21st August 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Nablus, Occupied Palestine
Update 26th August:On Thursday, August 22, Leena Jawabreh was sentenced to 30 days (one month) in Israeli prisons, and a 1000 NIS fine. On Sunday, August 25, Linan Abu Ghoulmeh was sentenced to 60 days (two months) in Israeli prisons and a 1000 NIS fine. Myassar Atyani’s case has been held over until Wednesday, August 28.
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At 10pm on August 15th Myassar Atyani, Linan Abu Gholmeh and Leena Jawabreh of Nablus district were arrested by the Israeli police with their friend Waroud Qasem in the 1948 occupied areas of Palestine (‘48), what is now referred to as Israel. The three friends who are all political activists and former political prisoners had travelled to ‘48 to visit Waroud who lives in Tire and has Israeli citizenship.
Leena Jawabreh, Linan Abu Ghoulmeh, Woroud Qasem and Myassar Atyani
They were traveling together in Waroud’s car when they were stopped by the Israeli police and found to be without travel permits; Palestinians living in the West Bank require permits issued by the Israeli authorities to travel outside of the West Bank, including to the Palestinian capital Jerusalem and the rest of ’48. These permits are notoriously difficult to obtain, especially for activists. The four women were subsequently arrested and transported to Hasharon prison. Myassar, Linan and Leena were detained at the prison until their appearance at Salem military court on the 19th of August.
Waroud, also a former political prisoner from 2006 to 2012 was released from Hasharon prsison and placed under full house arrest with her driving license confiscated. She has another court hearing pending. The other three women are now being held in Salem prison awaiting a further court hearing. Leena on the 22nd of August and Myassar and Linan on the 25th of August.
We call on international solidarity activists to organize demonstrations on 1 August in their own cities, and to spread awareness of the biggest impending ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians by Israel since 1948 through writing petitions, sharing information on the Naqab and Prawer Plan, or by any other show of activism.
On Monday, July 15, thousands of Palestinians protested in their cities, towns and at busy street junctions against the Prawer Plan, in a day that was designated as the national day of rage, or Anger Strike.
From Bir Sabe to Jerusalem, West Bank to the Galilee, Haifa to Gaza, Palestinians demonstrated against the Prawer Plan which passed its first reading in the Knesset last month. The Plan aims to
* confiscate 800,000 dunums of land in the Naqab desert
* expel over 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins
* demolish 35 unrecognized villages
* confine 30% of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab to 1% of the land
Dozens of Palestinians were either injured or arrested since July 15 by the Israeli occupation forces, yet the Anger Strike is far from over. Throughout the past week protests have been constant within Palestine, with Beirut in Lebanon and Cairo in Egypt also joining in.
We are determined to continue protesting daily and to raise international awareness for the plight of our Palestinian Bedouin brothers and sisters, and the next day of rage will be on Thursday, August 1.
We call on international solidarity activists to organize demonstrations on the same day in their own cities, and to spread awareness of the biggest impending ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians by Israel since 1948 through writing petitions, sharing information on the Naqab and Prawer Plan, or by any other show of activism. Your voice against ethnic cleansing and racism, matters. (Email the campaign at StopPrawerPlan@gmail.com).
27th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Tubas, Occupied Palestine
UPDATE 28th May 2013: Israeli court prolonged the arrest of Sireen until Thursday in which she will see a judge. To this day she is banned from seeing a lawyer
Last Tuesday Sireen, a 24 year old woman from Tubas, was detained by Israeli forces. She is currently being held in Al Jalameh, an Israeli prison. Her family and friends fear for her safety. She has been denied access to a lawyer and she has not been allowed to make any contact with her loved ones since her arrest.
Sireen Sawafteh
At around 3pm last Tuesday Sireen’s car was stopped at a temporary checkpoint on the road between Nablus and Tubas in the West Bank. After brief questioning by Israeli forces she was detained. The second person in the car was also detained.
In the early hours on Wednesday, Israeli forces raided Sireen’s family home whilst her father Khalid Sawafteh, her mother, three brothers, sisters in law and their two young children were sleeping. Twenty-five army jeeps entered the town of Tubas. Twenty officers entered the home and over one hundred remained in the street cornering off the house. The family and young children were all taken into one room whilst their home was ransacked. Israeli soldiers took all the computers in the house leaving Sireen’s relatives in shock.
Tubas is located in Area A as designated under the Oslo Accords, an agreement drawn up between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. ‘Legally’ it is under total Palestinian civil and military control. Israeli civilians and military are prohibited to enter Area A and any incursion into this area is considered a breach of this agreement. Despite this, Israeli forces have continue to carry out ‘operations’ in Area A.
The illegal incursion on Wednesday morning sparked protests in Tubas. Israeli forces fired tear gas and sound grenades at local residents as they gathered. Omar Abed al-Razaq, a 20 year old local university student from Nablus, was injured. He is in a serious but stable condition in Nablus Hospital. He has lost some of his fingers and is currently unable to communicate with his visitors. The full extent of his injuries are not yet known. The head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society in Tubas, Mahmud Sawafteh, denounced Israel’s continuous raids, which he says causes ‘fear and panic among residents (1).’
Since her detention, Sireen has been forcibly transferred out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories to an Israeli prison in Haifa located in the north of Israel, a practice illegal under international law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the cccupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive”. While Article 76 states clearly that ‘protected persons accused of offenses shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein”.
Last Thursday, lawyers acting for Sireen tried to visit the prison inside Israel where she is being held. They were refused entry. She appeared in court on Monday with her hands and legs shackled. The spurious charge was internet activism, creating a Facebook page which is considered a ‘threat’ to the ‘security’ of the region.
Sireen is active in the non violent campaign for human rights in Palestine. She studied computer science at the Open University in Tubas. During her studies she was actively involved in a twinning project between Tubas and the University of Sussex, England. She took part in a delegation of students which visited the UK from Palestine to strengthen links and foster friendships.
Rashed Kahled, Sireen’s older brother said; ‘We in the family are very concerned for Sireen and we would love her to be returned to us soon. My mother is very sad and fears for Sireen, she cannot sleep. How can we be at peace? We do not know what is happening and we are not allowed to see her.’
Many Palestinian women prisoners suffer abuse during their detention. Palestinian women prisoners are often kept in the same cells as Israeli female convicts. This practice often leads to female Palestinian prisoners being humiliated, suffering from threats and assault perpetrated with impunity by the Israel prisoners.
Adameer, a Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organisation reports that Palestinian women prisoners ‘are subjected to some form of psychological torture and ill-treatment throughout the process of their arrest and detention, including various forms of sexual violence that occur such as beatings, insults, threats, body searches, and sexually explicit harassment. Upon arrest, women detainees are not informed where they are being taken and are rarely explained their rights during interrogation. These techniques of torture and ill-treatment are used not only as means to intimidate Palestinian women detainees, but also as tools to humiliate Palestinian women and coerce them into giving confessions (2).’
Sireen was in court for the second time this Wednesday. The judge extended her detention for a further 6 days. She will appear again on Monday, when it is possible her detention will be further extended.
International Solidarity Movement calls on Ynetnews, a popular Israeli digital newspaper, to correct the false allegations against the recently arrested Swedish human rights activist and a young boy in Al-Khalil (Hebron).
Ynetnews reported that the Swedish activist allegedly attempted to take an Israeli soldier’s gun and resisted arrest. Also reported was that the young boy arrested was throwing stones. Both allegations prove entirely false in the Youth Against Settlements full video of the event. Story here.
Support our demand to report accurately on events in Palestine. Contact the Ynetnews editor-in-chief at editor-in-chief@y-i.co.il or the Ynetnews editorial department at news@ynetnews.com.
Below is the letter sent to Ynetnews editor-in-chief, still awaiting response.
It has come to our attention that ynet recently posted an article about the arrest of a child and an international activist in Hebron last week that contains entirely false information regarding the nature of the arrests. If ynet intends to report accurate information, unattributed allegations such as those that appear in that report are unaccountable as the basis for a posted story, especially as those sources turn out to be entirely false. You may see a full video of the event here. We hope that ynet will attempt to restore its lost credibility on this article and uphold an honest journalistic ethic by both correcting the falsity of that report in addition to posting the entire video of the event to display without a doubt for misinformed readers that the two arrests were made without illegal action by either the child or the international man. False information in reporting on a story such as this is, as ynet must agree, unacceptable.
Please also note that this false reporting has not gone unnoticed, as +972 magazine has already reported that ynet clearly misrepresented the events as evidenced by video of the event. You may see that report by +972 here.
Awaiting your response,
ISM Palestine Media
P.S. ISM will make this letter to the editor public awaiting appropriate remedy of this misinformation by ynet news.
N.B. In actual event, in the afternoon of the 28th April, several children from an illegal Hebron settlement attacked two Palestinian children, aged 11 and 12, who were walking home from school. The soldiers proceeded to arrest the Palestinian victims of the attack despite the fact that according to eyewitnesses, they never struck back.
Having witnessed the arrests of the children, Swedish human rights observer Gustav Karlsson asked Israeli soldiers “why are you arresting these children?” only to be violently grabbed and also arrested. Following this, the children and Gustav were taken to a nearby military base. Gustav said, “I was blindfolded, but I could hear the children crying and screaming next to me. Twice, the soldiers pointed their guns at me, loaded them and pretended to pull the triggers”. As well as these mock-executions, soldiers violently shoved Gustav with their guns as they moved him and the children around.
The children were released later the same day, while Gustav is currently in Givon prison accused of assaulting a soldier, despite clear video evidence to the contrary.
Addameer calls on activists and people of conscience to stand in solidarity with all political prisoners and join Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Organization’s upcoming global campaign against administrative detention.
Over 4,743 Palestinians are currently detained by Israel; 10 of them women, 193 of them children, and 178 of them held under administrative detention, a decrepit policy that Israel uses to hold Palestinians on secret information indefinitely without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.
Not only are these prisoners held arbitrarily, but Israel’s use of administrative detention violates several international standards, such as deporting Palestinians from the occupied territory to Israel, denying regular family visits and failing to take into account the best interests of child detainees as required under international law.
We need your support to break their chains and the silence on administrative detention.
Today, Israel has outsourced security for prisons where Palestinians are held to a British-Danish company named G4S. Along with the Israeli Prison Service, G4S is responsible for the harsh conditions the prisoners faced during the historic 2012 hunger strikes that thousands of Palestinians participated in, including two hunger strikers that neared death in protest of their arbitrary detention, Khader Adnan and Hana Al-Shalabi. G4S is also complicit in Israel’s detention of nearly one-third of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006, and for dozens of human rights defenders being arrested every year for participating in popular resistance.
The government of Israel should release all administrative detainees, and in the meantime, all administrative detainees must be granted their rights in accordance with international law.
Addameer supports the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against G4S to end its complicity in detaining administrative detainees and to put pressure on the Israeli government to release the prisoners. Addameer calls on solidarity organizations, individuals and human rights organizations around the world to join our End Administrative Detention campaign launching on 17 April 2013.
TAKE ACTION!
You can help us pressure the Israeli government to release the prisoners by:
Participating in a mass day of mobilization in your city on 17 April, the annual Palestinian Prisoners Day.
Organizing an “End Administrative Detention” week on 17-24 April 2013 in your city or university campus using Addameer’s forthcoming campaign materials.
Joining a local G4S BDS campaign in your city.
Raising awareness about administrative detention in your community using our forthcoming Activist Toolkit.
