Today, new posters and murals were posted on the streets of the 20th arrondissement in Paris, France, in solidarity with the Palestinian women prisoners, Anan Yaeesh, the Palestinian prisoner detained in France; and Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese struggler for Palestine imprisoned in France for the past 30 years.
The posters highlighted many images of imprisoned Palestinian women, as well as the martyrs of the prisoners’ movement. They include:
Karmel Khawaja , arrested on March 2 by occupation forces during a raid in the town of Deir Qaddis, near Ramallah. Karmel is a fourth-year Palestinian student of public administration at Birzeit University.
Like her, at least four other students are currently detained at Damon: Nour Mahmoud Badran, a student at An Najah University; Ruba Dar Nasser , a student at Birzeit University; Tasneem Odeh, a student at Al-Quds University; and Ammar Al Aghbar, a student at An Najah University.
Tasneem Odeh, originally from Kafr Aqab, is a law student at Al-Quds University. On Wednesday, February 12, the Zionist Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order from the city of Jerusalem against her, as well as against Mohammed Abu al-Hawa, currently incarcerated in occupation prisons, and Zeina Barbar, a prisoner released as part of the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange agreement reached by the Palestinian resistance and the proud and determined people of Gaza on January 19, 2025.
Shahd Hassan, 23, a graduate of the Arabic language department at Birzeit University, was arrested on the night of March 5-6 after occupation forces raided her family home in the Ein Misbah neighborhood of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. While Shahd was sleeping, the Zionist occupation forces raided her home and arrested her. The occupation forces did not allow her to get dressed, so she was forced to put on her prayer clothes. On March 12, Shahd was transferred to administrative detention for four months.
Shahd comes from a family with a long history of struggle. Her father, Sheikh Majed Hassan, former leader of Birzeit University’s Islamic bloc; her mother, preacher Nada Al-Jayousi; her brother, Abdul Majeed Hassan; and her older sister, Shatha Majed Hassan, executive of the Birzeit University student council, have all been previously arrested by the occupation. Her brother, Saleh Hassan, president of the Birzeit University student council in 2024, has been imprisoned since February 22, 2024. On February 19, 2025, the occupation renewed his administrative detention order for another four months.
This year, as all her sisters got married, it was the first time Shahd spent the month of Ramadan alone. On the first day of Ramadan, she took care of her newborn nieces. Upon her arrest, the occupation forces forbade Shahd from speaking to her family. Still, she left the family home with her head held high and her heart full of strength, according to her mother, telling them, “I’m fine, don’t worry.”
Ruba Dar Nasser , a Palestinian student at Birzeit University, originally from Deir Qaddis – Ramallah, arrested on January 17, 2025, and Myassar Hdeibat, originally from Yatta – Al Khalil, arrested on November 18, 2024.
Haneen Jaber was arrested on the evening of December 4, 2024, by the Zionist occupation forces, at the entrance to the city of Qalqilya. She is the mother of the martyr Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, an iconic resistance fighter and leader of the Tulkarem Brigades. He was first abducted by the Zionist regime at the age of 17 and spent a total of five years in occupation prisons. Abu Shujaa was martyred in August 2024, at the age of 26, alongside Hamouda Al-Awfi and Majd Daoud, after multiple assassination attempts. Another of her sons, Mahmoud Jaber, was martyred in December 2023 alongside 5 of his comrades, and her two surviving sons, Ahmad and Uday, are both released prisoners.
Siham Abu Salem (Umm Khalil), 71, from Khan Younis, Gaza, is the oldest Palestinian woman prisoner. She was arrested in early 2024 with her two daughters, Rabab and Suzan, at the hospital where they thought they were taking refuge during the Zionist entity’s genocidal offensive on Gaza. Shortly after their arrest, her daughter Rabab was released. Siham and her other daughter, Suzan, were then transferred to the Damon colonial prison. On February 26, 2025, Suzan was released along with Asmaa Shatat, another prisoner from Gaza, on the last day of the first phase of the Toufan Al-Ahrar prisoner exchange agreement. Siham is currently the only woman from Gaza incarcerated in the Damon colonial prison, although more Palestinian women from Gaza may be held elsewhere by the Zionist regime, which has consistently and repeatedly refused to divulge the names and information of those who it has kidnapped from Gaza. Palestinians abducted from Gaza have been subjected to the most extreme forms of torture and abuse, including physical, sexual and psychological torture, in prison camps and military bases, in reports documented by multiple international agencies and Palestinian organizations.
Aya Khatib, 35, from the city of Arara in occupied Palestine ’48, was imprisoned on September 18, 2023, sentenced to four years in Zionist prisons, after two years of house arrest. Accused of raising funds “and transmitting them to the resistance in Gaza,” Aya denied these accusations, stressing that this money was sent to charities to help patients in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank receive appropriate medical treatment and to support students in continuing their studies. Along with Shatila Abu Ayad, Aya Khatib is among the prisoners who were not released during the last two exchange agreements in November 2023 and January 2025. The Zionist regime consistently refuses to release Palestinians who hold “Israeli” citizenship in prisoner exchanges, seeking to classify their imprisonment as an “internal matter.”
Dr. Sereen Saeedi, 45, was arrested at her home in Beit Lid, east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, during a raid on February 11, 2025. Occupation forces took her to the Al-Moskobiyeh detention center for interrogation. Sereen’s trial was initially postponed for a week. With the March 16 decision to postpone her trial to May 20, this is the sixth postponement in total for Sereen. These successive trial postponements are a means of psychological pressure against prisoners and their families, who do not know how long they will spend in prison or what their sentence will be. Sereen also suffers from a pituitary tumor. Despite her delicate health, she has been deprived of her medication by the prison administration since her arrest. The refusal to provide medical treatment when absolutely necessary is a form of torture that Zionist prisons routinely practice on imprisoned Palestinians.
Sereen Saeedi is a writer and holds a PhD in Islamic Theology and Philosophy from the World University for Islamic Sciences and Education in Jordan. She is also a lecturer at Al-Quds Open University in Palestine. She has written several articles for the e-zine Dawawin and Palestine Net, and participated in the Sixth International Conference on Drug Abuse at An-Najah National University. She is interested in educational and intellectual issues and writes short stories on spirituality and thought.
Shatila Abu Ayad was born on May 14, 1993, and is originally from Kafr Qassem, a town in the territories colonized in 1948. In 2016, she was arrested and sentenced to 16 years in prison and a 100,000 shekel fine. She is currently the Palestinian prisoner with the heaviest sentence. Even after her arrest, Shatila continued to confront the occupation: some sources indicate that, in the name of the unity of the Palestinian people and the shared oppression they face, she refused to request that her case be converted to a civil case, which could have allowed her to receive a reduced sentence. She appeared with her face hidden during her trial and also participated in a collective hunger strike against administrative detention.
While 71 women were released as part of the exchange agreement achieved by the resistance and the steadfastness of the people of Gaza at the end of November 2023, Shatila was one of the women who remained imprisoned in Damon, like Aya Khatib and May Younis, also from the territories colonized in 1948, and Nawal Fatiha, a young woman from Silwan (East Jerusalem). On January 19, 2025, while 69 Palestinian prisoners were released in the Toufan Al Ahrar exchange agreement achieved by the Resistance, she was again one of the Palestinian prisoners who were not released and who were kept in prison, like Aya Khatib, Haneen Jaber and Shaden Qous.
A Palestinian from the territories colonized in 1948, she represents the unity of Palestinians in the struggle for national liberation: within the territories of 1948, in the West Bank, in Al Quds, throughout the diaspora and in Gaza.
Wafa Jarrar, a renowned activist, martyred after being seriously injured during her arrest by the colonial army, when both of her legs were amputated above the knees. Initially ordered to administrative detention for 4 months, the occupation forces released her from prison a few days after her amputation, on May 30, 2024, so as not to be held responsible for her health. She was the coordinator of the Association of Families of Martyrs and Prisoners of the Jenin Governorate. Her husband, Abdul Jabbar Jarrar, is a resistance leader in the Jenin Governorate and has been held in administrative detention since before his wife’s martyrdom.
Saadia Farajallah, martyred on July 2, 2022, at the age of 68, after a sudden heart attack while washing before early morning prayers in Damon Prison. She was married and the mother of eight children. Arrested on December 18, 2021, outside the Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil by occupation forces, she was brutally beaten, which worsened her health. During the hearing, her lawyers requested that she be allowed to see a specialized doctor, as she already suffered from complications related to diabetes, high blood pressure, and poor general health. Instead of providing her with the medical care she clearly needed, the military court sentenced her to five years in prison, a near-certain death sentence without adequate health care.
We also postered in solidarity with Anan Yaeesh, a 37-year-old Palestinian activist from Tulkarem in the West Bank. Active during the second intifada, he was imprisoned for 4 years in Zionist prisons and seriously injured after an ambush by colonial special forces in 2006. In 2013, he left Palestine for Norway before settling in Italy in 2017 and obtaining a residence permit there in 2019. At the end of January 2024, he was arrested by the Italian police in the city of L’Aquila, where he resides, and then transferred to detention in the high-security prison of Terni for alleged collaboration with the Tulkarem Brigades, an organization linked to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (one of the armed groups of Fatah).
Posters also featured Georges Abdallah, Arab communist and resistance struggler for Palestine, imprisoned in France since 1984 and eligible for release since 1999. Despite more than 40 years of incarceration and judicial harassment by the French imperialist state, he has never renounced his revolutionary convictions and continues to support the resistance of the Palestinian people against colonialism and occupation. On Thursday, February 20, the Paris Court of Appeal adjourned the decision on Georges Abdallah’s request for release until June 19, once again validating the need to release our comrade but invoking the condition that he financially compensate the civil parties (the family of Charles Ray). Between now and June 19, we must intensify the mobilization to rescue our comrade from French prisons together, through our collective action, so that he can finally return to his land, to Lebanon, among his people.
Discover more from Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
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