23rd October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
A march in solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat and all the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, Gaza City, 22 October 2013.
23rd October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gal·la López | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
It’s 9:00 am, and today the Red Cross in Gaza City is more crowded than usual. Women, men, children and the elderly await the arrival of the resistance. In a moment, they will receive some members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement.
When the resistance members arrive, a noise of great joy spreads throughout the crowd. They distribute flowers among the mothers, wives and relatives to honor the struggle they wage, Monday after Monday, in the Red Cross.
Today more than 5,000 Palestinians are detained by Israel.
It’s important to mention that while Palestinians differ on many questions, the armed resistance, as well as the detainees, are strong points of unity.
19th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Dozens of Palestinian children marched in Gaza Friday evening before holding a candlelight vigil outside the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
The event was the first in a global week of action to free Ahmad Sa’adat and other Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Sa’adat, an elected PLC member and general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was captured by Israeli forces on 3 March 2006.
During his trial by an Israeli military court, Sa’adat refused to recognize its authority, cooperate with it or answer its questions. On 25 December 2008, it sentenced him to 30 years in prison for leading an organization banned by the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli prison service held Sa’adat in isolation for over three years, from March 2009 – May 2012, releasing him into its general population only to end a a mass hunger strike of more than 2,500 Palestinian detainees from 17 April – 14 May 2012.
An earlier mass hunger strike against isolation, led by Sa’adat from 25 September – 18 October 2011, ended with the prisoner swap that freed 1,047 Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for an Israeli prisoner of war.
Protests and other events demanding his release, coordinated worldwide by the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, will continue through 26 October.
18th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Ibrahim Baroud joined his mother, Ghalia Baroud, or Um Ibrahim, at Gaza’s weekly sit-in for Palestinian prisoners, which she co-founded, on Monday morning.
Baroud, a former Palestinian detainee, was captured by Israeli forces on 9 April 1986, at the age of 23. He was held for 27 years, including seven in solitary confinement.
Um Ibrahim launched the vigil in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) courtyard in 1995 with Handoumeh Wishah, or Um Jaber, the mother of four detainees, including Jaber Wishah, who was held for over 14 years.
Wishah, a physics lecturer and a political and military leader in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was captured by Israeli forces on 5 June 1985. They released him on 9 September 1999, along with 198 other detainees, in partial implementation of the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization five days earlier.
“I had this idea to hold a vigil with photographs of the prisoners, to make sure they were not forgotten,” Um Jaber told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in 2008.
“It was just the two of us standing outside the ICRC the first time – but we knew the next week there would be three or four of us, and then, slowly, more mothers would come.”
Um Ibrahim celebrated her son’s freedom on 8 April 2013 after his completion of an Israeli military court’s sentence for membership in Palestinian Islamic Jihad and participation in its armed resistance.
The timing of his release, on a Monday morning, was convenient, as Baroud made his first stop in the Gaza Strip, before his home in the Jabalia refugee camp, at the ICRC.
Previously, Israeli forces barred Umb Ibrahim from visiting her son for 16 years, first due to unspecified “security reasons,” then as part of a complete ban on family visits from the Gaza Strip imposed on 6 June 2007.
The ADDAMEER Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said that “the absolute prohibition on family visits is designed to demoralize and punish prisoners’ families, and by extension the general population in Gaza, for their political choices in 2006 and for the June 2006 capture of Gilad Shalit, making the policy a clear case of collective punishment, a war crime for which Israel should be held responsible.”
In 2007, prior to the ban, Um Ibrahim received approval for one visit, but turned back after Israeli forces demanded she submit to a strip search.
“I finally got permission to visit him in jail in Israel last year, and the ICRC escorted me to Erez Crossing,” she told the PCHR. “But the Israelis ordered me to strip down to my underwear, and I refused. So they sent me back to Gaza.”
“They [the Israelis] had seen everything, even my bones,” she added. “They claimed it was for security – but I am entitled to protect my dignity and my rights.”
The Israel measures sparked a month of protests by Palestinian detainees in April 2010 and a mass hunger strike in April and May 2012, which finally ended the five-year ban on Gaza Strip visits.
“All Palestinians are dangerous for them [Israelis],” Um Ibrahim told Le Monde before her son’s release, which she called “a national wedding and a popular happiness.”
At the beginning of September, Israeli forces held 5,007 Palestinian political prisoners, according to ADDAMEER. 400 were from the Gaza Strip.
Many of them remain unable to receive visits from their families because of “security” claims, an ongoing ban on visits by Gaza Strip children ten and older, and other Israeli policies.
Hundreds of their relatives and supporters continue to gather in the ICRC every Monday morning, week after week, eighteen years later.
18th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
It’s Eid al-Adha, the festival commemorating Ibrahim, or Abraham as the Christian part of the world knows him, and his willingness to sacrifice his son. He never had to do it, and none of the three monotheistic religions are associated with human sacrifice, since his son was replaced by a ram. And it’s meat that is central to dining tables during this commemoration.
According to custom, the more affluent share their abundance after slaughtering their best animals. One third is given to the poor, one third to relatives, friends and neighbors, and the remaining third remains on dishes at home. Most of the wealthy no longer keep livestock, but rather buy food and then distribute it. It’s not uncommon to see people knocking on doors with bags in their hands.
This religious festival is not primarily about meat. But like the Christian part of the world celebrates Christmas, gifts and sweets are obvious feature. And clothes. Wherever you go in the streets you see people in their finest, and preferably new, clothes. Children are shorn and dressed up, and move more cautiously than usual so as not to dirty themselves. When darkness falls, people fill the streets to socialize and enjoy. There is an exhilaration that, to an observer, not even the intensified overflights of F-16s seems to obstruct.
But something casts a shadow over the celebrations. The situation is getting worse in this coastal strip. Now that Egypt has made common cause with Israel, it is precariously difficult for people and goods to cross the border. The destruction of smuggling tunnels, the lifeline for people and businesses, has deepened the crisis. In addition, the media shadow is also falling over Gaza, as its siege has been all but hidden by the crisis in Syria. Last year, charities distributed 400,000 kilograms of livestock and winter clothing for 3,000 children. This year, there was significantly less. And rising unemployment, as a result of the intensifying blockade and warfare by the occupation forces against farmers and fishermen, has put its mark on the celebration of Eid.
A poor society is rarely equal. Although some can manage well, while others seem to do so, the proportion of destitute people constantly increases. For them, Eid is another moment of exclusion from society, when they do not have enough food on the table to invite family and friends over, when they do not have new clothes to show off, when the consequences of the occupation, its heavy shade, prevent them from rejoicing with the diminishing ranks of those who can.
Eid al-Adha occurs the day after pilgrims complete the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. For many of the people of Gaza, the pilgrimage was an impossibility, and had it been possible, they would have returned to empty plates. The intensifying overflights to mark the occupying power’s presence are hardly necessary. The consequences of its policies are increasingly clear, even without this constant reminder.
