Randa and Khader Adnan's daughter Ma'ali, age four
As Khader Adnan entered his 59th day on hunger strike, his wife Randa appealed for the international community to end his isolation and save his life.
“My husband is dying inside an Israeli jail. The world should make sure I am able to see him,” she said. “And it should pressure the Israeli government to release him before it’s too late.”
Khader, a 33-year-old baker, graduate Birzeit University economics student, and Islamic Jihad Movement activist, was detained in a 3:30 am raid on his home in Arraba, Jenin on December 17. Israel’s forces have arrested him eight times, and he has spent over six years in its prisons, mostly under administrative detention orders. He has been unable to complete his studies because of these repeated imprisonments.
He began a hunger strike the same day to protest Israel’s administrative detention policy and the brutality of his captors, and to demand his freedom. Israeli interrogators responded by continuing the beatings that began during his arrest, tying him into painful positions for hours, ripping hair from his beard, smearing dirt onto his face, throwing him into a “punishment cell” with bright lights and loud noises intended to prevent sleep, and denying him treatment for his gastric illness, the disc problems in his back, and the injuries their fellow soldiers had inflicted on him. After they graphically insulted members of his family, including his two young daughters and elderly mother – a form of psychological torture used by Israeli troops to extract information from Palestinian suspects – he launched a speech strike, refusing to talk with them as well.
On January 8, an Israeli military court sentenced Khader to administrative detention until May 8. Israel holds 310 Palestinians under this extrajudicial measure, which allows its military to detain prisoners indefinitely without presenting accusations or evidence against them. Like other Palestinian prisoners, administrative detainees have minimal access to their families, whom Israel denies basic information about their relatives’ cases and conditions.
“I didn’t know what had happened to him until December 30, when the court held his first hearing,” Randa said. “My security application was rejected, so the prisons administration wouldn’t allow me to see him until a human rights organization coordinated our family’s first visit to him in the hospital last Tuesday. They refused to allow us to stay with him for more than 15 minutes.”
By then, she said, her husband could barely move to greet her. His shrunken, ulcerated body seemed like a shell, with its life already gone. She was shocked, and her daughters Ma’ali (four years old) and Bissan (one and a half) frightened, by the sight of his long nails and his beard and hair, which were overgrown, disheveled, and falling out in clumps. He told her that his captors had prevented him from bathing, grooming, or changing his clothes since his arrest, 52 days earlier.
“Israel has treated my husband without any humanity or compassion for his deteriorating health,” Randa said. “It’s obviously very bad, yet they’re not only preventing him from receiving any treatment, but also attacking his basic dignity as a human being.”
A letter from Khader’s cell in the Ramleh prison hospital Saturday seemed resigned to his likely fate. “The only thing I can do is offer my soul to God as I believe righteousness and justice will eventually triumph over tyranny and oppression,” he wrote. “I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on.” On Monday, a military court rejected his appeal and approved his administrative detention.
Yet Randa seemed to hold onto a glimmer of hope, for her husband’s life and for the world. “Israel denied Khader any fairness or decency,” she said. “But maybe the rest of humanity will show more mercy.”
Joe Catron is an international solidarity activist and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) organizer in Gaza, Palestine. He blogs and tweets.
A number of Gazans have joined Khader Adnan’s hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions that Palestinian political prisoners face in Israeli jails. Israel often holds Palestinians in administrative detention without charges, depriving detainees of their right to due process.
Adnan has been on hunger strike for 55 days and is currently hospitalized in Israel. While Adnan and his lawyers is contesting his administrative detention, the Israeli judge who heard the case yesterday declined to issue an immediate decision. Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said that the delay “may prove fatal.”
Here, Gazans fast at a protest tent in support of Adnan. Some lie in beds, with shackles, to simulate Adnan’s current condition.
7 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
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On Monday and Tuesday Palestinians rallied for Khader Adnan and all political prisoners before regional offices of the Red Cross, demanding that the organization takes a solid stand for the rights of more than 5000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons.
The mood was at once festive and somber Monday, February 6th, when a determined group of family, friends, and solidarity activists rallied in front of the Al Khalil (Hebron) office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanding that the organization take a stand for the rights of more than 5000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons, many without ever having been formally charged or offered legal defense. Organized by the Palestinian Prisoner Society, Monday’s demonstration comes two weeks after Israeli soldiers stormed the Al Quds (Jerusalem) ICRC office to arrest two Hamas government officials taking shelter there and three weeks after another three Palestinian elected officials were arrested.
For the last three months, the Palestinian Prisoner Society has organized a weekly protest to highlight the miserable plight of specific detainees—this week’s political prisoners are Khader Adnan and Razeq Al- Rjoob.
Khader Adnan is protesting his administrative detention in a hunger strike that has extended 52 days, with his health debilitating rapidly. Razeq Al- Rjoob is another political prisoner who has been kept in solitary confinement over eight months.
These men’s stories are not all that bring out protesters, many of whom have lost fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and friends as well as mothers, daughters, or sisters to Israeli prisons. Badran Jaber had his son, Rasan Badran Jaber, taken from him three months ago when soldiers entered the house, locked him and his wife in one room, and then “demolished all their furniture” and arrested their son.
Palestinians demand a firmer stance for its prisoners - Click here for more images
Like the men recognized this week, Jaber said his son was detained because he is active in the prisoner rights movement, agitating from inside during an eight year sentence and continuing after his release. Jaber was taken into custody once again without charge or legal recourse. Serving more than one multi-year prison sentence or period of detention without charge is common for Palestinian young men of Hebron, and the West Bank generally, especially for those engaged in civil resistance.
Incredibly in such a public conflict, Jaber maintains that most people internationally “do not know about the administrative detentions” and stated that the Red Cross needs “to [spread] knowledge of what is happening to the Palestinian people.”
With a mandate from the Geneva Conventions (1949) and additional Protocols I & II (1977), the ICRC is charged with holding military, occupying, and national forces to international humanitarian and human rights standards, which include prohibitions of torture, abuse, collective punishment, and forced relocation, and require that detainees be granted (among other rights) adequate food, water, medical care, legal representation, and visitations by family and aid workers.
Barbara Lecq, head of the ICRC’s Sub-delegation for the Southern West Bank was present for the protest and spoke to her organization’s position. Questioned about the protests, she expressed doubts about the feasibility of the crowd’s expectations, but also stated that review of “material conditions” in the lives of prisoners and detainees, especially access to food, water, outside time, and social interaction, is in order. While detentions, she added, are permitted under the Geneva conventions and are “nothing new” to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), they “may turn out not to be nice or moral.”
According to Amjad Najjar, media spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Society and head of the Hebron branch, the most recent wave of prisoner civil resistance was inspired in part by similar resistance movements to British authority in Ireland. “We all watched the Bobby Sands documentary,” he said.
At its height the strike has included as many as 2000 prisoners from all political parties and has brought systemic abuse of Palestinian inmates into limelight of international media.
Organized resistance among Palestinian resisters is no new phenomenon. Previous generations of prisoners have fought and won the ability to self-organize and educate, the very same rights taken away by the Netanyahu government.
The PPS itself is the continuation of organizing that took place inside prison, says Najjar, when prisoners recognized the need for prisoners to self-represent as much as possible to outside media. Along with advocacy for prisoner rights, they facilitate visitations and provide legal, educational, and other services for inmates and their families.
While Najjar said, “Our problem is not with the people of the ICRC…we think they are in solidarity,” the PPS campaign to end prisoner abuse is expected to escalate in coming months leading up to Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on April 17th.
Individuals in Hebron carry the pictures of loved ones, stolen from their families by Israeli administrative detention.
Until the ICRC denounces the treatment of prisoners and formally recognizes their status as prisoners of war, the Palestinian Prisoners Society will continue to hold weekly demonstrations.
This coming week a demonstration will take place near the town of Ad Dhahiriya at the Meitar Checkpoint, a main route for Palestinians to visit incarcerated family members. Soldiers have begun conducting frequent strip searches, including of women, in dual harassment of would-be visitors by violating their modesty and cultural and religious prohibitions.
Ramallah:
On Monday the father of Khader Adnan, Musa Adnan, announced that he too would join his 33 year old son in solidarity by partaking in the hunger strike, meeting with Salaam Fayyad in Ramallah.
Amnesty International also commented on Israel’s lack of compliance to international law, denouncing the potential fatal results of Israel’s lack of concern for prisoner rights. In a statement by Amnesty International’s Anne Harrison, Deputy Director of North Africa and the Middle East, she stated:
The Israeli authorities must release Khader Adnan and other Palestinians held in administrative detention unless they are promptly charged with internationally recognizable criminal offences and tried in accordance with international fair trial standards.
Supporters in Ramallah gather at the Red Cross Office in Ramallah in solidarity with Khader Adnan and political prisoners | Photos by Fadi Arouri
According to a statement released by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainee Affairs, the Ofer prisoner administration has collectively punished 8 prisoners who have joined Khader Adnan’s hunger strike, transferring them to solitary confinement. The prisoners names are Raed al-Sayegh, Muhtaseb al-Assa, Ayman al-Za’qeq, Hassan lafi, Mohammad Shaheen, Ahmad al-Iweiwi, Na’il and Firas al-Barghouthi.
Qadura Fares, the president of the Palestinian Society Prisoner’s Club, announced on Monday that demonstrations and acts of solidarity would continue. Prisoner advocates requested a statement from Ofer military court on Monday regarding the extension of Adnan’s administrative detention, only to receive a confirmation from Israel that Adnan still faces at least 4 months of imprisonment, enacted since the order was arbitrarily placed on January 8th.
Ramallah joins the march for prisoner rights - Click for more images
On Monday night supporters gathered in Ramallah’s clock square in light of Adnan’s diminishing health, violated rights, and Israel’s lack of regard or concern. According to local organizer Sabreen Al Dwak, she urged the community on Monday night to say “No to killing our people” in a meeting in Clock Square that evening. The action continued into today as hundreds of Palestinians and supporters gathered in front of the International Red Cross Office in Ramallah and in Clock Square, demanding a firmer stance against Israel’s manipulative and abusive measures of against Palestinian political prisoners.
22 year old Sabreen Al Dwak, local organizer, collapsed during today's demonstration in Clock Square, Ramallah. She is resuming her hunger strike. | Photo via raya.fm
Al Dwak collapsed during the demonstration as she endured her fourth day on hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners. Doctors gave her salt, which is commonly employed to sustain such hunger strikes.
She refused further medical care in order continue her hunger strike. Solidarity activists will continue to camp in Clock Square, on hunger strike, while according to WAFA News, the campers will remain under medical surveillance.
According to the prisoner support and human rights organization Addameer (‘Conscience’), since 1967 Israeli authorities have arrested 2 in 5 Palestinian men and 1 in 5 Palestinians in generally (700,000), including 10,000 women and many thousands of children. Currently there are more than 200.
These numbers do not include those incarcerated by proxy, through the Palestinian Authority, which has on many occasions been obligated to cooperate with Israeli forces. The steadily worsening conditions for 4500-6000 Palestinian in Israeli prisons at any given time received a severe shock in June 2011, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised collective punishment—including punitive isolation and curtailed access to education, television, books, medical care, family visits, and more—while the single Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit remained in Hamas custody.
Later that year, in September 2011, Palestinian prisoners from multiple factions and prisons announced a “Campaign of Disobedience,” involving a hunger strike, refusal to prison uniforms, and noncompliance with role calls. Even though Shalit was released in October, conditions have not improved and in many cases have worsened, according to an Amnesty International report. Since 1948, over 200 Palestinians have died in prison, from inadequate medical care and food, severe beatings and torture, and other abuse.
For more updates or to take action, people can monitor the ISM website (callouts for action will be posted), respond to Adameer’s call to action, or write an email to the ICRC Jerusalem Office (JER_jerusalem@icrc.org) and demand they take a stand for prisoner rights.
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
Khader Adnan, an imprisoned Palestinian activist held under administrative detention, has engaged in an open-ended hunger strike since December 17, 2012. Now at fifty days into his hunger strike, he is facing severe health consequences and has been moved to a hospital, continuing to refuse food in protest of torture, isolation, and the use of arbitrary detention against Palestinians.
Khader Adnan needs international support and solidarity to make it clear to the Israeli occupation that the eyes of the world are on his case and that of his nearly 5,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners. He is currently in a hospital bed and being force-fed liquids over his objection.
Addameer, the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation on their page dedicated to his case. Adnan, a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad party, is currently held under administrative detention, which is arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months. Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons – mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme. 280 fellow Palestinians are also held without charge or trial under Israel’s administrative detention mechanism.
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded.
A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother. The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment despite Israeli prison officials’ knowledge of his health conditions, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stress position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
This is not his first hunger strike – in 2005 he protested his isolation in Kfar Yuna with a 12-day hunger strike. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike has sparked solidarity tents in Gaza and protests in Ramallah. Ten of his fellow prisoners in Ofer prison have joined him in his hunger strike, six fellow Islamic Jihad activists and four imprisoned members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; dozens of prisoners have refused food or participated in civil disobedience inside the prisons in support of Adnan. Students in Gaza are organizing a solidarity hunger strike outside the Red Cross building.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners participated in a 23-day hunger strike in October 2011, demanding an end to isolation, abuse, denial of family visits, and the long-term isolation of Palestinian leaders such as Ahmad Sa’adat; Israeli promises to end isolation, aimed to secure the end of the strike, proved to be false.
TAKE ACTION!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges the Palestine solidarity movement in North America and around the world to publicize the case of Khader Adnan and raise up the voices of Palestinian political prisoners. Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for freedom is central to the struggle for a free Palestine.
Organize a picket or protest outside the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that the eyes of the world are on the situation of Khader Adnan and demand an end to the use of isolation, torture solitary confinement, and administrative detention against Palestinian political prisoners. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at samidoun@samidoun.ca.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to urge them to act swiftly to protect Khader Adnan and all Palestinian political prisoners. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
Share this alert on Twitter and use the #FreeKhaderAdnan and #KhaderAdnan hashtags.
Khader Adnan, an imprisoned Palestinian activist and a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad party, has been on an ongoing hunger strike since December 17. He is facing severe health consequences for his 43-day hunger strike and needs international support and solidarity to publicize his case and that of his nearly 5,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation. He was transferred today to a hospital and is continuing to refuse food, awaiting the arrival of two Palestinian doctors. He is currently in a wheelchair because he cannot walk, due to weakness from his hunger strike.
Addameer details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation. He is currently held under administrative detention (arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months.) Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, and faces another military court hearing on January 30. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons – mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme.
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded. A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother.
The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stressful position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
Ahmad Sa’adat and hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners participated in a 23-day hunger strike in October 2011, demanding an end to isolation, abuse, and denial of family visits; Israeli promises to end isolation, aimed to secure the end of the strike, proved to be false, as Sa’adat has now spent nearly three full years inside an isolation cell.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat calls for solidarity with Khader Adnan and all of the steadfast prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation who daily confront with their bodies and their lives the ongoing attacks of the occupation army and prison guards.
Picket, protest or call the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan, Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that you are watching the situation of Khader Adnan and that Israel is responsible for his health and life, and demand an end to the use of isolation, solitary confinement, and administrative detention. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at campaign@freeahmadsaadat.org.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the prisoners’ demands are implemented. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
