24 April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On the 17th of April, Palestinian political prisoners launched a mass hunger strike against the Israeli Prison Service’s (IPS) dismissal of the Fourth Geneva Convention and basic international law. The call for action comes on Palestinian Prisoners Day after a wave of high-profile hunger strikes evoked a global reaction.
Palestinian Support and Human Rights Association Addameer originally estimated that some 1,200 Palestinian prisoners would participate, along with approximately 2,300 others refusing meals in preparation for a wider campaign. Today, Israeli lawyers say the campaign has reached 3,000 participants.
The hunger striking prisoners’ demands include: an end to the IPS’s abusive use of isolation for “security” reasons, currently affecting 19 prisoners, some of whom have spent 10 years in isolation; an end to the detainment of Palestinians without charge or trial in administrative detention, under which 322 Palestinians are currently detained; a repeal of a series of punitive measures taken against Palestinian prisoners following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, including the denial of family visits for all Gaza prisoners since 2007 and denial of access to university education since June 2011.
These demands were echoed yesterday when Khader Adnan visited the village of Tubas, where the relatives of political prisoners gathered in a tent outside the Municipal offices. Standing before a wall covered in the cherished photographs of absent men, Adnan spoke of his 66 day hunger strike, giving solace to worried parents and siblings:
“We have a message for those mothers; we honour you. If the doors to the prisons are closed, the door of God will always be open.”
The International Solidarity Movement accompanied members of Tubas Prisoners Club and Khader Adnan to visit families of prisoners in their homes. Mohamamad Taj, who is 42 years old, has been on hunger strike since March 15. His family has not been given permission to visit the prison and await news of his condition. Adnan’s visit brought strength and resolution, stressing the need for solidarity amongst prisoners with sight of a clear goal. He mentioned that prisoners are united despite political differences outside the prison walls.
Acts like these are being mirrored all over Palestine. The prisoners’ solidarity tent has been standing since Palestinian Prisoners Day and is welcome to visitors to express their support and write a message in the visitor book. The face of Hassan Safadi is present amongst the many photographs plastered to the tent’s walls. As he enters his 53rd day of hunger strike, his family are still being denied contact with him and his health condition is still unknown. As his struggle is replicated by some 3,000 prisoners, the international community stands in solidarity against Israel for the same goal.
FREE HASSAN SAFADI
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS OF PALESTINE
Sylvia is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
“Any movement that does not support its political internees is a sham movement.” – US political prisoner Ojore Lutalo
Maali, daughter of jailed Islamic Jihad spokesman Khodr Adnan, stands next to a picture of her father as she takes part in a protest outside Israel’s Ofer prison near the West Bank town of Betunia on 30 January 2012. (Photo: AFP – Abbas Momani)
Political prisoners, their families, and their concerns and causes enjoy massive support in Palestinian society. Palestinians who may have never joined a boycott campaign or acted to break the siege of Gaza routinely demonstrate for the rights of detainees and contribute to support their families. Among political factions, the liberation of all prisoners is a clear point of consensus. Competing parties demand and celebrate the return of each others’ imprisoned members as a matter of course.
Political Prisoner Ameer Makhoul argues that the PLO’s official position on prisoners is, “a recipe for delaying and deferring the liberation of the prisoners indefinitely.”
In addition, he says that, “marginalizing the issue within the overall Palestinian agenda” fails to reflect this overwhelming sentiment.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of the global movement in solidarity with Palestinians and their struggle. Too often, it has treated a concern at the forefront of the Palestinian movement as an inconsequential afterthought, when it has mentioned it all.
Huge mobilizations by detainees, like the October hunger strike that, at its peak, included 3,000 people (and galvanized Palestinian society in support), received only a minimal amount of responses from overseas. Also, the daily struggles of individual prisoners, like the current hunger strike of administrative detainee Khader Adnan, barely elicit any notice.
Why does this matter? Aside from a basic principle of solidarity – backing the priorities of the people we support – these prisoners remind us, and the world, of “the Palestinians’ right, and duty, to resist occupation, colonization and displacement employing all means of struggle,” in Makhoul’s words.
Their perseverance, inside and outside prison walls, testifies to the fact that Palestine needs neither our charity nor our sympathy, but rather deserves our solidarity as it struggles to free itself.
The “internationalization” of prisoner support Makhoul advocates could renew the solidarity movement’s focus on this Palestinian agency. While Israel’s apartheid system includes too many shocking injustices to count, the prisoners are also an electrifying and radicalizing force, whose very existence defies attempts to depoliticize their struggle or reduce it to a humanitarian concern. A mobilized, energized and expanded worldwide solidarity movement would also offer much-needed political backing to them, and the families and communities that regularly mobilize for them.
Many organizations, both Palestinian and international, work to educate a global audience about these issues. Addameer, the Campaign to Free Ahmad Saadat, Defence for Children International, the International Campaign for Releasing the Abducted Members of Parliament, Samidoun, Sumoud, and the UFree Network, as well as media like the Electronic Intifada and the Middle East Monitor, generate tremendous amounts of high-quality information. But while information is a necessary prerequisite, it is ultimately from mobilization that public awareness, as well as political change, emerges.
Putting information to use – building a global campaign to free Palestinian prisoners – will require a strategy to build these organizations and expand their activities, while also engaging broader solidarity networks. Makhoul proposes a National Coordinating Committee, akin to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, to oversee these efforts. In the meantime, international solidarity activists can and should respond to the current “steadfastness, defiance and struggle” of Palestine and its prisoners.
Recurring popular mobilizations, like Palestinian Prisoners’ Day (April 17) and Gaza’s weekly occupation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), could be replicated, on similar or more modest scales, in cities from New York to Islamabad. (Of course Gaza lacks explicitly Zionist institutions, which might prove to be more opportune targets elsewhere.) Rapid response networks could answer detentions, repression, and resistance by protesting Israeli Embassies, consulates, and missions, as well as foreign governments and international organizations collaborating with Israel.
The prisoners’ struggle can also invigorate existing campaigns. It overlaps neatly with the three demands of the BDS movement: An end to occupation and colonization (including detentions), full equality for Arab and Palestinian citizens (in judicial and correctional matters as well as all others), and the right of return for Palestinian refugees (like those expelled from their homes following release from prison).
BDS organizers have pursued prison profiteers like G4S, JC Bamford Excavators, the Israeli Medical Association, and the Volvo Group. Anti-siege efforts like the Free Gaza Movement and Viva Palestinia, too, could highlight Israel’s prison apparatus as an essential part of the system of militarized apartheid they oppose – and one explicitly intended to crush legitimate resistance.
Being proactive should be the core principle on every front. Many solidarity activists have complained of the disproportionate media attention lavished on Gilad Shalit and his family, but few have taken the time to investigate the global networks built to support them, or to learn the many lessons they have to offer. Giving Palestinian prisoners meaningful solidarity will ultimately require a similar movement focused on making their lives and struggles unavoidable topics of any informed conversation on Palestine.
The Israeli government oversees the world’s most militarized society, and one that cannot sustain itself without massive, ongoing repression, from its border walls to its isolation units. The prisoners illuminate the ugly face of this 21st-century apartheid, while offering a glimpse of the decolonized society that will inevitably replace it. Their struggles stand at the core of the broader movement for a free Palestine. All of us who join their struggle should acknowledge their leadership, appreciate their sacrifice, and offer them our full support.
Joe Catron is a (BDS) organizer in Gaza, Palestine. A citizen of the United States, he joined the October hunger strike with Palestinian prisoners and is currently editing an anthology of prisoner’s stories. He blogs and tweets.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect Al-Akhbar’s editorial policy.
My lastest drawing of the Palestinians’ determination to find a way to fight injustices by the Israeli Occupation. (Shahd Abusalama)
If you have the power, you can abuse it and no one will say a word in protest. At least this is the case for Israel, which openly violates international law and human rights feeling secure that one will stop it.
But Khader Adnan, a detainee from Jenin, has decided not to stay silent and accept injustices against him and his fellow prisoners. He is battling armed jailers with his only weapon: his empty stomach. Khader started hunger striking the day of his arrest, December 18, to protest the unjust administrative detention he is serving and the indescribable cruelty he has experienced since then.
My father’s experience of being an administrative detainee
It’s worth mentioning that administrative detention is a procedure the Israeli military uses to hold detainees indefinitely on secret evidence without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Over 300 Palestinian political prisoners are serving this term now, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have experienced administrative detention since 1967.
My father served this term three times. Previously, he had been sentenced to seven lifetimes plus ten years, but released in the 1985 prisoner exchange after serving thirteen. As I read about Khader’s story in a report by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, stories about Dad’s experiences in Israeli prisons came back to me.
The last time it happened, a month after I was born in 1991, was the hardest. My mother told me how I came into this life where safety, peace, and justice are not guaranteed. ”In the middle of the night, a huge force of armed Israeli soldiers suddenly broke into our home, damaging everything before them. They attacked your father, bound him with chains, and dragged him to the prison, beating him the whole way.” The happiness of a new baby – me – didn’t continue for the whole family. My traumatized mother was able to breastfeed me for a month, but then she couldn’t anymore; her sorrow ended her lactation.
Every Palestinian is convicted to a life of uncertainty without having to commit a crime. Being a Palestinian is our only offense. For Khader, this detention is not his first time in Israeli prisons. It’s actually his eighth, for a total of six years of imprisonment, all under administrative detention. Each one had a different taste, ranging from bitter to bitterer.
Story of Khader’s Adnan’s arrest
This time, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) raided Khader’s house at 3:00 am using a human shield, Mohammad Mustafa. Mohammad is a taxi driver who always takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market. He was kidnapped by the IOF and forced to knock on Khader’s door while blindfolded. Then the IOF raided Khader’s house, trashing it as they did. Shouting, they aggressively grabbed his father, with no consideration for Khader’s two little daughters, his wife, who could have miscarried her five-month fetus, or his sick mother. But when did IOF have any respect for human values?
Khader was immediately blindfolded, and his hands were tied behind his back with plastic shackles. Afterwards, the soldiers pushed him into a military jeep with non-stop physical torment that continued for the ten-minute drive it took for the jeep to reach Dutan settlement. You can imagine how a short period seemed like forever to Khader, who was unable to move or see while every part of his body was continuously and brutally beaten. To make things even worse, Khader’s face was injured when he smashed in a wall he couldn’t see due to the blindfold wrapping his eyes after he was pushed out of the jeep.
Addamear reported that after Khader’s arrest, he was transferred to different interrogation centers and ended up in Al-jalameh. Upon arriving there, Khader was given a medical exam, where he informed prison doctors of his injuries and told them that he suffered from a gastric illness and disc problems in his back. However, instead of being treated, he was taken to interrogation immediately.
Silence and hunger strike in response to interrogators’ humiliation
The interrogation period, which lasted for ten days, took the form of psychological torture with continuous humiliation using very abusive language about his wife, sister, children, and mother. Throughout the interrogation sessions, his hands were tied behind him on a crooked chair, causing extreme pain to his back. Believing in the power of silence, Khader’s only response was to object to the interrogator’s use of increasingly insulting speech.
Because of Khader’s hunger strike against violations of his rights and the terrible treatment used against him, Addameer reported that he was sentenced to a week in isolation by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) on the fourth day of interrogation. Moreover, in order to further punish him without being required to go to court, the IPS also banned him from family visits for three months.
In addition, during the second week of interrogation, Khader experienced further humiliations. One interrogator pulled his beard so hard that it ripped hair out. The same interrogator also took dirt from the bottom of his shoe and rubbed it on Khader’s mustache. But they couldn’t break his dignity, and even after the interrogation ended, Khader continued his hunger strike.
According to Addameer report, on the evening of Friday, 30 December 2011, Khader was transferred to Ramleh prison hospital because of his health deteriorating from the hunger strike. But even there, he lacked medical care. He was placed in isolation in the hospital, where he was subject to cold conditions and cockroaches filled his cell. He refused any medical examinations after 25 December, which was one week after he stopped eating and speaking. The prison director came to speak to Khader, or rather threaten him, commenting that they would “break him” eventually.
I know I mentioned before that there are no trials for Palestinian detainees under administrative detention. But actually, they do get a trial. It’s not for them to challenge the reasons for their detention though. It’s for a military judge to decide the period they are going to serve according to the “secret evidence” that IPS holds against him, none of it shared with the detainee or his lawyer. This is an obvious violation of human rights, leaving Khader and detainees like him with no legitimate means to defend themselves.
On 8 January 2012, at Ofer military court, Khader received a four- month administrative detention order. There, he was threatened by members of the Nahshon, a special intervention unit of the IPS known for particularly brutality in their treatment of prisoners, who told Khader that his head should be exploded.
The need to act
Khader’s health is deteriorating rapidly. He is refusing treatment until he is released, but a prison doctor has threatened to force-feed him if he continues. Cameras in his cell watch him at all times, and if he does not move at night, soldiers knock loudly on his door. This prisoner is at risk, so SUPPORT Addamear campaign to call for his release.
People in Gaza set up a tent in front of the Red Cross last Thursday to join Khader’s protest against his administrative detention and violations of Palestinian detainees’ simplest rights, and demand justice and freedom for them. Something must be done against this unjust system and its conditions of imprisonment. International solidarity is greatly needed. Join Addameer’s campaign to Stop Administrative Detention.ACT NOW!
Shahd Abusalama, 20, is a Palestinian artist, a blogger and an English literature student living in Gaza City. She is interested in conveying the images, experience and emotions of the Palestinian people as well as their strength, determination, struggle and suffering. She blogs at Palestine From my Eyes, and she can always be followed at @shahdabusalama.
26 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Released prisoners make their way into Gaza
Loay Auda, in Israeli prisons since 2002, was released in the last prisoner swap exchange. Native of Jerusalem, he was of the many deported to Gaza. In an interview with International Solidarity Movement, Loay and his mother describe the night of his arrest, the solidity of prisoners in the face of abusive tactics, and the meaning of freedom despite the many who still wait in the shadows of Israel’s industrial colonial complex.
The words of Umm Izrod, mother of an exiled prisoner
“It was April 5, 2002, during the second intifada. My son called me saying that we could finally meet, I could embrace him again, see how he was. He was hidden for 9 days in Ramallah, where there was a curfew, because he was wanted by the Zionist occupation forces. During those interminable nine days I did not hear from him, so we menaged to meet in the house of my sister, which she did not use because she had gone to live elsewhere. We sat, we cooked potato chips and drank coffee, then Loay had to take a shower, because for nine days he could not do it, then we were tired and went to sleep.”
“At two in the morning I heard a noise. I thought they were the patrols that monitor compliance with the curfew, but then I heard the soldiers who called us by our names. ‘Come out with your hands up!’ they said.
“I tried to wake my son, ‘Get up, get up, they are coming to get you!’ And he did not wake up; who knows how many days he did not sleep well. From the outside they continued to call our names and surnames. I woke him up with more energy. We were completely surrounded, we would never be able to escape. Soldiers were throwing stones at the windows. They continued to call us and we did not respond. We started talking about the arrest, and we told each other, ‘We must be strong and do not talk, do not say anything. Even if they torture us, we must resist.’
“At some point in that chaos we were even joking and kidding … Around us, the Zionists had a large deployment of vehicles, helicopters, tanks, bulldozers … It seemed that we were going to be bombed!
“At 6.30 we heard the door open. They went to my sister’s house to pick up the keys, and had used her children as human shields to open the door. I came out, and I tried to keep the soldiers busy, they told me to call my son. I did not want to come because I was convinced that if he would come, he would be shot.”
When he got out, his mother, terrified, tried to protect him from the soldiers with her body.
“They took my son and put him on the sidewalk for questioning. I’ve brought the shoes first and then the cigarettes, and the soldiers insulted me. It was completely dark, in the streets there were only the occupation forces because of the curfew, but I could see neighbors peering from the windows.
“I told my son, ‘You are the greatest. You see all these dogs around you? Not as good as the sole of your shoe. Remain strong and you will be released.”
Her son replied, “I will be released only when old,” and his mother recounts when a soldier said, “I hope you die before being released.”
The mother continued to describe her son’s arrest. “They blindfolded him and called me to kiss him one last time, and then they loaded him onto the jeep and left.”
The treatment that was answered with strike
On his way to prison, the jeep stopped, explained Loay. They peppered him with a barrage of questions, and threatened to take revenge on his mother if he did not cooperate.
The first period of detention, the so-called “investigation” is probably the worst time for each prisoner. Psychological and physical tortures are applied to try to get information on the activities of the prisoners themselves and on other people. The interrogation of Loay lasted 55 days and was held in the Russian Compound, a former Russian church occupied and used for interrogations.
“They were questioning about my own activities but also about my comrades. The torture was more psychological than physical. The Zionists had learned that if they physically torture the evidence remains, yet psychological torture is more difficult to prove. They threatened to arrest members of our family. We were tied to a chair for consecutive days. We were bound in rooms that played loud music.”
Loay was transferred many times. Initially he was confined to Askelon prison, then prisons in Bir Seb’a, then Nive Tirtza, then back to Ashkelon, then Gilbo’a to Shatta and finally back to Gilbo’a.
“In prison, we organize,” said Loay. “The members of each party choose a spokesman, and the spokesman discusses the strategy to ensure unity. Nobody was allowed to talk to the guards except the one whom we collectively gave that position.”
He continued to describe the conditions prisoners had to endure, like the violence of the police, humiliating searches, collective punishment, and days of isolation. There was only an hour or two of outdoor time per day, and family visits were often forbidden. The food was cheap, and the diet was not healthy.
Loay participated in the last hunger strike.
“Our main demand was about the end of isolation. People in solitary confinement were locked in a small cell by themselves. And when given outdoor time, it was at odd hours and away from other prisoners, while still being chained. After two years in this situation, the psychological effects on prisoners begin to get really serious. At that time more than 30 prisoners were in solitary confinement for periods ranging from one year to 13 years. 10to 15 prisoners were in solitary confinement for longer periods. Ahmad Sa’adat was at his third year of isolation, and his psychological and physical health was deteriorating. We did some short strikes previously, a couple of days at most, but it was time to go through with something larger.
“The situation became even worse after the capture of the soldier Shalit. The soldiers attacked us more to try to make more pressure for his release. We could not study, books were not allowed. We had arranged for an escalation of the protests. Then other people were added to each week. For example, I striked only the last week with the largest group. There were already 420 people and [when we joined] we were 300.”
The strike was not restricted to food, there was also a form of non-cooperation with the Zionists.
We had stopped to assist in the count, we got together no longer standing when it was time, and for that we had deprived at the time of any visit to family or lawyers.” prisoners in Israeli jails are counted more than once a day, when the jailer passes they are forced to stand in front of the entrance of the cell, under normal conditions if they refuse they are punished with beatings or a few days of isolation.
He said that the repression of the strike by prison guards was not a trivial thing.
The Zionists had left us nothing but water, and we were able to hide salt in some of the gaps of the beds. We had on heavy clothing, because one on hunger strike feels colder than usual. During the strike they continued to move us from one cell to another, from one prison to another. Three times a day the soldiers came and searched the cells from top to bottom, leaving all our other personal belongings in the center of the room. Already weakened by hunger, three times a day we had to collect our things and put them back in place. They deprived us of bottles [to drink from], so all we could do to drink was to drink from the same tap. They kept telling us that other prisoners in other prisoners had given up the strike, but we knew that was not true.
He explained that he was in solitary confinement for several days as punishment because he was on strike, and therefore knew nothing of the exchange.
“I came out of isolation and they told me that I was going to be released the next day. I did not believe it. I was shocked, because in a cell with me were people who were there for more time and they would have priority. There were people who were there for 27 yearsand were not included in this statement.”
He continued to speak about the attitude of the Zionists against them in the light of this exchange.
The names of those who were included in the agreement were not clear. The jailers had fun playing with our nerves. One day they came and said somebody was free, and the next day would that we were going to stay in prison. I did not have the certainty that I would be released until 10 minutes before, when they came to pick me up. Even when they were taking people to free them, they amused themselves and did not tell us anything. They passed by a cell and would call out, ‘Come with us,’ without saying where they will take him. Then the would come back, call to another, and say ‘Come with us.’ Until the last moment it was not clear which names were included in the list.
The outlook of an exile
Loay, a native of Jerusalem with 162 others originating in the same city or the West Bank, was deported to Gaza. His mother and another brother were able to visit him because, coming from Jerusalem, they are able to cross the border between Egypt and the Zionist entity. Other people were deported from the West Bank yet cannot even be visited by family.
Loay explained, “In a year, 18 of us will return to the West Bank… And all the others, including myself, have no date to return home. Perhaps we can never return. ”
Loay was excited about the fact that 1027 prisoners were released.
“This exchange was a fantastic opportunity. When you are in prison, even 5 comrades freed means a lot for you. Imagine the happiness in knowing that 1,027 will be released! This is a victory even for those inside. My comrades still in prison are glad I’m out.”
In an appeal to those released and the greater community, Loay said, “I ask the men and women who are out of jail to think about the prisoner question in an unitarian way, far from the logic of political parties. I ask, as a human being, to appeal to your humanity to apply pressure for the sake of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”
Silvia Todeschini is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
18 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Gaza City’s Qatiba Square yesterday morning, swelling to over 200,000 as news arrived that the prisoners had safely crossed the border from Egypt into Rafah. ISM volunteers waited for hours with local families eager to catch a glimpse of the former prisoners as they exited their buses.
“This is the best day of my life because today, good defeated evil,” said 45-year-old Saleem Abu Sa’ada. “For us, we want all the prisoners to be free,” he added. Qatiba Sqaure, a large sandy plaza, took on a festive atmosphere as women, men and children waved Palestinian flags, as well as flags of the various political parties. On the street, vendors sold juice, tea, coffee, bread as well as Palestinian flags.
Mother of Maher El 'Aqaad - For more images of the festival of victory, click here
One 55-year-old women from Khan Yunis who described herself as the mother of Maher El ‘Aqaad, said “I am so happy. These are all my sons, and I hope all are released.” El ‘Aqaad was captured by Israel in 2005 when he was 17 and is still serving an 8 year sentence.
Throughout the day music played in Qatiba Square. On stage, people danced and sang. Meanwhile, those on hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners—including 3 ISM volunteers—suspended their two week strike today after Israel agreed to end solitary confinement.
“All of the prisoners are our children and all of us are so happy for our children who have been released,” said 60-year-old Saleem Ibrahim Faris, a retired teacher. “I hope unity returns to the people, that we unite our state and that we work together to achieve the state of Palestine,” he added.
Radhika S. is an activist with International Solidarity Movement.
