Author: ISM Media - Page 468 - International Solidarity Movement

Nakba anniversary message

by Mazin Qumsiyeh

15 May 2012 | Popular Resistance

On this 64^th anniversary of the Nakba we mourn the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 and that continues today with silent transfer, home demolitions, land confiscation and more. But we also celebrate an amazing resilience and success of the Palestinian endogenous people against incredible odds:

-We just celebrated the success of a hunger strike by over 1600 political prisoners despite attempts to stifle the story in Zionist dominated Western media. They succeeded in achieving a part of their basic rights including receiving family visits and ending solitary confinement.

-We are 11.5 million people and while most of us are refugees and displaced people, we remain steadfast and hopeful and connected. Thanks to persistence and now the internet and modern communications, even the feeble attempts to isolate us from each other failed. Thousands of Palestinians still go to their main city of Jerusalem without Israeli permission. Thousands connect across the Green line to the areas occupied since 1948.

-We are still the most educated people in the Middle East with the highest per capita of postgraduates.

-We now have 12 universities inside the occupied Palestinan territories. On Saturday we held the second biomedical research symposium in Bethlehem showing scientific work rivaling that done in countries with a strong tradition of research. This is miraculous considering the conditions under occupation.

-We are still the people who helped develop the Arab world and even remind it of its unity and common destiny. But more than that, our resistance shielded fellow Arabs from the original plans of Zionists for an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates. We are still the main obstacle to the victory of the racist Zionist project.

-We have an amazing history of 130 years of struggle against the most well-financed, most-organized, most-supported (by Zionists and their Western backers) colonial project in human history.

– We have the fastest growing boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in anti-colonial struggles. In less than 7 years we accomplished far more than what was accomplished with BDS in any other place (including in 25 years in South Africa).

-Palestine is still the place where people of different religions lived together in the same neighborhod unsegregated until European Zionists came and recreated ghettos for Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) and one large ghetto for Jews called Israel coexist in harmony. Church bells and the call of the Muezzin to prayer still penetrate deep in our souls despite all the Zionist attempts to silence them (e.g. the ethnic cleansing and destruction of 530 villages and towns).

– We educate our children that racism and notions of choseness are wrong and they grow to believe that we can still have the new Palestine that will be like our old Palestine: multiethnic, multireligious, multicultural and beautiful.

– Palestinians inspired activists around the world. Polls show great sympathy for our cause among average people. Palestine is now cause celebre among those struggling against oppression. Even Nelson Mandela said that South Africa will not be fully free until Palestine is free. According to polls, a majority in Western Europe correctly view Israel and the US as the two greatest threats to world peace. Thousands of internationals joined us in the struggle locally. Israel has become so paranoid about any solidarity visits and in the process exposed its apartheid racist nature.

We are grateful to be participants in shaping a better future for all. I am 100% sure that our Nakba will end, refugees will return, freedom and equality will happen, and Israelis will also be liberated from being oppressors and colonizers and become integrated into the fabric of the new and better Palestine. We can then become a “light unto the peoples.”

What Thaer Halahleh’s family told me about his release brings joy, but raises troubling questions

by Lina Al Saafin

15 May 2012 | Electronic Intifada

At around 1:30am Palestine local time I was lying on my side in my bed trying to sleep and doing my best to ignore the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as I thought about how the 64th commemoration of Nakba Day would pan out.

My phone suddenly vibrated jarringly. I grabbed it and the name of the last person I expected to call me was flashing on the screen: Abu Thaer Halahleh, the father of Palestinian hunger striker Thaer Halahleh. I immediately answered.

What I learned in the conversation was a cause for both joy, and serious concern about a pattern of pressure to isolate prisoners and coerce them into accepting deals.

“Hello?”

“Hello…is this Um Muhammad?”

“No, this is her daughter. Is that Fathiya?”

“Yes, it’s me, Thaer’s sister.”

My heart stopped. I thought she had called to tell me Thaer had died. She cleared her throat. “I just want to tell you…I’m happy to tell you that Thaer has taken the decision to end his hunger strike in the morning.”

My heart swelled. “Tell me more!” I almost shouted.

“He will be released on 5 June after Israel signed a contract promising not to renew his detention… during that time he will receive medical aid to help his recuperation.” Fathiya was bubbling with happiness.

“What about Bilal Thiab and the other hunger strikers?”

“I’m not sure yet about Bilal…Thaer called my family in Kharas at around 12:45 am to inform them of the news. People in Kharas fired their guns in the air at 1 am when they heard the news. The mosques’ loudspeakers carried the call of ‘Allahu Akbar’ at that time too. My family immediately called my father to tell him the news but he didn’t believe him. Thaer was allowed to make another call to my house, and we almost didn’t pick up because it was a private number…anyway, talk to my father.”

“Uncle! This is fantastic news!” I said to Abu Thaer.

“Yes, my daughter, thank God. You heard he was to be released on 5 June?”

“Yes…tell me, how did he sound on the phone? What was it like talking to him again after two years?”

“His spirits are high, and his voice…well you know, it’s a good thing he can even talk after 77 days on hunger strike. But one thing he said struck me hard. He told me that if I wasn’t satisfied with his decision he was ready to continue his hunger strike.”

I asked him if he knew more information. He told me that all administrative detainees signed a deal with the Israeli Prison Service (brokered by an Egyptian mediator) to end their hunger strike in return for getting released once their detention was up, with Israel promising not to renew their detention.

“This means that Bilal Thiab will be released in August, because that’s when his administrative detention ends,” Thaer’s dad said.

Bilal was arrested on 17 August 2011.

“I don’t know if Bilal will be released on August 17 or not,” continued Thaer’s dad. “You know how it is with the occupation. They will find any excuse to postpone the release of a prisoner even by a few days. Thaer’s administrative detention ends on May 27 but he is getting released a week later.”

Deal raises new questions over role of Jawad Boulos and pressure on hunger strikers

The deal was struck after midnight, in the Ramle prison hospital. It is not known for sure whether Thaer and Bilal’s lawyer, Jamil Khatib was present, but Jawad Boulos, the lawyer who conducted the deals for Khader Adnan and the even murkier one with Hana al-Shalabiwas there.

Israel has consistently denied prisoners access to their lawyers of choice, so there is special reason to be concerned when Israel allows lawyers who do not represent the prisoners into the room.

On 14 May, Maan News Agency reported that Issa Qaraqe, a Palestinian Authority minister, had told media that Boulos had been dispatched to Ramle Prison to speak to Thaer Halahleh and fellow long-term hunger striker Bilal Diab.

The Egyptian mediator, the Higher Committee for prisoners, and the Israel Prison Service officials were also there.

Boulos was the key figure in the deal which ended up with Hana al-Shalabi being banished to Gaza for three years on 1 April in exchange for releasing her from administrative detention.

Boulos and Palestinian Authority officials claimed that this was al-Shalabi’s “choice,” but this was challenged by Hana’s father and by Hana herself in an interview with The Electronic Intifada:

In her comments to The Electronic Intifada, al-Shalabi demanded that her lawyer [Boulos] clarify to her and to the public the controversial circumstances surrounding the deal to send her to Gaza.

Al-Shalabi’s account casts doubt on the claims that it was her “choice” and confirm that she may have received misleading information in order to induce her to accept the deal.

Is there a pattern here? It does look like Israel and those working with it to end the strike are creating conditions where prisoners are isolated from family, their own legal representation and independent medical personnel and then a “good cop” lawyer of Israel’s and the Palestinian Authority’s choice is brought in to pressure them to accept a deal.

This has now become a pattern with Boulos and there must be clarity and accountability.

A deal, but is it a victory?

Thaer’s father was speaking to me outside on a street, waiting for a taxi to take him back home to Kharas in Hebron. He hadn’t slept for three days.

“You better prepare the mansaf,” I joked.

“Of course. I’ll be waiting for you and your mother to come down to Kharas,” he laughed.

The fact that Thaer and Bilal and the other six hunger strikers in their second or third month without food will survive is a cause for great happiness. Yet this deal doesn’t seem like a victory.

Thaer and Bilal have vowed over and over again that they will not end their fast until immediate freedom or martyrdom, and with the involvement of Jawad Boulos in the arrangement similar to that of Khader Adnan’s, there seems to be more to it than meets the eye.

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Palestinian prisoners agree to end hunger strike

by Haitham Hamad

14 May 2012 | Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners agreed Monday to end a weekslong hunger strike after winning concessions from Israel to improve their conditions, the two sides announced.

The deal ended a strike in which prisoners had gone without food for up to 77 days, leaving several prisoners in life-threatening condition. It was the longest strike ever staged by Palestinians in Israeli custody.

With the Palestinians set to hold an annual day of mourning on Tuesday, both sides were eager to wrap up a deal to lower tensions. The Palestinians are marking what they call the “nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the term they use in describing the suffering that resulted from Israel’s establishment 64 years ago.

The Palestinian minister for Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said that Palestinian prisoner leaders signed the deal on Monday afternoon at an Israeli prison in Ashkelon. Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and Palestinian militant groups confirmed the deal, which was brokered by Egyptian mediators.

Two men launched the strike on Feb. 27, and were joined by hundreds of others on April 17.

Among their demands: permission to receive family visits from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, an end to solitary confinement and a halt to an Israeli policy of “administrative detention,” under which suspected militants are held for months, and sometimes years, without being charged. Israel has defended the policy as a necessary security measure.

According to a Palestinian negotiator, Israel agreed to allow prisoners from both the West Bank and Gaza to receive family visits. The visits from Gaza were halted in 2006 after Hamas-linked militants in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier. After the soldier was released in a prisoner swap last October, the Palestinians said the ban should be lifted.

He said Israel also agreed to halt its punitive policy of placing prisoners in solitary confinement, would allow prisoners to make phone calls to relatives and permit prisoners to pursue academic studies.

He spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

There was no word on any change to the administrative detentions.

The Shin Bet said in return, the prisoners pledged “to absolutely stop terror activity from inside Israeli jails.” It also said militant group’s commanders outside the jails made a commitment “to prevent terror activity.” It did not elaborate.

Israel said some 1,600 prisoners, or more than a third of the 4,500 Palestinians held by Israel, joined the hunger strike. Palestinians said the number was closer to 2,500.

The fate of the prisoners is an emotional issue in Palestinian society, where nearly everyone has a neighbor or relative who has spent time in an Israeli jail. As the strike dragged on, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of the West Bank and Gaza to demonstrate in solidarity.

For families of the prisoners, any deal that did not win their freedom fell short.

“Will they release Bilal? Is it over?” asked Missadeh Diab, the elderly mother of Bilal Diab, one of the prisoners who refused food for 77 days. “May God give your demands and freedom.”

Statement No. 7 of the Strike leadership

by The Central Committee of the Leadership of the Strike

13 May 2012 | Samidoun

We have only two options: to achieve all of our demands, or to die

Free Palestinian people, masses of our nation, free people of the world….

We have entered a stage of legendary and draining human struggle, where we face real danger which threatens our lives. We are now very close to martyrdom, which is more precious and one of the best options for us.

We are now at the state of a great test of wills and we reject completely the attempts of the Prison Service management to force us to accept partial settlements in order to bring an end to this epic humanitarian struggle for justice. Here, we emphasize the following points:

We have only two options to achieve all of the following.

First, we swear not to go back without achieving our demands. We are waiting for martyrdom for the sake of our dignity, and we have prepared ourselves to confront our only two options – the victory of our humanity and our dignity, or our martyrdom without it.

Second, we strongly and firmly swear that we will continue with our battle of the empty stomachs, whatever the costs may be, until we achieve the minimum of our demands, particularly the immediate end to the horror of solitary confinement and isolation, and to allow prisoners from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who have been denied family visits to receive them, and to return prison conditions to their pre-2000 state.

Third, we greatly appreciate the role of our great sister Egypt with regard to compelling “Israel” to implement the second part of an agreement and fulfilling its commitments, and we are confident that Egypt is an Arab leader that will not leave us to face this battle alone. We also affirm categorically that we will not end our strike without promptly achieving our demands. We are confident of the depth of support in our nation, and particularly in Egypt.

Finally, we are ready for martyrdom. We are not amateurs in hunger. Death is easier than disrespect for our dignity, so we swear we will live with dignity or die.

Activists seal off settlement in solidarity with hunger strikers

13 May 2012 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

The protesters managed to halt traffic at the entrance to the settlement for about 20 minutes, before Israeli forces managed to remove them from the road and onto the pavement. Two of the Palestinian protesters were detained and taken to the adjacent police station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=66jn–Wmt28

The Ma’ale Adumim Jewish-only settlement is located 7 km east of Jerusalem, and is the third largest in the West Bank, with about 35,000 residents. The entrance that was blocked, leads to the Israeli police’s Judea and Samaria Central Unit’s interrogation center, one of the biggest in the West Bank.

Background

More than three weeks ago, some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have launched an open-ended hunger strike and their life is in danger. Their demands are simple and the strike’s slogan, echoing through the prison walls, is just as plain- freedom or death. The lives of all prisoners on strike are currently under danger, but among them is a smaller group, which has been striking for a longer period and whose lives are under immediate threat.

Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab have not eaten for more than 70 days – since the 29th of February. Israeli courts have rejected their appeals and refused to free them from administrative detention where they remain without charge or trial, subject to secret evidence and secret allegations. They are in critical condition.

Hassan Safadi has been refusing food since the 2nd of March, Omar Abu Shalal, 54, since the 4th of March, Mahmoud Sarsak, the only Gazan to have been incarcerated under Israel’s Illegal Combatants Law, since the 24th of March, Mohammed al-Taj, 40, also since the 24th of March and Ja’afar Ezzadeen, 41, since the 27th of march.

The Prisoners’ key demands include:

Ending the policy of solitary confinement and isolation;
End to the use of administrative detentions;
The restoration of visitation rights to families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, a right that has been denied to all families for more than 6 years;
Canceling ‘Shalit’ law, which restricts prisoners’ access to educational materials as punitive measure. The law remains intact despite a prisoner swap deal last October.
Ending systematic humiliation, including arbitrary strip searches, nightly raids and collective punishment.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have been hit hard with retaliation from Israel Prison Services, including beatings, transferring from one prison to another, confiscation of salt (an act that could have severe health consequences for hunger strikers), denial of family and lawyer visits, and isolation and solitary confinement of hunger strikers.

In response, Human Rights Watch issued a statement chiding Israel’s over its administrative detention policy; it said, “It shouldn’t take the self-starvation of Palestinian prisoners for Israel to realize it is violating their due process rights.” Amnesty International also issued a call for urgent action from individuals around the world to contact Israeli authorities about Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh.