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.
(Photo by Gal·la López)
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.
(Photo by Gal·la López)
Today more than 5,000 Palestinians are detained by Israel.
(Photo by Gal·la López)
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.
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.
Ghalia, or Um Ibrahim (right), and Ibrahim Baroud. (Photo by Gal·la López)
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.
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.”
“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.
16th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Palestinians rallied outside Gaza’s International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office Monday morning to support Alaa Hammad, a Palestinian-Jordanian on hunger struck since May 2 against the conditions of his detention by Israel, and other Palestinian detainees.
(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
Families and supporters also continued a weekly sit-in inside the ICRC courtyard in support of Palestinians held by Israel.
(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
Hammad, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, is one of 26 Jordanian nationals held by Israel. The occupation has imposed a near-complete blackout on news of his 168-day hunger strike, so most information on his case is over two months old. “On 5 August Hammad fainted and remained unconscious for five hours, without the guards calling a doctor,” the ADDAMEER Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association reported two days later. “After finally receiving treatment Hammad regained consciousness.”
(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
Hammad and four additional Jordanian-Palestinian detainees launched a group hunger strike on 2 May to demand the right to receive visits from their families in Jordan. The other participants, Abdallah Barghouthi, Mohammad Rimawi, Hamza Othman and Munir Mar’ee, ended their strike on 11 August, citing the lack of international attention to their cases.
11th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Every Monday here in central Gaza City a demonstration is held, and has been since 1994 or 1995. It was the first time I attended, though I’d probably call it a meeting more than a demonstration. Around 200 people had gathered in a small courtyard belonging to the Red Cross, with stretched canvas as protection from the sun. The simple wooden pews filled quickly. Those that did not fit on them stood along the walls. Several TV crews were in place. There was a short speech and subsequent interviews.
Women in the Monday Red Cross protest. (Photo by Gal·la López)
It is about the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Inmates in most cases, in some ways, resisted the occupation forces, but are also political prisoners. There were banners with portraits. Some of them brought to mind images of Russian icons. There were mothers and wives of prisoners who sat with pictures of these men, many lifers.
Mona Babakh, age 50. Her son Rami Barbakh, age 37, was imprisoned on 10 July 1994 and condemned to one life sentence. (Photo by Gal·la López)
But there was also a pretty hilarious mood, chatting along the benches instead of absorbing the speech, gravity mixing with the joy of reunited friends. It had elements of a social meeting, certainly not what I would call a demonstration.
Mothers and wives of the detainees. (Photo by Gal·la López)
While I sat there, I made a comparison with ‘the Mothers’ in Buenos Aires, with their regular demonstrations against the then-prevailing junta demanding to know what happened to their men and children, but soon realized that the comparison limps precariously. Their goal was clear. These recurrent demonstrations as more in the nature of social events instead, as a safety valve, to show each other that they are not forgotten, that they support their missing relatives, where they feel that they are not alone in their loss. And it is this cohesion that is so familiar to people here, and perhaps that makes it so hard to subdue the proud people more than anything else. They have not forgotten, they refuse to forget and they are waiting for the day when they will all be free.
Detainees’ relatives protest in front of the Red Cross. (Photo by Gal·la López)
2nd October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
On Monday morning, hundreds held a weekly sit-in in the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza City office to support Palestinians detained by Israel. The regular gathering, which began in 1995 and has continued for nearly two decades, brings together families and supporters of many of the 422 Palestinian political prisoners from the Gaza Strip, as well as 4,646 from elsewhere in occupied Palestine.
