
Another method of torture currently used we call shabih in Arabic. They tie the prisoners with their hands behind their backs and put them on a very small chair – if they move at all in any direction they will fall down. They put people in this position for many hours.
Another method also forces people to endure very uncomfortable conditions for a long time, but in another way – they keep the prisoner standing for a long time in the sun or in the rain, depending on the season. After that, they increase the effect by using the same conditions in the rooms – if it is hot, they open it to the heat, or to the cold in the winter.
Many, many methods are used by the Israelis to torture Palestinians – they don’t allow for prisoners to see their lawyers, or their families for many weeks or months. Some prisoners don’t see their families for years. The food is very dirty and very bad, especially at the start of the arrest because they put all the youth in very small rooms and they can’t cook their own food. Instead, it is brought to them and it is not good or healthy. The prisoners also don’t have a bathroom in this small room – they have to use something else, like a bucket instead. They also don’t allow them to take a shower for many days and even when they do it is only for a couple of minutes, without privacy because there is no door to the shower stall.
I think these are the main methods – in the past they used shaking, grabbing the prisoner’s neck or head and shaking it – this is very dangerous, one person died after being tortured in this way I think. After that, the Israelis stopped using this method as much – not completely, they continue to do this sometimes. Another issue is that people are suffering from many diseases which are not treated in prison – if they take them to the doctor it is only when they are very ill. I don’t know the number of prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons because they were not treated for their diseases.
ISM: As you said, the Israelis use both physical and psychological torture. Is there a difference in the methods of torture that are used between time in interrogation and in jail?
WD: The first weeks are the most dangerous and difficult for the prisoners because the methods of torture are used more. They use methods that I mentioned before, generally putting prisoners in a small isolation room – which we call zenzana in Arabic – because they want information from them. After this time, maybe two months or a little less, they send them to another prison, with a larger group of prisoners. After that there is less physical torture.
Israeli soldiers posing for a photo with a female Palestinian arrestee blindfolded and handcuffed
However, not being permitted to see their families, not being allowed access to a doctor and not being allowed to have things that they need can also be considered torture. Everyone has heard about the Palestinian hunger strikers – some prisoners have stopped eating for weeks or many months because they need something from the Israelis which they are not permitted.
ISM: What types of trauma do people that you treat suffer with?
WD: Most suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), especially women and those younger than eighteen. Some people also suffer from depression and a small number of others have schizophrenia. There are also some cases of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and some have epilepsy, because during the torture they have been hit in the head or the Israelis have used very noisy music during their time in prison.
The majority of the people that we work with experience PTSD or depression; we generally work with them for three or four months, in about twelve sessions – or more depending on the level of suffering. We work together as a team – psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. We give medication to some people if necessary; the psychiatrists see these cases and prescribe the appropriate medicines. But this is a minority and they generally take medication for a short time – maybe a course for three months or six months.
ISM: How do people who need your help know about the TRC?
WD: Some of our cases know about our centre through the media outreach we used to do. Every week we had a small feature on television or radio, so one of us would be on this and speak about our work. Sometimes we would speak to our cases on the phone on the program so people could hear how it was effective. However, due to a lack of funding we had to stop this recently. For the last nine years or so we had a newsletter every month about our work. This contains news about our centre and the stories of some cases, with their photos if they give permission for them to be included.
We also do workshops in the villages – for example, I would go to visit a village like Burin and speak to the cultural centre there or the municipality or any other society. We tell them that we will come soon to do a workshop with people who have been in prison or have been injured by the soldiers. So then we come and speak about our work in the workshop and talk to the people – afterwards, people ask many questions about how we can help them and we give them our address and phone number.
After that, some cases come to the centre, or some prefer to continue with the outreach program in their homes. Some people prefer us to visit them at home because they don’t like people to know that they are seeing us in the centre. Some youth also have a problem to move from their homes to the centre, especially when the checkpoints are difficult – there is a danger that they may be arrested again.
The children that we work with we often treat with group therapy – last week we finished summer camps in Jenin for our cases. This year though, because we have problems with funds, we could only have a small summer camp. These children are mostly suffering from PTSD mostly – generally this is because their fathers are in Israeli jails and the trauma is caused by the deprivation and the prison visits every two or three months.
From four in the morning they take buses to inside Israel, in the south in the Naqab prison or Bir Saba, or far in the north – it’s a long way and it’s very difficult for them. They tell some stories, about the checkpoints, about the cages in the prison. When they see their fathers, there is a wall between them, they can speak only by telephone. For years they weren’t able to hug their fathers or shake hands with them, it’s forbidden. I think for children under five, it is allowed for them to see their father without a wall every three or four months. These children suffer from many problems, such as bad dreams.
A prisoner talking to his daughter by phone and separated by a glass wall
ISM: Do you also work with children who have been arrested and interrogated and experienced torture themselves?
WD: Yes, but this year and for the last couple of years this has not been such a large number. However, this does depend on the area; for example in and around Jerusalem and in Hebron, there are many child arrests because there are a high number of Israeli soldiers there. So, from time to time we do work with many children who are arrested there.
In 2012, we worked with small groups of children from the Nablus area. Most were about sixteen or seventeen years old. They stayed in prison for about six or seven months. Some of them, we work with them for two months and the Israelis arrested them again.
We work with cases of children who were arrested when they were sixteen and when they’re freed they are twenty-five, twenty-six, having spent six or seven years in prison. But now, the number is not large. I think, now there are around two hundred and thirty-six children arrested in Israeli prison.
ISM: Can you tell us about the state of Palestinian prisoners in general?
WD: Every month we have some visits to Palestinian prisoners or we see in the news about the prisoners. Three or four years ago, there were over ten thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Now there are five thousand, including two hundred and thirty-six children and twenty-three or twenty-four women. About one hundred and twelve prisoners have been in prison since before the Oslo Agreements of 1993.
Now I heard in the news that during Ramadan they will release forty of them because the Palestinian Authority said that they won’t negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements and releases these prisoners. They have been in jail for over twenty years, since before the Oslo Agreements. This is very bad for our Palestinian presidents because in the past they must release them in the time. Before 1993, there was no relationship between Israel and Palestine and there was no Palestinian Authority. When the Oslo Agreements were made the Israelis should have released all Palestinian prisoners but, as you know, after that, years and years passed and after 2000 the intifada started and everything was stopped.
ISM: On the TRC website, you say that you want to eliminate the culture of impunity felt by perpetrators of torture, how do you do this and what obstacles do you face in doing so?
WD: We write reports on our cases and tell people how much the Palestinians are suffering because of their treatment in Israeli prisons. In the past we used to send them to many lawyers in the West Bank who we had relationships with.
Some cases we turn into case studies, along with photos of the prisoners. We translate this into English and put the information on the website, as well as taking the case studies to conferences around the world, in Europe, Australia, South America and Africa. We also sent many of the studies to the UN, and other centres from around the world have come here to visit the cases and have done interviews with them.
We have taken four or five cases to the Israeli courts, taking all the papers and reports and show that these people were suffering because of being in Israeli prisons. We testify as psychologists, social workers or psychiatrists, saying that we treated this person in our centre and have a report saying that he is suffering from “1, 2, 3”. So this is what we can do about fighting impunity in the courts. The process of the court cases that we are working is still ongoing – they didn’t finish until now.
But the main thing is to do case studies about the people we work with and send them to the media, conferences and provide them to the groups that come to visit. The main project with this was with the UN, in 2002. However, now, we have some difficulties in our centre so we had to stop many of these projects. At the moment we only treat people, because for the last two or three years we have been only seven or eight social workers and psychologists so we cannot cover all the areas and visit all these people. We need a big team for that.
ISM: And why is it so important that there is not impunity for torture?
WD: It is forbidden to torture any person around the world so we need to show the world that the Israeli “democratic state” uses torture on Palestinians in their prisons, because they regularly present the Palestinians as terrorists in the media. But now the world knows that we are under the Israeli occupation and we must show that our people are tortured by the Israelis.
ISM: Do many torture victims file complaints in the Israeli legal system?
WD: Most of them don’t go to the Israeli court; only a small number go through this process. Some of them have reports from Israeli hospitals saying that were tortured. But people are only referred to Israeli hospitals if the torture has been particularly bad, from the first hours of the arrest.
I work with four or five youth who have epilepsy because the Israelis hit them in the head with guns or against the wall. One boy was beaten with a stick in the head when they arrested him at a checkpoint. He lost consciousness and fell down on the floor. He wasn’t treated well in prison – they didn’t give him any medicine and when he left prison, he suffered from epilepsy every three weeks, because he has a trauma. So in our centre we gave him medicine for epilepsy. But the majority of these cases are suffering until now, because we cannot completely cure epilepsy.
One of my cases used the Israeli reports from when he was in prison and went to court four years ago. They took him to an Israeli hospital to check him for two three days and he had a new report. When he went back home the Israelis called him and said to him “we will give you 200,000 shekels if you stop the court process” but he refused. After that they came and arrested him again. They brought him to Huwwara camp for hours and they tried to scare him saying “we will put you in prison again” “we will kill you” “you will die”. But he continued his case until now, it is not finished. Some of the cases take years in court.
ISM: Do you think the main reason Israel uses torture is to get information from the arrestees?
WD: I think the torture is not only used for information. It is also to punish people, to destroy their personality and resistance and to punish their family. Some people don’t do anything and they still imprison them. In Arabic we call this idari, meaning a sentence without time restrictions. In English I think it’s called administrative detention. Some people go to court and they give him six years and then they will be free. But other people, they put them in prison three months and three months, six months – because they claim that they are dangerous. So, some of them spend years in Israeli prisons without going to the court because they can put anyone in prison without trial.
ISM: Sometimes do people make false confessions if they are tortured, giving invented information just to make the torture stop?
WD: Some of them say things that they haven’t done, especially children. They scare them in prison because it is the first time for them and they are young, they don’t have previous experience. The Israelis punish them or say “we will bring your family to the prison”, “we will damage your family house” so they are scared and will admit to something that they didn’t do. But the majority are strong when they face torture, but all of us are human.
ISM: There is a recent case of five boys in Hares who admitted under torture to throwing stones at a settler car. Afterwards in the court, they retracted these statements (take action for the Hares boys here). Do these kind of cases happen regularly?
WD: This happens. They say in the court that they didn’t do it, and that they only admitted to it before because they were under torture. I heard similar stories in the Hebron area, with a child who was seventeen. There was an Israeli car accident and the driver died in the car. The Israeli authorities said that children threw stones, so he died because of the stones. I read in the news that they wanted to give the boy 25 years in prison because he killed a person, but in the court the Palestinian lawyer said that if this did happen, when he threw the stone he didn’t mean to kill, it was an accident.
We have many difficult and dangerous stories. Some people spend many years in prison without having done anything. During 2001, 2002 and 2003 the situation was very bad and inside Israel everyday many people were killed; some people went to Israel and put bombs on the buses. During that time, in the Israeli court they gave all prisoners many years in prison, Maybe they did something which should have had a one year or two years sentence, but the judge gave them ten years. Some cases in Burin, their families told me about these cases and they are still in prison, for twelve or thirteen years.
ISM: As a clinical psychologist, why did you choose to work with torture survivors?
WD: I am one of the people who was exposed to torture. When I finished High School in 1992, I wanted to continue studying in Russia as a dentist but the Israeli authorities wouldn’t allow me to cross the border. They sent me back and said to me “you must go to the Israeli army tomorrow”. I went to the crossing every day for a month and every day they put us in a camp and took our IDs from the morning until 4pm – and at the end they always said “come back tomorrow”.
The last time I went, I was asked “where are you going?”, “why are you going to study there?” and many other questions. After I answered, they said “it is forbidden for you to go out but if you help us, we will allow you to go”. I refused and instead, I stayed here and studied to be a psychologist at An Najjah University in Nablus.
While I was at university I was arrested by the Israelis twice, once for six months and then again for two months. It was the same thing for all of us, we were told “you have done something in the university, in the political movements”. When I finished my studies, I got a one-year diploma here in Palestine and after that I started working in the TRC from 2003. I’ve been working here for 10 years.
ISM: Do you see differences in the regions of the West Bank regarding the use of torture?
WD: There are no differences, we see the same cases all over. But it depends on the situation in the area – for example, during the intifada Nablus and the north were very bad, so in Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem, we had a large number of prisoners, whereas from Ramallah there were not so many. In Hebron and in the Jerusalem area, many are under eighteen or they were in the prison under eighteen.
Abu Karam Maswathi, blindfolded and hadcuffed with his son in Hebron (Photo by ISM)
However, I think in all places the methods of torture are the same – often the Israelis pressure them to be a spy and work for them. They especially use the children for this, they scare them, or maybe they say to them “we will help you, we will give you money”. They don’t necessarily ask them directly to be a spy, instead they just say “tell us who throws stones, how many people are in the area and what are they doing”. Some of the prisoners become spies because of this.
I went to Gaza last year – it was my first time there. We have a relationship with a rehabilitation centre there so we went to speak to the people. In Gaza, they give people permission to come to the West Bank to go to the hospital or to go to Israel, but at the checkpoint, they don’t allow people to actually leave even though they have permission. Instead they try to make them be spies, saying “we will give you a permit to go to the hospital if you help us”. We have many cases like this.
ISM: We know that Israel has signed treaties that ban the practice of torture including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention against Torture, do you have a message for the Israeli authorities about this?
WD: I would say to Israel, if you are talking about democracy and human rights, you must tell the government to stop all methods of torture against us. The world knows that you have occupied us and one day you will be held accountable in a court. The court could be Israeli, Palestinian or European and you will be punished for your use of torture against us.
As Israeli or Jewish people, you suffered from torture sixty years ago or more; if in the past you were the victims how can you now be the perpetrators? Why? You occupied our land and anyone under occupation has the right to fight. If you believe in peace you have to leave our land and be our neighbours.
ISM: Do you want to add anything else?
WD: Being in Palestine you can see everything that is going on around, how we live but in the past our life was even more difficult. Today is comparatively okay, now you can move from place to place but in the past that was very difficult – there were always many checkpoints.
But Palestinians are still forbidden to go to Jerusalem, it is surrounded by the wall. During Ramadan they are allowing some people to go on Fridays – women are permitted at any age but men can go only if they are over the age of forty. Eight years ago, before they started to build the wall, you could move freely to any place. Now they don’t allow anyone to go to Jerusalem. Many young people have never visited Jerusalem, nor do they know about Haifa or Jaffa. In the past every week or month we used to go to Jerusalem with our fathers or friends, as we now go to Ramallah or Nablus. But now it is closed.
They speak about freedom but that’s only for the media. Go to Qalandiya and you will see how they treat people at the checkpoint. But I believe that this wall and the occupation must end and the Israelis know that. They know that their state is for some time but not for ever.
We have workshops in Jerusalem and Haifa with Israelis social workers called Physician for Human rights and we speak about many things. Some of them say “yes, we must leave from West Bank and Gaza and be neighbours” but they don’t do anything against their government.
18th June 2013 | Mondoweiss, Katherine Flynn| Hares, Occupied Palestine
Three months ago today, in the early hours of March, 17 2013, Israeli soldiers appeared at 16-year- old Ali Shamlawi’s house in the West Bank village of Hares. They blindfolded him, handcuffed him and took him away. His arrest was one of a spate of arrests in March of this year which saw 19 boys, aged 16 and 17 years old, arrested for throwing stones which were alleged to have caused a traffic accident on Route 5, a large road which cuts through the West Bank to service illegal Israeli settlements.
Hares is a village of 4,000 people south of the city of Nablus in the West Bank. Illegal Israeli settlements – including Ariel, the second-largest settlement in the West Bank – have been built on agricultural land confiscated from Hares. The traffic accident in question occurred on March 14 when a car carrying a mother and her three daughters from Ariel crashed into the back of a truck on Route 5 near Hares, after the truck had braked suddenly. The youngest daughter was critically injured in the crash. The driver of the truck initially attributed the sudden breaking to a flat tire but later claimed he braked suddenly when stones hit his truck.
Locals who were at the scene of the accident moments after it occurred were interviewed by the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) and reported that they did not see any youth in the vicinity. However in the weeks since the accident, 61 witnesses from surrounding illegal settlements have come forward claiming their cars were also damaged by stones thrown by Palestinian youth from the side of the road. These settlers claim that Palestinian boys were 5-10 metres from the side of the road but these allegations have never been verified by the extensive CCTV footage in the area.
Since the initial arrests, 14 of the Palestinian boys have been released. However, five boys, including Ali Shamlawi, remain in prison three months later. Along with the other boys, Ali is being charged with 25 separate counts of attempted murder (one for each individual stone he allegedly threw) and is facing 25 years to life imprisonment.
Last Thursday on June 13th, Ali was in court again for his sixth hearing. Having applied to attend the hearing in advance, I was informed the night before that permission had not been granted because it would be a closed hearing – something all too common in Israeli military courts. Ali’s lawyers have since confirmed that at the hearing his detention was extended to July 25th in order for the defense team to be able to consider all evidence being used against him.
Along with the 61 “witnesses” mentioned above, the prosecution’s evidence consists of confessions from the boys. The lawyers and NGOs working on the case insist that these confessions were forced under extreme duress and are therefore inadmissible. 16-year-old Ali was held in solitary confinement for two weeks after his arrest and denied access to a lawyer for the first few days. He was interrogated for up to 20 hours at a time and beaten. Until last week, he was also denied visitation from his family. Ali’s lawyers submitted a complaint on May 15th about the circumstances of his interrogation and torture but are still waiting to hear back from the military police investigation.
Interviews carried out by IWPS with some of the boys already released by Israel show further mistreatment of children in custody. One of the 19 boys arrested was hospitalised after being beaten by interrogators, while another reports being kept alone in a small cell where bright lights shone continuously and being threatened with harm to him and his family. Indeed, such allegations come on the heels of a February 2013 report by UNICEF which firmly concluded that “the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the [Israeli] military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the process…”
It is not just the treatment of these children during interrogation that should raise questions. Despite being only 16 years old, Ali is being tried as an adult in Israeli military court; while illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civil law, Palestinians living in the same area are subject to strict Israeli military law. Under this law, Palestinian youth can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for throwing stones at vehicles. Twenty years in prison for throwing stones would be considered harsh in even some of the world’s strictest regimes, but this case sets an even more dangerous precedent: the Israeli courts are charging these five boys not with stone-throwing but with attempted murder.
If the sentence is passed, this case could set a legal precedent which would allow the Israeli military to try any Palestinian youth with attempted murder for incidents of stone-throwing. While the evidence against the boys is tenuous at best (and downright illegal at worst), statistics on conviction rates in Israeli military courts do not bode well for the boys. According to a 2010 internal IDFreport, the military court system used to try Palestinians has a 99.7% conviction rate (In 2010, that meant only 25 full acquittals out of 9,542 cases).These highly troubling statistics expose the discrimination inherent in the Israeli judicial system when compared with similar statistics on settler attacks on Palestinians. A 2011 UN OCHA report revealed that over 90% of monitored complaints of settler violence filed by Palestinians with the Israeli police were closed without indictment.
With conviction rates of almost 100%, allegations of torture against children, and systematic discrimination against Palestinians, it is high time that Israel is held to account for the violations of international law endemic to its military detention and judicial systems.
For now, Ali must wait until July 25th to appear in court again, not knowing whether he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. This case has until now received little media attention. But for those of us who respect due process and human rights, it is time to speak up.
Addameer, IWPS and Defence for Children International are working with Ali’s lawyers on this case.
