Year: 2011

Prisoners’ relatives protest against Israeli detention

3 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

Ahmed Youssef Al Ahnan was but a child of 17 when he was arrested six years ago in his aunt’s house by the beach of Khan Younis. “I still don’t know why they took my boy. How is it possible that they can arrest a child just like that?”, asked his mother ragingly, clinging firmly onto her son’s picture. To this day, Ahmed is still imprisoned in Israel, while none of his relatives have been allowed to visit him during the six years he has spent in detention. “It even took four years before he was allowed to make his first phone call!”, his mother continued. “In the past years, he has been able to call more, but still I can’t see him.” When asked how her son is holding up in prison, she answers with an ambiguous sense of pride and sadness: “He’s a good boy, he doesn’t want me to worry over him and always says that he is doing fine, but he doesn’t sound like he is.”

Next to her sits five year old Fara Omar Shehda Al Bardawi, playfully hiding behind her father’s picture that she is holding up. He was arrested five years ago, just a month before she was born, orphaning her before birth. “He called us once, but after we haven’t heard of him anymore”, said the young girl. The image of this vivacious little girl is discontinuous with the drama that enfolds from her words. Fara has not only lost her father: her mother remarried and had to leave her with her father’s family. “All I want is my father to be back”, she utters finally with a halfhearted smile.

At the protest, about 100 people, the majority of them women, gathered outside the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, every one holding pictures of a family member who is detained in an Israeli prison. According to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights NGO, there are currently 5395 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, no less than 209 of them are children.

It is not coincidental that this weekly sit-in is held at ICRC’s headquarters; every Palestinian wishing to visit a family member imprisoned in Israel must receive an entry permit, which is submitted via the ICRC to the Israeli side. The visiting population is restricted by outrageous visiting criteria: 16 to 45 year old boys and men, for example, are automatically excluded. Hundreds of others are barred on so called “security grounds”, which results in hundreds of prisoners not receiving visits for extended periods that may reach a number of years.

Since June 2007, Israel has banned all Gazans from visiting their relatives incarcerated in Israel. The 684 Gazans that are currently imprisoned in Israel have therefore not received a single visitor for more than three-and-a-half years now. Addalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel states that the Gaza detainees, many of whom are held indefinitely without trial, have since been in virtual isolation, as they are generally not allowed to communicate through phone or over the internet, and are only occasionally allowed to send out a letter to their families.

The 55 year old Aysha Abu Yazen comes all the way from Rafah, in the south of the Strip, to Gaza City to attend the prisoners’ sit-in: “Eight years ago, Israelis raided our house, demolished it and took my 18 year old son, Ahmad Jimah Abu Yazen. He allegedly has another nine years of imprisonment ahead of him and so far, for eight years, we have not received a single phone call from him.”

Two six year old twin girls, Ala'a and Wala'a, each holding a picture of their brother, Abed Foul, who has been in prison since two years, without a single visit

Every demonstrator has a devastating story to tell that bears witness to the isolation and alienation of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The family members of the imprisoned Ibrahim Majdoub for example say that Ibrahim was only allowed to call once throughout the year 2010.

And so these children, men and women come here every week – most of them for many years – to protest against and draw attention to Israel’s illegal conditions of imprisonment which are isolating their relatives and breaking up their families.

The ICRC is mandated, under the Geneva Conventions, to verify whether prisoners’ rights, under international law, are respected. Nonetheless, Gazans prisoners’ rights to receive visits are blatantly violated and people feel the ICRC is not putting the appropriate pressure on the Israeli authorities to respect the rights of the detainees.

Palestinian prisoners are defrauded of family visits, and also have restricted access to basic necessities in prison – such as clothing and money – as visits are often the prisoners’ sole means of contact for these items. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes that lawyers are prohibited by the Israeli Prison Service from transferring money to a prisoner. The IPS insists that only relatives may transfer money, which is obviously impossible as this would require a Gazan to be present in Israel.

Jameela Ahmed Salman holds up a poster of her bearded husband, Mahmoud Salman, who has been in prison for 17 years. “They took him when I was pregnant with my youngest son. For six years we haven’t been allowed to visit him. He’s sick and suffers from heart problems, he’s in and out of Ramla hospital, but I’m still not allowed to visit him and take care of him. I’m worried about him, I wish someone could help me and go to prison to check up on him and give him some money”, says Jameela softly. “My youngest was 11 when he saw his father last – in prison, that was – by now he has difficulties remembering his father’s face. What did my children ever do wrong to lose their father like this? The holidays during Eid al-Fitr [Islamic Festival of Fast-Breaking] and Eid al-Addha [Islamic Festival of Sacrifice] are bleak without him, we miss out on all of the joy. My eldest son and daughter got married recently and both were sad at the day of their marriage because they couldn’t share it with their father.”

Women holding their dear ones

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on December 9th 2009 that Israel has no obligation to allow “foreigners” entry into the country and that visits to prisoners are not a basic humanitarian need. The legal center Adalah states that this is not only a misapplication of international law, but also a sign of Israel’s continued and systematic persecution of Palestinians. As an occupying power, Israel cannot refer to Gazans as “foreigners”, but has to consider them as “protected persons” to whom Israel owes a particular duty of care. Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 stipulates that protection of the occupied population includes protection of family rights.

Furthermore, article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that prisoners taken from occupied territories should be detained within the occupied territory. Most of the Palestinian prisoners and all of the Gazan detainees are however held within Israel, which is thus illegal under international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime.

NGO Addameer notes that the decision to ban Gazan family visits, coincided with the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza. It appears to be a form of collective punishment, which is not related to the official reasons of imprisonment, but aims to coerce Palestinian factions to respond to Israel’s demands, turning Palestinian prisoners into pawns of political gain.

Fahmi Kanaan is one of the 26 people who have been exiled to Gaza after the 5 week long siege on the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem in May 2002. “Before that, in 1987, I spent five months in an Israeli prison, so I know how the hardships of Israeli imprisonment. Forced to live in exile and being cut off from my own family for more than eight-and-a-half years now, I know something about social isolation as well. I come here in solidarity with these families and to call upon the international world and the United Nations to
interfere in Israel’s illegal conduct and to stop their violations of international law! How can it be that the whole world calls for Gilad Shalit, the only Israeli prisoner in Palestine, to be released while it keeps silent about thousands of Palestinians that are detained in Israeli prisons!?”

Two youths detained in Hebron

5 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

A 14-year old boy was arrested at a checkpoint in Hebron on Friday morning. His family have contacted the Israeli authorities, but have received no answer as to his whereabouts. The following day, his cousin was detained at the same checkpoint, apparently for calling someone German. The Palestinian youth claimed he was just joking around with his friend; he was released an hour-or-so after his family promised to discipline him.

Hebron is unique in that the town has the presence of Jewish settlers within the city itself, with five illegal settlements in the city centre. Since the Goldstein massacre in 1994 – when Baruch Goldstein fired on Palestinians while they prayed in the mosque, killing 29 men and boys, and injuring a further 200 – al-Shuhada street (which is located in the heart of the city) has been closed to Palestinians. This has severed the city in two, paralyzing trade and destroying the commercial centre.  More than 500 shops and businesses have been forced to close under military order.  The continued repression enforced by the occupation has led to the mass abandonment of more than an additional thousand shops, businesses, and homes in the city centre.

Three injured as Israeli army fires upon rock collectors

06 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

Forty-five year old Abdallah Rabea Odwan works as a rock collector around Beit Lahiya. On the morning of 6th February, he and many others were working outside Abu Samra, around 700 meters from the border, when they were fired upon by Israeli soldiers. Abdallah was hit once below the knee and taken to the Kamal Udwan Hospital. Thankfully, no bones were broken, and doctors say he will recover over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, 19 year old Bilal Abdallah Al Daour and 22 year old Ibrahim El Nabaheen were fired upon whilst working in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood to the east of Gaza city. Hundreds of people were out collecting rocks in the area, about 500 meters from the Israeli border. At around 8:30am the first shots rang out, but no one was injured. The soldiers stopped shooting and, assuming it was safe, people returned to work. An hour later, the soldiers started shooting again; Bilal was shot in the knee and Ibrahim was shot in the pelvis. The other workers rushed them to a nearby car, but the car was out of gas due to the shortages caused by the closing of the tunnels under the Egyptian border. Bilal was finally taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza city; when we found him, he did not know where Ibrahim had been taken.

These are not the first rock collectors shot by the IDF, as countless others have been shot over the last two years in the ever expanding buffer zone.  Originally 50 meters under the Oslo agreements, it was expanded to 150 meters in 2000, and then to 300 meters in January 2010. However, the buffer zone isn’t really 300 meters: Adballah was shot 700 meters from the border; others have been shot at up to 2 km from the border – it is as big as the Israeli military wants to make it on any given day.  The Gazan economy has been choked by the three year Israeli siege. Unemployment is widespread, and so poverty – combined with the impossibility of importing cement to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed and damaged during Operation Cast Lead – forces people to collect rocks. These new injuries are yet another result of Israel’s inhumane policy of shooting anyone it thinks is too close to the border, even if they are forced there, risking their lives to feed their families. 

Daily life in Gaza

4 February 2011 | Nathan Stuckey, International Solidarity Movement Gaza

After spending six weeks waiting in Cairo I entered Gaza two weeks ago. I never would have guessed that Egypt would explode so soon after I left. Congratulations to the people of Egypt. The trip from Cairo to the border at Rafah was uneventful; we weren’t stopped at a single military checkpoint. The border was easy, no questions from the Egyptians and the Palestinians only wanted to know where I would be staying, what I would be doing, and how long I would be here. They were very friendly.

Life in Gaza has been a bit surreal so far. On the day I arrived the ISM moved to the new apartments by the harbor. I share a nice two bedroom with a great sun porch with Adie, a British ISMer. The women live upstairs in a rather nicer three bedroom. It is a little strange to live on my own in Palestine, in the past I had always lived with local families. It is in an area with a lot of foreigners. The local stores are relatively well stocked, but everything is quite expensive, so most people really can’t afford to buy anything.

Drones and F16’s can often be heard in the air overhead. Thankfully, since I arrived, there haven’t been any strikes that I know of. Gaza is densely populated but the streets are very quiet. Unemployment is brutally high because of the siege, few imports, and exports are impossible, so you don’t see many cars or people on the street. They don’t have jobs to go to, and they don’t have any money to shop with.

The apartment has a generator, so it took me a few days to realize just how often there is no electricity in Gaza. If you don’t have a generator there is electricity for less than half the day, and you never know when you will have it. As part of the siege on Gaza, Israel limits the amount of electricity supplied to the region, they also bombed Gaza’s power plant during Cast Lead, Israel’s last major assault on Gaza, which further restricts residents from producing their own electricity. Not having electricity when you want it is a real pain; it definitely lowers productivity. Today our landlord came by and said that because the tunnels from Egypt were closed supplies of gas for the generator will be quite limited. No more hot water or refrigerator when the generator is running.

My first task in Gaza was going with Adie to teach the Samouni children English. Many of you have probably heard the story of the Samouni family. During Cast Lead the Israeli army herded the family into a house, and then shelled the house. Ambulances were not permitted to help the wounded. Twenty six members of the Samouni family were killed. You can read a longer account of their story here. The children are really cute and really eager to learn. It really wasn’t until my second visit that I began to notice all that was wrong with the picture. So many of them have missing limbs, disabilities, and massive scars which you don’t immediately notice. Amal, whose name means hope, has recently started failing her classes. She used to be a very good student, but after the massacre she can’t concentrate, she still has shrapnel inside her head. The missing fathers aren’t just away at work, not all of the brothers and sisters you see in family pictures are with us today.

Later that week I visited a family in Khuzzaa. Our guide was a 21 year old university student named Shathem. Her father was recently kidnapped by Israel during an incursion. She lives at home with her mother and sisters. One of her sisters is getting married soon, so the house is a whirl of activity. Khuzzaa is right next to the buffer zone, and Shathem’s family lives on the edge of the village closest to the buffer zone. Israel has declared that no one is allowed to come within 300 meters of the border, this is the buffer zone, violating the buffer zone is likely to get you shot. Of course, the buffer zone is on Palestinian land, not Israeli land, similar to the wall in the West Bank-annexing Palestinian land for “security.”

Unfortunately for the villagers, not only has Israel banned them from going to much of their land, the soldiers are not really a very good judge of distance. 300 meters, 500 meters, one kilometer, apparently all of it looks about the same when you’re looking through the sights of your M16. In Khuzzaa, the school is on the edge of the newly declared buffer zone. The soldiers shoot at the school. We met a young woman who had been shot in the knee on her way to school one morning. Her neighbors have been forced to put giant stone shutters on their windows to stop the soldiers’ bullets from coming into their living room. The town has erected 20 foot tall concrete blocks on the streets that face the border to stop the soldier’s bullets from killing even more people.

Over the weekend we went down to Faraheen to help a farmer who lives by the buffer zone. Most of his land has been lost to the buffer zone. We joined Jabur, his wife Leila, their son, their five daughters, and assorted cousins in planting onions in a field next to the buffer zone. It is easy to forget just how much work farming can be, a full day of crouching while I transplanted onions left me with two very sore legs. All day long the IDF wandered up and down the border with their bulldozers, and giant armored trucks, thankfully they never crossed the border. We had lunch at the house by the onion field that Jabur had to abandon because it was too close to the buffer zone. He has since moved into town, too much shooting at his old house.

Jabur’s wife Leila walks with a pronounced limp. As is far too common, at first I didn’t really notice, then, I assumed that maybe she has arthritis or something. It wasn’t until the second day that I noticed just how severe it was. It turns out that during the first intifada she had come upon some Israeli soldiers beating local children for throwing stones. She tried to intervene to help the children and one of the soldiers shot her in the hip. Hearing Leila’s story I was reminded me of a recent article on one of the first videos to shock people with the brutality of the occupation, you can read the article at Ha’aretz, or watch the video below. I am in constant shock at the number of scars and wounds from the occupation you see here. Often, at first, I don’t notice, then someone moves, or some skin exposed, and the endemic violence of the occupation is in front of you again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36r8eSmpGx4

The next day it was raining in the morning, so instead of planting more onions I taught two of Jabur’s daughters English. They were very competitive; they kept trying to distract each other as soon as I asked a question so that they could be the first one to answer it. They study English in school, but there are 43 students in each class, so learning a language is rather difficult, they obviously do not get much time to speak. Their vocabulary and reading skills are quite good though. About noon, the rain stopped, so back to the fields to plant more onions. That evening we came back to Gaza City and home sweet home. Going home was probably a very good idea, because I spend the next couple of days sick.

The buffer zone might not seem like such a big deal, after all 300 meters isn’t very far is it? But 300 meters isn’t really 300 meters, farmers complain that the soldiers shoot at them from even a kilometer away, and anything closer than 500 is quite dangerous, because who knows were exactly 300 meters start, not you, and not the soldier doing the shooting. Gaza is only about 8 kilometers wide, so 500 meters is a significant chunk of land. It is a total disaster for farmers whose land is in the buffer zone. God help those whose homes are next to the buffer zone, or even worse in it.

I think the most surprising thing about Gaza so far has been how liberal it is. The levels of gender-based segregation are much lower than I expected. I am meeting, and talking to young women. This did not happen in the West Bank, and it did not happen much in Syria. I’m sure that part of this is that the families we are in contact with are more liberal than average, but the whole society seems much less conservative than I expected. You see women in the streets, in the stores, working, and in cafes smoking shisha.

Harsh Interrogations of Children Escalate in Nabi Saleh

31 January 2011 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

14 year old Islam Tamimi was arrested in a night raid on Sunday 23 January 2011 and subjected to psychological torture in order to extract dictated false testimony that will be used to incriminate and prosecute villagers in Nabi Saleh.

In an escalation of the repression of unarmed demonstration in the West Bank, 14 year old Islam Tamimi was seized from his home and arrested at 0200 on Sunday 23 January 2011 . It was the second time in roughly three weeks that he was taken by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers applied stress position techniques on the 14 year old boy, hoping to force his psychological collapse. The exhausted child was then taken to an unnamed police station where he was interrogated without his parents or a lawyer present. During an eight hour interrogation and after prolonged exposure and sleep deprivation, Tamimi capitulated to the army’s dictated script. The army interrogators continued to attack Tamimi with psychological torture in order to extract more false testimony about demonstrations in Nabi Saleh.

Tamimi’s lawyers were in contact with a police interrogator and military officials immediately after the arrest. However, lawyers only gained access to the child after five hours of interrogation. Tamimi’s parents, who have the right to be present when a child is under investigation according to international law, Israeli law and precedents in the Israeli military court of appeals, were denied access to their son.

A military judge, Major Hilbraun, extended Tamimi’s arrest for four days at the request of the police. Defense lawyers filed an appeal requesting that the child be immediately released due to the unlawful conduct of the police and military. However, the request was ignored and Tamimi’s hearing only took place on Wednesday 26 January 2011. The military judge stated in the court that he would give a decision on rather to reprimand Tamimi on Wednesday. The decision was never published and was brought to court Thursday 27 January 2011 according to the original request and without any reference to appeal of defense lawyers. Tamimi is currently waiting to hear if an appeal to allow him to be moved to house arrest will be honored by the court.

Since Sunday 23 January 2011, three 15 year old children have been arrested in night raids in Nabi Saleh. Bassem Tamimi, the popular committee leader of the village, was briefly detained on Wednesday 26 January 2011 near a checkpoint in Ramallah. He was brought by soldiers, who repeatedly beat him, to Nabi Saleh. He was warned that the army is aware of his role in the village demonstrations and will keep an eye on him during the upcoming Friday demonstration.

The repression of Nabi Saleh in the form of arresting children and subjecting them to psychological torture in order to get false information has been used by the army in other villages such as Bil’in and Ni’ilin. The popular committee leader of Bil’in, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, has been in jail for over 13 months for a charge of incitement which was based on dictated false testimonies from a number of children from the village. The army is attempting to use the same method in Nabi Saleh in order to crush the demonstrations.

Nabi Saleh, a small village west of Ramallah, has engaged in an unarmed demonstration against the confiscation of their land by the neighboring Jewish settlement of Halamish for the past year There have been countless injuries, arrests and collective punishment against the village over the past year as the army has tried to crush the protest.