Category: In the Media

Tristan Anderson civil suit delayed as new evidence emerges

by Charlotte Silver

3 Demember 2011 | The Electronic Intifada 

“If he had been a Palestinian, he would have gone to the Ramallah hospital and died,” Gabby Silverman said firmly.

Silverman was close enough to Tristan Anderson that she didn’t even have to shout for him to hear her when he was shot in the head by the Israeli border police.

Anderson was 37 years old when he was shot in the right corner of his forehead by a high velocity tear gas canister that broke his skull, penetrated his right eye and devastated his frontal lobe. It was 13 March 2009, and the weekly nonviolent demonstration against Israel’s wall in the West Bank village of Nilin was coming to a close.

But Anderson did not die. He was taken to a hospital in Tel Aviv where he would be treated for the next 15 months. Silverman stayed with him, keeping close watch.

Anderson and his family have filed a civil suit against the Israeli military for the injury he sustained. Evidentiary hearings for the suit were to begin in Jerusalem in late November; however, the trial was postponed due to a last-minute revelation of material evidence.

New video evidence could lead to indictment

Lea Tsemel, an Israeli human rights lawyer who is representing Anderson in his civil suit, told The Electronic Intifada that mere days before the hearing was to begin, new video evidence emerged. “The footage, found only now, shows the army in the village the day Tristan was shot,” she said. “All of us [the state and lawyers] were surprised by the new evidence and wanted to investigate it before we go forward,” said Tsemel.

Now, before proceeding with the civil case against the army, lawyers representing Anderson in the criminal court will submit the newly discovered footage to the State Attorney’s office.

“We believe that the evidence supports the immediate re-opening of the investigation, and we hope that investigation will yield enough evidence to lead to the filing of an indictment before a criminal court,” said Emily Schaeffer, a lawyer with Michael Sfard’s Law Office, who represented Anderson and his family in the separate criminal case.

For Silverman and Anderson, the trial is not about weeding out a few bad apples, but challenging a regime that has never been held accountable.

“Palestinians die at protests all the time — no one will even talk about it. But people will talk a little about Tristan,” Silverman noted.

Long-term social justice protesters

In 2000, 17-year-old Gabby Silverman had long, thick wavy hair died bright red and wore unlaced combat boots. She was in the midst of the “A16” demonstration against theInternational Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC when Tristan Anderson first saw her.

“I walked by you and I noticed your shoes. Shoes tell you a lot about a person,” Anderson recalled in September 2011, as sat in his wheelchair in the house he shares with Silverman in Oakland, California. We were joined by their friend Ayr. Anderson’s right hand fingered the almonds in a bowl on a table. Every so often, he brought one to his mouth and ate it.

Today, Anderson is hemiplegic, almost entirely paralyzed on his left and dominant side, and blind in his right eye.

“Everyone was wearing black, but you had bright red hair and I thought, wow, look at her,” he added. Then the crowd pushed Silverman and Anderson away in different directions.

Eight years later, Anderson would meet Silverman again — this time at the top of an old oak tree at the University of California at Berkeley in the winter of 2007. They were both involved in a long-term protest of the university’s decision to cut down a grove of ninety ancient oaks to make room for a new gym.

The tree-sit lasted until September 2008 but Anderson and Silverman remained together as a couple. In March 2009, Silverman decided to travel to Palestine. She explained that as a person of Jewish background, she has been told her entire life that the country was personally relevant to her.

“I came with the intention to get a better understanding of what was going on in Israel and Palestine; I felt like I had a responsibility,” she said.

Anderson followed Silverman to the Middle East. Anderson had spent his adult life travelling Europe and the Americas, photographing what he saw and engaging with various types of international solidarity work.

Explaining his past work, Tristan told The Electronic Intifada: “Sometimes it’s solidarity, sometimes it’s like we’ve all got to fight against something. I did everything there is to do: bicycle activism, gardening activism, anti-globalization activism, [US political prisoner] Mumia [abu Jamal] activism, tree-sitting.”

Taking his lead from Silverman, Anderson decided he, too, wanted to learn more about what was happening in Palestine. He was in Palestine for six weeks before he was injured.

Anderson’s injury

Anderson’s injury initially wiped out his short-term memory. For many months, he had no recollection of events that had occurred within a year of the incident. However, with daily, arduous rehabilitation exercises he has regained some of the lost memories.

Anderson told The Electronic Intifada with certainty that he does not remember the day he was shot.

“It’s weird to think about things you have no memory of; I’m used to going through life with memories,” he said.

But glimpses of his time in Palestine have surfaced. Anderson remembers the iconic Stars and Bucks Cafe in downtown Ramallah, Silverman’s relatives in Israel and the first day he arrived in the West Bank.

“Israel tries to make [the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip] unbearable and they’ve done that quite well,” says Tristan.

Silverman and Anderson were based in Susya in the south Hebron hills in the occupied West Bank, but would travel to Nilin every weekend to attend the demonstrations there.

Nilin is a small city near Ramallah that borders the green line, the internationally-recognized armistice line between Israel and the occupied West Bank. In 1995, after the signing of theOslo II Interim Agreement, Nilin was included in Area C, making it part of the nearly 60 percent of the West Bank which is under full civil and military control of the Israeli army. When one-third of its land was slated to be confiscated with the construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank in 2008, the village began weekly protests.

Newly discovered video footage shows the Israeli army in Nilin village the day US activist Tristan Anderson was shot. (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills )

“I watched him fall”

Alone, Silverman spoke directly with The Electronic Intifada as she sat at her kitchen table in Oakland, cutting vegetables for a pot of soup. Anderson and their friend Ayr were in another room. Her hair is still long but now is a mix of natural golden and dark brown, and a few strands of grey.

Silverman recalled, “The demonstration was winding down at the end of the day — most of the people had left — but some were still walking around. But Tristan and I walked away from the crowd to get some air from the lingering tear gas.”

This was Silverman’s fifth and Anderson’s sixth demonstration in Nilin, but she recalled still feeling like an outsider there. “People didn’t really know us,” she explained.

They recognized a fellow international activist standing with three Palestinians in the shade and joined them.

Silverman stopped chopping to walk me through the next few moments. “Tristan had wandered off with his camera. I was looking at him. And out of nowhere, they opened fire on us. The first shot they fired, they got Tristan.

“I watched him get shot, watched him fall.”

Silverman left the kitchen for a moment and returned with two empty tear gas canisters. One is about a half-a-foot-long cylinder, metallic and hollow. The other is a black, dense sphere and felt like a small bowling ball in my hand. Anderson was shot with the latter, a new high-velocity tear gas projectile that had become known as the “bad gas.”

According to Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, this particular kind of tear gas was introduced to the West Bank in the midst of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09.

The canister that hit Anderson is called “extended range tear gas” and is made by the United States-based company Combined Systems, Inc, which makes “non-lethal” and “less-lethal” weapons. The company’s website recommends using the type of tear gas that hit Anderson to break barriers.

What makes this weapon particularly dangerous is that it has an internal mechanism that propels it forward, significantly increasing its impact. “It’s like firing a small missile,” Michaeli explained.

One month after Tristan was shot, the very same device would kill Bassem Abu Rahmeduring a demonstration in the nearby village Bilin.

According to eyewitness testimony collected by B’Tselem, the canister was shot directly at Anderson from a hilltop around 60 meters away. The tear gas projectile has a range of 250 meters.

Michaeli told The Electronic Intifada that the investigation conducted by Israeli police in the West Bank revealed that there were three groups of border police deployed throughout Nilin on 13 March, the day Anderson was shot. The investigation confirmed eyewitness statements given to B’Tselem — that there was indeed a group stationed on a hill approximately 60 meters away from where Anderson was standing.

However, that team of border police was never investigated.

“It was a careless investigation. It cannot be described as thorough, professional or complete,” said Schaeffer, in a statement mailed to The Electronic Intifada.

“Unfortunately the authorities’ treatment of Tristan’s case is not the exception — in my office alone we have seen literally hundreds of cases of Palestinians injured by the security forces whose investigations have also been negligent and have therefore failed to hold anyone accountable,” Schaeffer added.

According to statistics gathered by Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq, 57 Palestinians have been killed at demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the second intifada began in September 2000.

In June 2009, Akil Srour, 36, who was with Anderson at the time he was shot, was killed in Nilin when soldiers shot live-ammunition into the crowd. Srour was the fifth Palestinian to be killed in Nilin during an 18-month period.

Anderson’s recovery

For the three months after his injury, Silverman slept in the same room as Anderson as he moved from the intensive care unit to rehabilitation in a Tel Aviv hospital. Shortly after he was shot, Anderson’s parents arrived in Tel Aviv to be with their son.

Throughout the next 15 months, Anderson’s health was precarious and fluctuated wildly. The various viruses, diseases and infections Anderson picked up rolled off Silverman’s tongue like a grocery list during our interview.

“The doctors would tell me that he’s in a ‘dynamic’ state — meaning at any point he could die,” Silverman said bluntly.

She explained that initially Anderson was all but comatose. Doctors told her that they eventually hoped “for some kind of meaningful communication,” which Silverman translated to mean that he would be able to answer yes or no questions.

As Anderson gained lucidity while in the Tel Aviv hospital, the extent of the injury to his brain emerged. Typical of frontal lobe injuries, he had initially lost his short-term memory, and had a hard time learning new things. “He had to relearn how to swallow, he had developed dysphasia [impairment of the ability to communicate]. We worked for hours every day. But now he can eat anything he wants,” Silverman said.

To this day, his impulse control is compromised. Silverman said that Anderson is easily distracted by shiny cars or big advertisements, and cannot be trusted around streets.

He also does not believe that he is blind in his right eye.

“It’s very difficult to interact with someone who doesn’t respond to reason,” Silverman added.

With some caution, she said, “Luckily for us, Tristan is still continuing to improve.”

While he has recovered well beyond the hope of the initial prognosis, he requires constant assistance. These days, Anderson stays with his parents in Grass Valley, a small town in northern California, and comes down to Oakland to be with Silverman and other friends on the weekends.

“Akil was killed, Bassem is dead. The Tristan that I knew — who was my partner — who we all knew — he doesn’t exist anymore.”

Silverman added, “They [Palestinians] won’t get a big trial. That is why we have a responsibility to go through with this.”

With the new evidence, the State Attorney’s office will now decide whether to re-open the investigation, thereby opening the possibility for Anderson and his family to pursue criminal charges against the Israeli military.

Charlotte Silver is a journalist based in the West Bank. She can be reached at charlottesilver A T gmail D O T com.

 

 

 

Gaza: Rebuilding from rubble

by Ruqaya Izzidien

29 November 2011 | Al Akhbar English

Despite Israel’s blockade on building materials entering the Gaza Strip, local entrepreneurs have come up with a way to turn destruction into reconstruction by recycling rubble into construction material.

He who builds his house here puts his sweat and blood into it, laying stone after stone. When it becomes rubble, it is devastating and personal for him... (Photo: Ruqaya Izzidien)
He who builds his house here puts his sweat and blood into it, laying stone after stone. When it becomes rubble, it is devastating and personal for him... (Photo: Ruqaya Izzidien) - Click here for more images

The bedroom of Nasser Abu Said features two-meter holes punched by Israeli rockets and his front door is splattered with deep gashes from the nail-bomb which clawed his garden apart and killed his wife. The staircase is half-collapsed, there is no roof and involuntary windows have cropped up all over the house, each one marking the entry of one of the nine bombs that hit his home, meters away from the eastern border with Israel in the Jahr el Deek neighborhood. This is what a shelled house looks like in Gaza.

The Gaza Strip experiences frequent airstrikes which have targeted every form of infrastructure over the last few months, leaving destroyed farmland, factories and houses in their wake.

Israel forbids Palestinians in Gaza from importing building materials, obstructing their ongoing attempts to repair damage caused during the 2008-2009 war. Add to this continuing destruction caused by regular, if unpredictable, bombings that rain down on Gaza and it becomes seemingly impossible for Palestinians to reconstruct buildings destroyed by Israel since the siege came into effect in 2007.

However, a stroll through central Gaza City makes it clear that Palestinians living in the coastal enclave have resorted to ingenious and defiant methods in order to keep Gaza’s homes and businesses running. It is known as ‘rubble recycling.’

The area east of Gaza City is littered with stone-crushing factories that are identifiable from the huge clouds of dust that hang over them. These factories buy rubble from bombed out buildings, crush it down into pebbles and refashion them into new bricks, allowing Gaza to be rebuilt, in spite of the ban on construction materials.

Younis Aboul Foud was one of the first entrepreneurs to found a stone-crushing plant, or kassarat in Gaza. He began crushing rubble 25 years ago, “We even used to import stone and crush it into all sorts of bricks, but now importing such materials is banned by Israel. Today, recycling rubble into building blocks is our only option; there is no alternative and no other construction materials are available to us.

Three weeks into November, the Israeli authorities allowed a rare shipment of construction materials into Gaza, but the recipients were hand-picked private organizations or businesses. Although Israel permitted an average of 800 trucks into Gaza over the last three months, this is around 16 percent of the construction material that crossed into Gaza between 2005-2007, before ‘Operation Cast Lead’ and the need to reconstruct the 18,000 homes that were damaged or destroyed in the offensive.

The few building materials that enter Gaza are only permitted for use by recognized international agencies, while regular citizens have no access to the 800 trucks that enter and no opportunity to reconstruct damage caused by repeated bombings. Even civilians who qualify for assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), say they are told that their home is not ‘damaged enough’ or wait months or years for their houses to be rebuilt.

23-year-old Khalil Elzaneen began rebuilding his home in the north of the Gaza Strip one year ago using bricks he bought from the kassarat stone-crushing plants. “There are no stones in the country to construct bricks, so they have to be made out of rubble. The borders were completely closed and until today there aren’t building materials in Gaza. Even the cement had to come in through tunnels.”

Elzaneen and his family could no longer live in their old home, which suffered day-to-day wear and tear, exacerbated by frequent bombings that weaken the structure of many of Gaza’s older buildings. “You can’t stop people from acquiring the materials they need to live, however hard you might try.”

Ban on Construction Materials

Israel maintains that the blockade of the Gaza Strip is necessary for state security and that construction materials are prohibited because militants could use the cement and stones to build hideouts.

Khalil Elzaneen disputes this, “Every restriction they impose on us is to do with ‘terrorists.’ I really don’t think that this is what the construction materials are used for; Israel is simply punishing an entire population. Look around you, you can see that we don’t use the bricks to build hideouts for terrorists; we use them for constructing homes and civilian buildings.”

Kassarat factories have created an exclusive and highly-coveted amount of building materials in Gaza. As with any other market, these fall into the hands of the most affluent amongst the community. Along with factory-owners, businesspeople and NGO-workers, political parties and armed groups are able to raise funds when a building they own is destroyed. As a result, the ban on construction materials – and the blockade in general – affects most the poorest residents of Gaza, who cannot pay the escalated price of up to US$10 per cement block.

From the Ashes

Some see other advantages to rubble recycling that have a deeper message than simply making a living, “Israel doesn’t want us to rebuild, that is why it is important that we do,” explained Aboul Foud. He sees his means of earning a living as an act of defiance against Israel, using their airstrikes to bring new life to bombed bricks. “In spite of their attacks and the blockade, we will keep recycling rubble and making life from nothing, making life from rubble.”

Khalil Elzaneen explained, “Even if I am told not to rebuild, I will still continue to do whatever it takes to survive and that, to me, is a form of resistance.”

But recycling rubble is far from idyllic. Fahd Daghmoush runs a rubble-crushing plant east of Gaza, which employs young men to break down the larger pieces of rubble so that they are digestible for his machinery. His employees work surrounded by powdered rubble and dust. “You can see that it is very dangerous to be crushing these stones,” he explained, “it is going to affect our health in the future and maybe even shorten our lives.”

Daghmoush entered into the business of recycling rubble out of compulsion, “If I could do absolutely any other job, I would; I don’t want a job that damages my health. I used to be a construction worker, but these days there is no work and I’m too old for that anyway. Hopefully by manufacturing bricks from rubble, I am creating jobs for the younger people who struggle
as I do.”

There is also a depressive cycle associated with refashioning building materials from rubble, the bricks are simply in rotation, like a currency. In order to have new bricks for your own house you have to wait for someone’s home to be bombed.

Fahd Daghmoush explained, “He who builds his house here puts his sweat and blood into it, laying stone after stone. When it becomes rubble, it is devastating and personal for him. People here put everything they own into building their homes. But life has to continue and we have to bounce back.”

But using the resources available to you is not optional in Gaza, Younis Aboul Foul explains. “We use all of our resourcefulness against this siege to challenge those responsible. Gaza is resilient – every way which we pick ourselves up is miraculous. Everyone has a right to live, and that’s all we want to do, whatever it takes,” he says.

The majority of recycled rubble is used to create the standard half-meter blocks that overwhelm the Gaza Strip, particularly in the refugee camps that are identifiable by their gray, piled cube signature. But a small amount of granite is reused for decoration and calcium carbonate is powdered down to provide Gaza with talcum powder, make-up and whitewash.

Palestinians in Gaza have defied the ban on construction materials since the siege began; turning what was once a blooming trade into a necessary business required in order to rebuild the territory. It is a bittersweet industry, but in besieged Gaza, nothing can afford to go to waste.

Gaza lives on

16 November 2011 | Al Jazeera English

The Israeli blockade may have taken a heavy toll on Gazans, but this film reveals life and hope among the devastation.

Since 2007, most of the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have suffered gravely from an intensified land, air and sea blockade imposed by Israel.

The blockade, deemed illegal by the United Nations, was implemented after Hamas, a Palestinian faction labelled a terrorist organisation by Tel Aviv, took control over the territory and ousted Fatah officials from power in the battle of Gaza.

After more than two decades of tight sanctions and even though Israel eased the restrictions on non-military goods in 2010, the blockade continues to take a heavy toll on Gaza’s civilian population, with many essential and basic goods banned from being exported or imported. This has led to rampant poverty and a massive unemployment rate in Gaza.

But Gaza once had thriving economy and was a major exporter of key staple foods, including fruits and vegetables, to countries across the world. Israel’s policies since the occupation, however, have forced the vast majority of Gazans to rely on foreign humanitarian aid for survival.

According to the UN, about one-third of Gaza’s arable land and 85 per cent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to the Israeli blockade.

Abu Anwar Jahjouh, who has worked as a corn seller for the past 15 years and lives in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, says it is a daily struggle to scrape out a living: “Back in the 1960s, we used to export oranges. Ships would come from Turkey, Spain, Germany and all of Europe. We used to export oranges, lemons, clementines and grapefruits. But those ships stopped coming to Gaza after 1967. No one comes to Gaza anymore. We can’t export anything. That’s why we started selling corn here on the beach. We sell anything.”

Rebuilding … without materials

The Israeli blockade has also prevented construction materials from entering the Strip, with the exception of some materials intended for internationally-supervised projects.

According to an Oxfam report, in 2008, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended due to lack of access to material needed for production and the inability to export produced items.

Kamal Khalaf, a construction contractor, said Israel’s war on Gaza between 2008 and 2009, in which the UN estimates 60,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, made the blockade much more problematic: “After the siege, the import of construction material into Gaza was banned. We had no cement, no steel, nothing. I stayed for two years with no work. There was nothing to build.”

Even construction material needed to build schools has reportedly been blocked from entering the Strip. With half of Gaza’s population under the age of 18, children are attending overcrowded schools – with many running multiple shifts – which has severe repercussions for the quality of education they receive.

In addition to this, thousands of children remain displaced from their homes – having lost all that is familiar to them, including clothes, toys, school books and a secure environment.

Israel even bans fishermen from going more than three miles from Gaza’s shoreline for “security reasons”. Those who breach the rule regularly run the risk of being shot at by Israeli navy patrols. At least seven fishermen have been killed by the Israeli navy in recent years and many more have been injured or arrested.

An underground lifeline

As a result of the blockade, underground tunnels have been Gaza’s main lifeline to Egypt and the rest of the world.

“We wanted to live, so we had to look for solutions …. We started to bring sacks of concrete into Gaza through these tunnels. It was exhausting to lift those heavy sacks inside these tunnels,” Khalaf says.

As well as being used for the smuggling of goods, the tunnels have also helped reunite families unable to enter Gaza through legal means.

May Wardeh met her husband Mohammad in the West Bank, but had to travel for four days via Jordan to Egypt and then through an underground tunnel to reach Gaza. She says she almost died just to get to him in Gaza, but then they had a big wedding party at the beach and she now lives with her husband in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

“I thought I’d see a worsening situation in a city full of refugee camps. But when I reached Gaza, I saw something completely different from what I had imagined,” Wardeh says, recalling her first day in Gaza.

Sharif Sarhan is a photographer from Gaza who works with several news agencies and international organisations. He is amazed by the Gazans’ strength and determination to live their lives and rebuild their city despite the siege and destruction.

“You can always find life and hope in Gaza,” he says. “Amid this devastation, you can see that people still want to live.”

This episode of Al Jazeera World can be seen from Tuesday, November 15, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600.

Global week of action against Israel’s wall in the West Bank

by Nora Barrows-Friedman

9 November 2011 | The Electronic Intifada

Since the beginning stages of Israel’s implementation and continued construction of its illegal wall in the occupied West Bank nearly ten years ago — and compounded with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling in 2004 that the wall is in violation of several international laws — activists on the ground in Palestine and in numerous countries around the world have engaged in sustained and creative protest.

The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign/Stop the Wall (STW) has organized a global week of action against Israel’s wall and its policies of apartheid and settler-colonialism in Palestine, which begins today and runs through 16 November.

Activist groups, boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) committees, student coalitions and grassroots organizations from 18 countries on five continents have signed on to officially participate in the global week of action.

In Palestine, STW has organized three separate demonstrations in addition to the regular, weekly Friday actions against the wall in different villages.

From their website:

13 November: Demonstration in the southern West Bank village of Tarqumiya — The demonstration takes place to commemorate the massacre of the people of al Sammou, south of Hebron. Exactly 45 years ago, on November 13 1966 Israeli forces raided this village, destroyed 125 houses, the village clinic and school as well as 15 houses in a neighboring village. 18 people were killed and 54 wounded.

15 November: Demonstration in Qalandiya — Qalandiya has become the flashpoint of confrontation, a symbol of the Palestinian determination not to accept the isolation of Jerusalem and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian capital.

20 November: Demonstration in northern West Bank city of Tulkarem — Tulkarem, its refugee camps and surrounding villages are heavily impacted by the Wall and its checkpoints. People from the northern parts of the northern part of the West Bank will gather to demonstrate their determination to continue resistance against the Apartheid Wall and the Israeli project of enclosing them in enclaves and Bantustans.

Global solidarity events

A sampling of international events — culled from the official list on the STW website — include:

– Belgium, 10 November: In Brussels, Intal [a Belgian global solidarity group] will organize a conference and debate in support of the Palestinian call for a comprehensive and mandatory military embargo on Israel by highlighting the fact that Belgium sells weapons to Israel. This conference will have as a goal to inform our members and their friends about the weapons business between Belgium and Israel

– Netherlands: Activities are planned in Utrecht and Amsterdam … Signatures will be collected for a so-called citizens initiative asking for a debate in parliament on the ICJ ruling. From the needed 40,000 signatures the last 3,000 will be collected that week plus the following weeks of the year

– Spain/Basque country, 10 November: A conference in Bilbao about Israel’s wall

– England, 12 November: Wall around the Monument in Newcastle City Centre. A human wall where each person represents a fact about the apartheid wall. Distribution of fact sheets on the wall, Israeli apartheid, human rights abuses, and BDS nearby. BDS pledge cards will be distributed to the public.

– Argentina, 16 November: The FEARAB youth group in Buenos Aires have launched a call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel in Argentina, and the signatures of the persons who support the initiative will be announced publicly as the week of global action closes

– Canada, 10 November: An evening with writer and photo journalist Jon Elmer, coordinated by Students Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto

– United States: Huge awareness-raising campaign tool kits for various action ideas by US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

– South Korea, 12 November: A performance to educate the public on the wall and its effects on Palestinians

Radio Intifada

Several organizations throughout Latin America, including Argentina and Mexico, are participating in the week of action. Radio Intifada, a Spanish-language radio project of STW, has also produced three 30-minute segments that are available for free download and syndication on local independent radio stations interested in broadcasting news and analysis on Israeli policies and the grassroots actions to challenge them.

Prisoner release: Palestinian narratives

Fadi Kawasmi

9 November 2011 | PASSIA

Below is an abridged transcript of a talk given at PASSIA (Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs ) Round table on ‘Prisoner Release – Palestinian Narratives’ on 31 October 2011 by Fadi Kawasmi, a lawyer who specializes in working with Palestinian prisoners.

“In order to understand the prisoners issue we have to talk about the problem from the beginning.  Why are prisoners very important to Palestinian people?  They are seen as freedom fighters, people that have sacrificed themselves for the sake of liberty.  But I think there is also another reason – it is the suffering that they go through from the moment that they are arrested and even after they are released.

 “It is estimated that almost 750,000 Palestinians were arrested by Israel from 1967 to today.  Now, after the prisoner release, there are 9 women in jail, almost 300 children in jail and the whole number of prisoners is estimated be around 5000 – 500 of whom are sentenced to life.  More than 100 prisoners have already spent 20 years or more in prison.  202 prisoners have died in detention.

“When we talk about suffering we have to talk about it from the beginning.  How do the arrests take place?  Usually – for ‘security reasons’ – they take place at night.  Large forces burst into homes and arrest someone.  And someone might think – how dangerous might this be?  But actually it’s very dangerous.  The police, the army – when they enter houses they are so alert because they think that the people they are going to arrest are dangerous and they might harm them.

“For example, a 16 year old kid who – influenced by the media – thought that he could kidnap a settler and exchange him for his relatives who are imprisoned by Israel.  Apparently he didn’t have the means, so his attempt didn’t succeed.  The Israelis knew about him and they went to his house at 3am in order to arrest him.  He was not there but his parents were and after entering into his house the Israelis killed his mother by mistake, his father was left paralysed and they demolished part of the house.  On the second day he turned himself in.  He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

‘Three or four months ago, the army was about to arrest someone, who they said was not that dangerous, but they entered the wrong house and there was a 65 year old man sleeping in his bed and he was killed in his bed.  The Israeli version of the story is that he made a ‘suspicious move’ and he was killed.

 “After the arrest, detainees are usually taken to interrogation facilities.  There are four of them in Israel– the most famous is nearby [in Jerusalem]. It is called the Russian Compound, or as we say in Arabic – ‘Al-Moscovia’.  Detainees are interrogated there by the Israeli intelligence.  Israeli military law allows them to keep detainees for 180 days for the purpose of interrogation.  During this period, several kinds of techniques are used to oblige the detainee to confess – sometimes to confess to something that they didn’t do – torture is one of the means.  Although in 1999, the Israeli high court of justice banned physical torture, several methods of torture are still used by the Israeli intelligence.

“For example, detainees are prevented from sleeping; interrogation sessions sometimes take 20 hours; people are exposed to extreme temperatures.  Sometimes they just play loud music.  They keep detainees seated and handcuffed for hours and hours. They isolate them and they prevent lawyers from seeing them.  Israeli military law allows the Israeli intelligence to prevent the detainee from seeing his lawyer for 30 days and this can be extended by court order.  Another method of abuse is arresting a member of the family; Israeli military law allows the army to arrest someone for 8 days without a court order.  So sometimes they just arrest them and take them to the interrogation facility in order to exert pressure on their beloved ones in order to make them confess.

“After interrogation, most detainees are usually then put on trial.  There is a difference between people from Jerusalem and people from the West Bank and Gaza.  People from theWest Bankare put on trial in military court.  Jerusalemites on the other hand are put on trial in Israeli civil courts, while people from Gaza are put on trial in Israeli civil courts in Be’er Sheva.  One might think that Jerusalemites are in a better situation as they put on  trial in civil courts and they have more rights – but the situation is actually different because Israeli civil courts, when it comes to security offences, are known to be strict.  So usually when someone is arrested and two people that committed the same crime, and one is put on trial in an Israeli military court and the other in civil court, the one who is put on trial in civil court will definitely get a higher sentence.

“What happens in trials – especially in military courts – is really very bad.  There is no right to a fair trial.  Court sessions take place in Hebrew and usually prisoners don’t speak Hebrew.  The court provides translation but this is not usually professional translation.  Most lawyers are Palestinians and they don’t speak Hebrew and the knowledge they have in Israeli military is often really poor.  This is a very big problem for many years and I don’t think it is going to change.

“The most important thing for a prisoner when he is put on trial is not the trial itself, whether he will be found guilty or not, or what sentence will be put on him, it is a completely different thing.  It is when the prisoner is transferred from his place of detention to the court and back again.  I had so many case where prisoners told me – “please, I am ready to spend two more years in prison but please spare me this.  I don’t want this [transfer].  Do everything you can to end this, I can’t take this anymore.”  Why?  It’s because a simple journey – for example from Ktzi’ot prison, Negev to Ofer Prison [near Ramallah] which should take 3 hours, takes 5 or 6 days because of the way the Israeli prison authorities work.  Detainees sometimes stay in buses for 18 hours, travelling in roads without food, water or even access to bathrooms.  Anyone who needs to go to the bathroom will be given a bottle. So there is no right to a fair trial, especially in Israeli military court.”