27th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
On Monday, at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, the weekly rally in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails saw the participation of many prisoners’ families, released prisoners, and international and Palestinian activists.
Each week, the rally focuses on certain topics, ranging from administrative detention to the health condition of sick prisoners, women prisoners and ill-treatment, to the prisoners on hunger strike.
Many women show photographs of their detained children, grandchildren, husbands or relatives.
On Monday, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine protested to demand the release of its general secretary, Ahmad Sa’adat, on the eight anniversary of his abduction by Israeli forces.
Eight years ago, on 14-15 March 2006, Israeli forces surrounded the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where Sa’adat was held with his comrades Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Majdi Rimawi, Basil al-Asmar and Hamdi Qur’an. The Israeli forces attacked and destroyed the prison, kidnapping the Palestinian prisoners held inside. United States and British guards, under whom Sa’adat and the other prisoners were held, left the prison in advance, knowing it would soon come under attack from the Israelis.
Eight years after his abduction, Sa’adat is considered a leader in and out the prison, and protests for his release, as well as broad international support, are the proof.
There are 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Many of them suffer from diseases, included cancer. Due to medical negligence, their conditions worsen day by day.
Prisoners on hunger strike have also suffered punitive measures by the Israeli Prison Service in response to their strikes. These measures include solitary confinement in small and cold rooms with no blankets, denial of the right to take showers, denial of family visits, investigations and searches during the night.
Israel continues to arrest Palestinian children and apply administrative detention, arresting Palestinians without charge or trial. Yesterday an Israeli court has extended the detentions of Shireen, Medhat and Shadi Issawi, siblings of former Palestinian hunger striker Samer Issawi.
2nd March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
In recent weeks, protests for both sick Palestinian detainees and those engaging in long-term hunger strikes have increased in the Gaza Strip.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Last Monday morning, following a regular weekly sit-in in the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza office, demonstrators rallied by a protest tent erected outside.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
On 18th February, Addameer reported hunger strikes by seven detainees. Today the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said three additional prisoners had launched strikes against their administrative detentions.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Demonstrations in solidarity with the detainees have also been held elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, including yesterday by the Erez checkpoint in Beit Hanoun.
11th February 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
Friends and relatives, as well as local and international activists, gathered Monday morning at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza to demonstrate, like every week, in support of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
“My cousin was arrested during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Beit Hannoun,” Said Attallah Abu Oudah said. “He is detained in the Ramle prison. He is 31 years old and has been in jail for almost eight years. Only his mother and his sister can visit him. I hope one day all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as Palestine itself, will win their freedom.”
Outside the ICRC, the Muhjad al-Quds Association erected a stage in the middle of the street. The spokesman of the association gave a speech, appealing to all the Palestinian political factions to combine their efforts in support of the struggle of the prisoners. He spoke of all types of Palestinian detainees, from the sick prisoners to the released ones, from Ibrahim Bitar to Samer Issawi.
The Fatah delegation currently visiting Gaza from the West Bank attended the rally as well. Nabil Shaath, head of the delegation, spoke from the the stage about the current series of prisoner releases.
Umm Muhammad, the mother of critically ill prisoner Ibrahim Bitar, with two of his neices at a weekly sit-in. She hasn’t seen her son in more than three months. (Joe Catron)
“We’ve garnered internal support for my brother, and created this popular campaign,” Ibrahim’s brother Mamdouh said last week. “It started within our family. Many of my friends participate in it. It’s a symbol of all the sick detainees.”
“All the funding is personal,” he added. “It comes from our own pockets.”
Ibrahim Bitar, now 32, was a fighter in Fatah’s Abu al-Arish Brigades. Israeli forces captured him on 7 August 2003.
“He was injured by the Israelis in his right eye during clashes,” Mamdouh said. “He was transferred to Egypt for treatment. The Israelis let him go to Egypt. During his return to Gaza, they detained him at the Rafah border.”
A military court sentenced him to 17 years, although Mamdouh said the prosecution had initially asked for a life sentence.
At the family’s house in Khan Younis, a town in southern Gaza, Mamdouh flicked through folders on his laptop. The campaign’s graphic designer, he showed the logos and posters he has created for it. He also collects photos of rallies for his brother, in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Illness remains a mystery
Despite news reports on Ibrahim’s medical condition, his illness remains a mystery, at least to his family.
“They aren’t giving his family the proper diagnosis,” he said. “We still don’t know the exact disease he has. First, they claimed he was suffering from leukemia. They gave him medication for three years. Then, they found out he didn’t have it and stopped his treatment.
“Finally, they told him he had colon cancer. They gave him cortisone. Now he takes 15 types of medicine per day.”
Mamdouh recited a list of his brother’s ailments: chronic anemia, Crohn’s disease, rheumatism and a tumor on his back which was recently removed by surgery.
“We don’t have any details about the surgery,” Mamdouh said. “We only know that it was conducted. He still bleeds from it.”
Ibrahim’s mother, Umm Muhammad, said Israel’s occupation policies had limited her family’s contact with him.
“I haven’t been allowed to visit him for three months now,” she said. “We have gotten no messages or letters except through the lawyers. When other prisoners are released, they come visit us to tell us about his condition and send his regards.”
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Three goals
Their family’s campaign has three goals, according to Mamdouh.
“The aim is for Ibrahim to be released because of his health condition,” he said. “The second is for a health committee to have access, to find out his condition and give him the proper medication. Finally, we want the release of all the sick prisoners.”
By most official accounts, Bitar is one of at least 180 detainees in critical condition — including 25 with cancer — among roughly 1,400 sick prisoners.
“This number is the figure used by Palestinian groups dealing with the issue,” said Osama Wahidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a prisoners’ society in Gaza. “But if you research among prisoners, you will find a higher number. This is the one registered in the files of the Israel Prison Service and humanitarian associations.”
Because of his family’s efforts, Bitar’s detention has emerged as a flashpoint for the families of sick prisoners in general. When crowds gather outside the Red Cross during the weekly rallies, signs depicting other prisoners mix with those Mamdouh has designed for Ibrahim.
“If every Palestinian detainee’s family did like Bitar’s, it would be a turning point for the issue of detainees,” Wahidi said. “There would be no need for the associations. And it would mount great pressure against Israel, more effective than the work of all the Palestinian factions.
“What they are doing is very helpful for everyone. They are trying to highlight him as a symbol of the issue of sick detainees.”
Broad support
The living room of Nahid al-Aqraa’s home in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood is decorated with posters of his image issued by Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah.
Al-Aqraa, a fighter for the Popular Resistance Committees’ al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, hails from none of these organizations. But their paraphernalia offers a visible reminder of the broad, strong support he and other sick detainees attract in Palestine.
Like Ibrahim Bitar, Nahid al-Aqraa was captured by Israeli forces while returning to Palestine from medical treatment in Egypt. They detained him on 28 July 2007, at the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, when the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip was closed.
A military court sentenced him to three life sentences.
“I visited him for the first time since his detention very recently,” his wife Jahadir said. “His father and mother live in the West Bank, but his children and I live in Gaza. His parents have been able to visit him. For me and our children, it has been impossible.”
The al-Aqraas have three daughters and a son. Israeli forces have not allowed two of his daughters, aged 12 and 15, to visit him since his detention. “I send him voice messages through a radio station, and written messages through the ICRC,” 15-year-old Nisma said in June last year.
Under the current occupation policy, their son Raed, who turned ten in December, has not been able to see his father since the family’s first visit either.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Visits blocked
For more than five years between June 2007 and August 2012, Israeli forces had blocked all visits to detainees by family members in the Gaza Strip.
Israel ended this comprehensive ban as part of an agreement to settle the mass Karameh (“Dignity”) hunger strike in April 2012, but continues to bar categories of relatives, including children who have reached the age of ten, from traveling through the Erez checkpoint to its prisons.
“Before I was allowed to visit my husband, both the older girls started crying,” Jahadir said. “I threatened them that if they kept crying, I wouldn’t go. They said no, I should go, even if they couldn’t.”
“My daughter Nada was very upset that she couldn’t hug her father, since she is over the age of eight,” she added. “It was the first time she had ever seen him.”
Another occupation policy bans physical contact between detainees and their children who, like Nada, have turned eight.
“When we saw him, Nada started crying and asking to stay with her father,” Jahadir said. “I told her it was up to the Israelis, not me.”
Now 44, al-Aqraa is one of 18 sick detainees held permanently in the Ramle prison clinic. In June, he and another Ramle detainee, Mansour Muqada of Salfit in the West Bank, undertook a dramatic protest when they swallowed potentially lethal quantities of pills.
“We were ignored in the Shalit deal [a prisoner exchange agreement in 2011], and we don’t want current talks to ignore us too,” they wrote. “Death has become easier than living with sickness aggravated in our bodies” (“Ministry: Two sick prisoners attempt suicide,” Ma’an News Agency, 6 August 2013).
Their attempt, along with a subsequent hunger strike by Ramle prison clinic detainees, led to slightly improved medical treatment, Wahidi said.
Meanwhile, Nahid al-Aqraa’s condition has continued to deteriorate.
“He has inflammation in his legs,” his wife said. “Parts of both were amputated. The first was in Gaza, before his detention. The second was inside the Israeli jails. The Egyptians did some surgery on it, but it didn’t succeed.”
“While I visited him, he didn’t want me to know he had problems. He just said he had a little inflammation and tried to hide his second amputated leg. But his lawyer told me the truth.”
Both families said that Ibrahim Bitar and Nahid al-Aqraa were not receiving proper treatment.
“Many lawyers have met Ibrahim,” Mamdouh Bitar said. “They have told us his condition is in the terminal stages.
“The bleeding from his surgery still has not been treated. Many times, they have taken him to the Ramle prison clinic or Assaf Harofeh hospital, then sent him back to the prison the same day under the pretext that there are not enough beds in the hospital.”
“The Israelis delayed his medical treatment,” Jahadir said about her husband Nahid. “They could have cured him if he had the proper medication. But he didn’t.”
“We don’t trust Israel”
Last year claims of Israeli medical negligence that followed the deaths two sick Palestinian detainees, Maysara Abuhamdia and Hassan al-Turabi, sparked protests across the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Addameer, an advocacy organization for Palestinian prisoners, argued that al-Turabi’s death on 5 November was “the direct result of the Israel Prison Service policy of medical negligence which is being practiced against all Palestinian political prisoners and detainees.”
“We’re not asking the Israelis to only give them the proper medication,” Wahidi said. “They need their freedom. We don’t trust the Israel Prison Service to give them the right treatment.”
At this week’s Gaza sit-in in solidarity with political prisoners in Israeli jails, the focus was on the sick prisoners. The Palestinian political prisoners in need of medical care number about 1,000, and the lives of many are in danger because they are often denied necessary medical care.
“My son’s name is Ibrahim Al Goshen,” a woman said in the International Committee of the Red Cross courtyard. “Since after the hunger strike in October 2011, he has had pain in the legs and shoulders. He has an enlarged thyroid and high blood pressure, and sometimes falls into a coma for hours.”
(Photo by Sil)
“A year ago he had some tests, but they have not yet yielded the results,” she continued. “The only medicines they give him are painkillers and analgesics, paracetamol, and aspirin.”
“Ibrahim has been in prison for four years, and must serve another two and a half. He is 37 years old and has three children. We were able to visit him only three times, and only after the exchange with the soldier Shalit. We do not know which disease he has, but are sure he does not receive adequate care.”
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Ibrahim is not the only one in his situation. Many witnesses report that too often the “cures” patients receive are limited to paracetamol and painkillers, which will not affect the causes of the disease. There are cases of untreated leukemia, prisoners suffering from cancer who are not receiving chemotherapy, persons who have contracted serious diseases like hepatitis due to poor hygienic conditions in prisons.
Other sick prisoners have died because of lack of medical care. Abu Hamdiyeh, for example, died in March 2013. In August 2012 had a very painful sore throat, which was treated only with painkillers. When he was finally taken to the Soroka hospital, his throat cancer had already spread to his spine. Hasan Turabi, arrested when he already had leukemia, stated he did not receive adequate medical care. He went to the clinic because he vomited blood, for which he received painkillers. Hasan was discharged on his deathbed. He died at age 22 on 5th November 2013.
(Photo by Sil)
Islam Abdo, media coordinator of the ministry of detainees in Gaza, cited the case of Yosri al-Masri, 31 years old, who was arrested ten years ago and sentenced to 20 years.
“This morning we went to visit his family,” Abdo said. “Yosri has thyroid cancer that has already reached the lymph nodes. A month and a half ago, they removed the thyroid gland, but did not give him the medicines to replace the hormones it produces, only painkillers. He should have chemotherapy, he should receive care that does not receive, so as a kind of protest he refused to take paracetamol and painkillers that were administered in place of the medicine he needed.”
(Photo by Joe Catron)
“While I was in the intensive care unit, after the operation, my hands and feet had been cuffed to the hospital bed,” Yosri said in November. “I was guarded by 3 jailers, and whenever I wanted to go to the bathroom or to take shower they had to take the permission from Nafha intelligence officer.”
Motassem Radad suffers from acute intestinal inflammation that causes bleeding and severe pain. His condition deteriorated after a cortisone injection, which caused difficulty in the movement of his hands and legs. Thaer Halahla has contracted hepatitis C in Ashkelon prison, following a dental operation. He was transferred to a medical clinic in December. Thaer was held under administrative detention. After 77 days of a hunger strike, which contributed to the deterioration of his health condition, he was released on 5th June, 2012 and re-arrested 10th April, 2013. The list could go on, but would become repetitive. These are only examples.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
1,000 patients are waiting for medical treatment in the Zionist jails. 25 prisoners suffer from cancer. 207 detainees have died since 1967, including 54 from medical negligence. Under international law, no Palestinian should be arrested and imprisoned by the occupying power in territories occupied in1948 In the Zionist jails, prisoners are routinely subjected to torture, forbidden family visits, held under administrative detention, without charge or trial.
(Photo by Sil)
Ibrahim al-Bitar, age 33, was arrested in 2003 while traveling through the Rafah crossing back from Egypt, where he had gone to receive medical treatment for an eye, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Islam, at the ministry of detainees, said that his interrogation and torture have worsened his medical situation, and now has problems with his stomach and intestines. Rami, who was released a month ago after being held in Israeli prisons since before the Oslo agreements, said that Ibrahim is a friend of his. Part of Ibrahim’s intestine was removed, but his health is still precarious because he has not received the necessary treatment since the operation.
“The last time I saw him he was very ill, but had not yet lost his strength and hope,” Rami said. “He asked me to talk about his case and the other sick prisoners. He asked me to create pressure for them to receive the treatment they need. When he can, he calls me on the phone from jail to remind me to do so.”
