On Monday, 24 June 2024, Palestinian prisoner, captive freedom advocate, leftist, feminist and scholar Khalida Jarrar was ordered to another 6 months behind Zionist bars without charge or trial under “administrative detention” — one day before her previous detention order was set to expire.
There are currently well over 3,500 Palestinians held in administrative detention out of nearly 10,000 captives held by the Zionist regime, most of which are being subjected to extreme torture, abuse and starvation — and who, yet, continue to resist and lead for the liberation of Palestine.
Jarrar was seized from her home in the morning hours of 26 December 2023 as part of mass arrests by Zionist forces in the West Bank of occupied Palestine during the genocide in Gaza.
She is currently a scholar and researcher at the Muwatin Institute at Birzeit University. In fact, she was scheduled to appear on 27 December at a panel convened by Jadaliyya on imprisonment in the time of genocide; she was seized from her home only one day before.
Jarrar, a historical leftist political leader with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has been imprisoned on multiple occasions by the occupation regime, including in 2015, when her administrative detention without charge or trial drew global protests before she was then transferred to the occupation military courts. She is a lifelong advocate for the liberation of political prisoners and was targeted specifically for her statements and advocacy for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners.
In 2019, she was once again seized by the occupation regime. While she was imprisoned, her daughter Suha tragically passed away. She was denied the right to see Suha’s body and attend her funeral before she was released again in 2021. During both of her times of imprisonment, she established independent educational programs to teach the imprisoned minor girls the high school education they were denied as well as the adult women prisoners their rights under international law.
She discusses her imprisonment in the book, Our Vision for Liberation, by Ramzy Baroud and Ilan Pappe; her piece is published at the Palestine Chronicle.
While the Zionist regime has been waging a full-fledged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, they have seized thousands of prisoners and subjected them to horrific conditions. Palestinians from Gaza in particular have been brutally and routinely tortured and abused by occupation forces — for example at the Sde Teiman concentration camp, where the extreme stories of torture and abuse reported by released Palestinian civilians have included forced amputations, sexual assault, starvation and other severe abuse. This is both a continuation of the attack on the Palestinian people as well as a mechanism to inflate the number of prisoners in order to manipulate the results of a prisoner exchange with the Palestinian resistance. They are holding Palestinians like Khalida Jarrar hostage
Freedom for Khalida Jarrar and all Palestinians in zionist, imperialist and reactionary jails!