At least three Palestinian prisoners are currently on hunger strike in Israeli prison. On Wednesday, 8 November, Israeli occupation forces stormed the home of Bajis Nakhleh in the Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah in a pre-dawn raid; he was taken to the Etzion interrogation center, where he immediately launched an open hunger strike. A former prisoner, Nakhleh, 53, spent over 20 years in Israeli prisons over various arrests and was released only two months prior, on 1 September. Nakhleh is now on his fourth day of hunger strike.
Hassan Hassanein Shokeh, 29, is on his 31st day of hunger strike, about to enter his second month without food. Shokeh was previously detained by the Israeli occupation and released on 31 August. He was seized once more by Israeli occupation forces on 29 September and once again ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial. He launched his hunger strike on 11 October in protest of his administrative detention. Shokeh has spent 13 years in Israeli prisons, including eight years in repeated administrative detention.
Hamza Marwan Bouzia, 27, from Kifl Hares in Salfit, is also on hunger strike for 26 days. He has served over seven years in Israeli prison in the past and is now held without charge or trial under administrative detention, and is demanding his freedom.
In particular, Bouzia and Shokeh have been on hunger strike for an extended period of time, in which they not only are suffering from extensive weight loss, fatigue and pain but also cognitive difficulties. Prior to and after the third week of hunger strike is one of the most dangerous times for a person on strike. The commitment of the hunger strikers to achieve their freedom is so great – and the ability to challenge administrative detention so limited by the occupation – that their bodies and lives are on the line in their bid for freedom.
On Thursday, 9 November, the family of Bilal Diab announced that he was suspending his hunger strike after 23 days. Diab, 32, suspended his strike after an agreement signed by the representetive of Islamic Jihad prisoners in Megiddo prison with the Israeli intelligence representative, Wattan TV reported. His administrative detention will not be extended and he will be released on 18 January 2018. He has been imprisoned without charge or trial since he was seized by Israeli occupation forces on 14 July 2017.
Diab previously launched a 78-day hunger strike in 2012 to win his freedom from administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. The agreement came shortly following a hearing on Thursday morning by the Israeli high court, from which Diab was excluded due to his severely deteriorated health.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges support and action to free these three Palestinians whose lives and bodies are on the line for freedom and against injustice. By taking action, you can show the Israeli occupation and international governments that these Palestinians are not alone and have worldwide support and solidarity with their urgent demands.
Take action:
1) Organize or join an event in support of the hunger strikers. Protest outside your local Israeli embassy, consulate or mission, or at a public square or government building. You can drop a banner or put up a table to support the prisoners and their strike. You can also bring signs and flyers about the hunger strikers to local events about Palestine and social justice. Send your events and actions to us at samidoun@samidoun.net or on Facebook.
2) Call your government officials and urge action. Call your foreign affairs officials – and members of parliament – and urge action for the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.
Call your country’s officials urgently:
Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop: + 61 2 6277 7500
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland: +1-613-992-5234
European Union Commissioner Federica Mogherini: +32 (0) 2 29 53516
New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully: +64 4 439 8000
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: +44 20 7008 1500
United States President Donald Trump: 1-202-456-1111
Tell your government: Three Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike for their basic human rights – for freedom from imprisonment without charge or trial. Governments must pressure Israel to end administrative detention now!
3) Build the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign! Join the BDS Movement to highlight the complicity of corporations like Hewlett-Packard and the continuing involvement of G4S in Israeli policing and prisons. Build a campaign to boycott Israeli goods, impose a military embargo on Israel, or organize around the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Three Palestinian prisoners are continuing their hunger strikes in Israeli jails, demanding their release from administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial.
On Wednesday, 8 November, Israeli occupation forces stormed the home of Bajis Nakhleh in the Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah in a pre-dawn raid; he was taken to the Etzion interrogation center, where he immediately launched an open hunger strike. A former prisoner, Nakhleh, 53, spent over 20 years in Israeli prisons over various arrests and was released only two months prior, on 1 September. He has pledged to continue his strike until his release.
He joined Hassan Shokeh, 29, from Bethlehem, on hunger strike since October 11 against his own imprisonment without charge or trial. Shokeh was seized again by occupation forces in late September, less than one month after he was released from Israeli prison on August 13, and ordered imprisoned without charge or trial.
Also on hunger strike is Hamza Bouzia of Salfit, held without charge or trial under administrative detention. He has been refusing food to demand his release from imprisonment.
Sheikh Khader Adnan, former long-term hunger striker, said that the hunger strikers are engaged in a battle of freedom and dignity that challenges the occupation. He urged greater action to support the hunger strikers and work to end their suffering, emphasizing that the hunger strike is a tool of action for the Palestinian prisoners’ movement (samidoun.net/2017/11/four-palestinian-prisoners-continue-hunger-strikes-in-israeli-prisons).
Marking 100 years of the Balfour Declaration, we present an important discussion on the British role in the creation of Israel, with guest speakers Palestinian activist Saed Assaf and FRFI writer Bob Shepherd.
The Balfour Declaration was made in Manchester. Chaim Weizman, the first Israeli head of state, was based at The University of Manchester – which is now celebrating the anniversary of this colonialist act. But why did British Tory and Labour politicians and business leaders like Marks & Spencer throw their weight behind Zionism? How did Palestinians respond to occupation? And, despite 100 years of colonial racism and war, why do the Palestinians remain undefeated in their struggle for justice?
Hassan Karajah, Palestinian youth activist and organizer, was released after nearly a year and half held without charge or trial under administrative detention late on Thursday night, 9 November. He was supposed to be released in the afternoon, but his release was delayed for hours; his family and friends waited for over six hours as the weather grew dark and cold outside the gates of the Ofer prison in order to welcome him.
He immediately went to his family home in Saffa village, where he was received by hundreds of friends and family members. He was seized on 12 July 2016 at the Beit Ur al-Foqha checkpoint near Ramallah and four days later ordered to administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. He was welcomed by, among others, his twin baby girls, Sarai and Kinza, born several months after he was imprisoned; he and his wife, Thameena Husary, had been married for only six months when he was arrested. She was barred from visiting him for over two more months after.
Karajah is a prominent Palestinian leftist and a community leader and youth organizer. He is a trainer at the Handala cultural center in Saffa and director of its annual arts and cultural festival in the village. He is well known for his work in a number of civil society organizations, including the Stop the Wall Campaign and the Partnership for Development Project, and his advocacy for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. During his time in prison, he remained an activist; he was involved in the collective hunger strike to free Bilal Kayed in 2016 and once again in the Dignity Strike of April-May 2017.
He is also involved in a grassroots project called Tijwal Safar, which organizes political tours in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and occupied Palestine ’48 of Palestinian villages, especially those threatened by Israeli land grabs, settlements and racist policies; operating under the slogan, “If you walk the land, you own it,” it has brought hundreds of Palestinians to targeted villages and farmland.
This is only the most recent arrest for Karajah; from January 2013 to October 2014, he spent 22 months in Israeli prison, charged with allegations of participation in a prohibited organization (all Palestinian political parties are prohibited organizations) and contact with an enemy state (frequently used to target Palestinians who travel to Lebanon for conferences and other events.) He was the subject of an international campaign for his release, which highlighted the Israeli targeting of Palestinian human rights defenders.
Karajah was one of over 450 Palestinians who remain held captive in Israeli jails under administrative detention orders for imprisonment without charge or trial, and one of 6,200 total Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Administrative detention orders are based on “secret evidence” that is not available to either the detained person or their lawyer, and they are indefinitely renewable; like Karajah, Palestinians often spend years at a time jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention.
There are currently three Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli jails, Hassan Shokeh, Hamza Bouzia and Bajis Nakhleh – two of them, Shokeh and Bouzia, who have refused food for weeks, are protesting their administrative detention.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network congratulates Hassan Karajah and all of his friends, family and comrades upon his release. We demand the immediate release of all Palestinians jailed without charge or trial, the end to administrative detention and the liberation of all Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq was released from Israeli prison after ten months jailed on Wednesday, 8 November. Al-Qeeq, 35, was seized by occupation forces in January 2017 as he returned home from a protest against the Israeli detention of the bodies of Palestinians killed by occupation forces.
Al-Qeeq became nationally and internationally known after his 94-day hunger strike against his administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, in 2015, in order to win his freedom. When he was once again seized by occupation forces in January he was ordered again to administrative detention; he immediately launched an open hunger strike. After 33 days on strike, he ended his strike with an agreement to dramatically reduce his administrative detention period. Only days before he was to be released, in March 2017, the Israeli occupation cancelled the administrative detention order and instead charged him in military court with “incitement” for speaking out about the issue of Palestinians’ bodies being held hostage by the Israeli occupation.
Al-Qeeq is one of hundreds of Palestinians who have been targeted for public statements, speeches, and even social media writing, for arrests, administrative detention and imprisonment via the military courts. He was sentenced to 10 months in Israeli prison.
Upon his release, Al-Qeeq said that “the prisoners looked to the resistance in Gaza as a sign of hope for freedom and liberation from the prisons of injustice and oppression,” noting that the prisoners are at the spearhead of the Palestinian people, separated from their beloved families and children for the Palestinian cause and nation. He urged unity and cohesion with the compass point of the Palestinian prisoners, especially the veterans who have spent decades in Israeli prison.
Fayha Shalash, al-Qeeq’s wife and a fellow journalist, said that her husband’s release was a “new victory over the Zionist occupier,” urging support for the over 6,200 Palestinian prisoners who remain inside Israeli prisons.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes Mohammed al-Qeeq upon his release and demands the release of all Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and an end to the targeting and detention of Palestinians for their political expression under the framework of “incitement.” The Israeli occupation is blatantly imprisoning Palestinians in an attempt to silence their anti-colonial resistance – even that which comes through words, speech or social media.
New York City activists protested on Monday, 6 November outside the Best Buy in Manhattan as part of the Global Day of Action for a World Without Walls, an international series of actions urged by the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. The protest came ahead of the global actions planned for Thursday, 9 November.
The protest was organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in New York. Samidoun was one of hundreds of organizations that signed on to the global call for the 9 November day of action that highlights the connections between the Israeli apartheid wall and the U.S. Wall of Shame.
“From Israel’s apartheid Wall on Palestinian land to the US Wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico – almost 70 walls across all continents are today ripping through people’s lives and lands as they fortify often unilaterally defined borders or limits of state control. They cause thousands of deaths every year and destroy means of livelihoods and hope for many more. They are monuments of expulsion, exclusion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation.”
Photo: Bud Korotzer/Desertpeace
The World Without Walls protest also focused on the growing global boycott of HP (Hewlett-Packard.) Organized outside the Best Buy electronics store in Manhattan, organizers distributed leaflets and materials about HP’s role in profiteering from Israeli colonialism, apartheid and occupation, including the HP companies’ contracts with the Israel Prison Service and to manage the system of ID cards and checkpoints, including those at the Apartheid Wall. A growing number of churches, labor unions and other institutions are becoming HP-free zones until the corporation ends its involvement in the oppression of Palestinians.
It came one day after Samidoun held a study focusing on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration and 100 years of British and Zionist colonialism – and Palestinian resistance – in Palestine.
The protest also came days after Samidoun joined a number of other Palestine organizations in New York, including the NY4Palestine Coalition, Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine, New York City Students for Justice in Palestine, the International Action Center, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, Labor for Palestine and more for a protest on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in New York on 2 November.
Photo: Bud Korotzer/Desertpeace
“I think it’s especially important today on the 100-year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that we continue to struggle,” said Michela Martinazzi from CSFR and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in Fight Back News. “Every time we take two steps forward, Israel is right there enclosing Palestinians inside walls. They’re testing new weapons, and new ways to oppress and enact genocide on people trying to liberate their land.”
Photo: Bud Korotzer/Desertpeace
Samidoun is continuing its New York City organizing and protests to support Palestinian prisoners. All supporters of Palestine are invited and encouraged to participate in the weekly protests outside Best Buy to free Palestinian prisoners and build the boycott of HP.
Majd al-Tahhan, 19, the son of imprisoned Palestinian Rajab al-Tahhan, died on Tuesday evening, 7 November, in the Hadassah Ein Karem hospital in Jerusalem of complications from leukemia. He had been kept from his father most of his life due to Israeli imprisonment, and even during his critical illness, was finally able to spend less than 30 minutes – closer to 10 minutes – with his father only weeks ago after numerous legal filings and his father’s threat of a hunger strike.
Rajab al-Tahhan, 49, was imprisoned in October 1998 – when Majd was only an infant – and accused of taking part in a Palestinian resistance military action in which Israeli settlers in the West Bank were killed; he was sentenced to life imprisonment. After 13 years in prison, he was released in 2011 as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange.
Along with over 60 other Palestinian prisoners, al-Tahhan was seized by Israeli occupation forces in 2014 in mass arrests targeting freed prisoners in the exchange. His life sentence, along with those of dozens of other prisoners, was reimposed by a secret Israeli military committee under Article 186 of Military Order 1651. Most of these sentences were reimposed on no basis at all or a flimsy pretext such as communication with members of a prohibited organization, which includes all major Palestinian political parties. The demand to release the re-arrested prisoners has been a priority for Palestinian resistance organizations.
Al-Tahhan spent only two years and eight months with his son before being seized once more; Majd developed leukemia since his father’s most recent imprisonment.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network mourns the passing of Majd al-Tahhan. On a daily basis, Palestinian political prisoners are cut off from the lives, joys and tragedies of their families, denied visits with their dying mothers, fathers and even children. This is another form of collective punishment and collective attack on entire Palestinian families through the imprisonment of Palestinians and the denial of family connections by the Israeli occupation.
Bushra al-Tawil, journalist, former Palestinian prisoner and prisoners’ rights activist seized at her family home on 1 November, was ordered on 7 November to six months in administrative detention without charge or trial. She joins five other Palestinian women and over 450 men imprisoned without charge or trial under so-called administrative detention orders, which are indefinitely renewable and based on “secret evidence” to which both the prisoner nor their lawyers are denied access. Palestinians have spent years at a time jailed under administrative detention.
Al-Tawil, 25, was ordered to administrative detention on a secret file without discussion. She was seized from the family home in Ramallah on 1 November, where she lives with her father, Jamal al-Tawil, a prominent Hamas leader and former prisoner.
Bushra al-Tawil was seized by the Israeli occupation in 2011 and ordered to 16 months in prison; she was freed five months later as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange. In 2014, she was seized with over 60 more former prisoners and her prior sentence arbitrarily reimposed by a secret Israeli military committee; she served 11 months in Israeli prison before her release in May 2015.
She is also among nearly 60 Palestinian women prisoners in total held in Israeli prisons. Also on Tuesday, 7 November, the Israeli occupation court in Jerusalem extended the detention of Huda Odeh, 38, until next Thursday. Odeh is the wife of a Palestinian prisoner, Mohammed Odeh; she was seized from her home in a pre-dawn raid by occupation forces on Monday morning, 6 November, and taken to the Moskobiyeh interrogation center in Jeruslem.
Her husband, Mohammed, 44, has been imprisoned since 19 August 2002 and is serving nine life sentences in Israeli prisons.
Four Palestinian institutions that work on prisoners’ rights, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, issued the below report on the arrests of 483 Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces in October 2017. English translation by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
International law provides special protections to civilian populations under occupation. One aspect of such protection includes safeguards against arbitrary detention and other measures aimed at preserving and maintaining the human dignity of people inside and outside detention centers.
In violation of its most basic obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, Israeli occupation forces continued their policy of arbitrary detention of hundreds of civilians from the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2017.
Arbitrary arrests and detention are serious phenomena that continue to be carried out by occupation authorities in various Palestinian governorates and affect all sectors of society, especially children and women.
Part 1: Statistics of arrests
(Note: the figures in this report are based on the monitoring and documentation by the institutions involved in its preparation.)
In October 2017, Israeli occupation forces arrested 483 Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), including 125 children, eight women and four journalists.
According to the monitoring and documentation conducted by the four Palestinian institutions, the Israeli occupation authorities arrested 137 Palestinians from Jerusalem governorate, 80 from al-Khalil, 82 from Jenin, 52 from Ramallah and El-Bireh, 32 from Bethlehem, 28 from Qalqilya, 20 from Nablus, 15 from Tubas, 15 from Tulkarem, eight from Jericho, seven from Salfit and seven from the Gaza Strip.
In the context of the policy of administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – the occupation authorities issued 86 administrative detention orders, including 35 new orders. Thus, the total number of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails reached 6300, including 59 women, among them 11 minor girls. There are approximately 250 Palestinian children in Israeli jails and 450 Palestinians held without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Part 2: Detention of Children
The Israeli occupation courts in Jerusalem continue to issue sentences of house arrest againt Jerusalemite children, which deprives these children of their right to education. A child who has been sentenced to house imprisonment is forbidden from leaving the home, except for approved medical visits with their guardian and after informing the authorities. This forces parents to become jailers of their children, causing them deep pain.
Even more, the Israeli courts do not hesitate to issue sentences of imprisonment for children under 15 in the “sheltering center,” where eight Palestinian children are currently held. (Shadi Farrah, Adam Mohammed Sub Laban, Burhan Mohammed Abu Shaker, Ahmed al-Zaatari, Ali Ehab Alqam, Mohammed Ayman Abdel-Razaq, Yazan Mohammed al-Husseini and Mahmoud Naim Ashayer.)
Isolated Childhood
The mother of the child Shadi Farrah, 14, from Kufr Aqab in Jerusalem, said that he has been held in what the authorities call a “sheltering center” since his abdution by occupation forces along with fellow child prisoner Ahmad al-Zaatari about two years ago as they returned from school. The Israeli court later claimed that they were found to have a knife when searched. The occupation court held over 20 sessions in the trial of her son and he was considered the youngest prisoner in Israeli prisons.
She added that her son suffers from very difficult and complex psychological conditions in prison at his young age and needs psychological and moral support in particular as he is held in a “reform” institution accompanied by “criminal” prisoners.
Part 3: Arrests and allegations of “incitement” on Facebook
The phenomenon of the arrest of Palestinians for posting on Facebook under the pretet of “incitement” constitutes a new, punitive policy of the occupation authorities to bring as many children and young people as possible in prisons. Since the beginning of 2017, 220 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned on charges of publication of articles and opinions on Facebook and social media pages.
The Israeli military courts in the West Bank base these charges of “incitement” on Article 85 (1)(f) and (g) of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, which forbids the authorship or possession of any illegal book, account, journal, publication or advertisement.
In the event that Palestinians from Jerusalem are convicted of incitement, the occupation bases its charges on Article 144, section (d)(2) of the Penal Code of 1977, where paragraph (a) stipulates that:
Publishing publications for the commission of an act of violence or terrorism, or in sympathy or encouragement for acts of violence or terrorism, or displaying support for such acts, and in accordance with the contents and circumstances of the publication, being that there is a real possibility that this publication would lead to acts of violence or terrorism, can result in imprisonment for 5 years.
During October 2017, the prisoner Abdel-Salam Jihad al-Masri, 23, from the village of Aqaba near Tubas, was transferred to administrative detention for four months after serving a sentence of three months imprisonment. Al-Masri was seized by Israeli forces on 1 August 2017 and accused of incitement for posting on his Facebook page. He was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment and a fine of 2,000 NIS ($500 USD) for incitement. On 17 October 2017, he was taken once more to the Israeli military court, sent back to prison and told that he was transferred to administrative detention for four more months, on the grounds that he is a threat to the security of the occupation state, ostensibly because of his writings on Facebook.
The occupation authorities claim that the imprisonment of activists on the basis of writing on social media is the only means to prevent a danger to the security of the occupation, but it seems to have become a clear means by the occupation of silencing voices and violating the right of expression, and to create new policies to serve as a tool of arrests and repression in order to deny Palestinian freedom of expression. Facebook is an electronic space that does not reflect factual acts. It is a space where writers express themselves poetically and emotionally. It is not acceptable for this to be used as an excuse to restrict freedom of expression or muzzle Palestinian voices. It is not an acceptable or reasonable conclusion for occupation courts to interpret Facebook posts as actual acts rather than writing on screens; it is a wrongful and unfair comparison.
Section 4: Legal Analysis
This report presents the legal protections under international humanitarian and human rights law to detainees, related to the types of Israeli violations during the reporting period and the legal rules that prohibit such violations, as follows:
1 – The arbitrary detention of Palestinian citizens violates the legal guarantees related to the prohibition of arbitrary detention in international human rights law, including article 9 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 9 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976).
2 – The policy of administrative detention by the occupation state, in which detention is carried out on the basis of secret evidence and without any charge against the detainee, constitutes a direct violation of fair trial guarantees under the following legal principles:
a) It is contrary to Article 11 (1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: “Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.”
b) It constitutes a grave violation of articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial, to be informed of the charges against them and to be able to defend themselves. (Note: The Occupying Power acceded to the ICCPR in October 1991, and shall be bound by it.)
c) The failure to disclose any charges against the person detained under the administrative detention order precludes every possibility of verifying the compliance of the occupying state with Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which states that “If the Occupying Power considers it necessary, for imperative reasons of security, to take safety measures concerning protected persons, it may, at the most, subject them to assigned residence or to internment.” It is impossible to verify whether this detention is permitted without knowing what the reasons have been and are.
d) Failure to inform the detained person of the charges against them constitutes a violation of Article 71 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which obliges the occupying power to report charges without delay. They also constitute a violation of article 10 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons in Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1988, which requires the same.
3. The use of home imprisonment against children deprives them of going to school, which is harmful to their right to education, guaranteed under article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social of Cultural Rights of 1976. Denial of that right violates article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1990.
4. The arrest of Palestinians for posting on social media is a violation of their freedom of expression under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Politicl Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Conclusions:
This report sustains a number of findings, through our analysis of the practices of occupation authorities and the reality of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, as follows:
1) The occupying forces are continuing their gross and systematic violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
2) These Israeli violations have resulted in severe suffering for Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
3) The silence of the international community has encouraged the occupying power to increase their violations against Palestinian detainees.
4) The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions have failed to fulfill their duties and have in fact encouraged the occupation authorities to escalate their violations.
Recommendations:
At the conclusion of the report, this series of recommendations is based on the above-mentioned facts and the systematic and gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the occupying power, as follows:
Recommendations at the international level:
1) Formation of a fact-finding committee by the UN Human Rights Council on Israeli violations against detainees.
2) Activate the mechanisms of accountability by the international community towards the perpetrators of violations in fulfillment of its legal and ethical obligations.
3) The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must uphold their responsibilities and pressure the occupying power to respect international humanitarian law.
4) International contracting committees of the Conventions must activate their role to pressure the occupying state to respect the standards for prisoners’ rights.
Recommendations at the local level:
1) Activating local solidarity campaigns with Palestinian prisoners.
2) Media support for detainees through intensified media campaigns.
Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice An International Conference
Call for Proposals
Date: March 12-30, 2018 Deadline: November 15, 2017
Organized by: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies San Francisco State University USA
Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute for International Studies, Birzeit University Palestine Institute of Women Studies Birzeit University Palestine
& other Palestinian & International academic and research institutions
Concept/CfP:
Initiated by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (SFSU) and co-sponsored by the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute for International Studies and the Institute for Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and a host of Palestinian and international universities and research institutions. Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice international conference will be convened in Palestine between March 12 and 30, 2018.
This academic year, 2017-2018, coincides with significant anniversaries in Palestinian history: the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan Heights (June 5, 2017); the 35th anniversary of the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila Massacre (September 17, 2017): the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 2017); and the 70th of the UN Partition of Palestine (November 29, 2017), Deir Yassin Massacre (April 9, 2018) and the Nakba (May 15, 2018).
The current political and historical moment is particularly significant. Israeli colonialism, racism and occupation is deepening and entrenching. By contrast, Palestinian resistance to the Zionist project is appropriately taking multiple/different shapes and forms in all the geographies of dispossession, displacement and precarious existence. Shaping Palestinian politics is a regional and international context that is characterized by deepening poverty, civil wars, imperialist interventions, unrestrained neoliberal economic policies, hostile alliances, and the recolonization of previously decolonized nations. Rooted in xenophobic, Orientalist, Zionist, and other supremacist Ideologies, the consolidation of global and regional alliances under the guise of the so-called “war on terror” has fueled an alarming rise in Islamophobic and anti-Arab racism as well as an escalation in targeting marginalized communities.
These political, social, economic and socio-cultural dynamics shape the learning environment within and outside the classroom and extends beyond campus grounds. The rise of the neoliberal corporate university has shrunk the emancipatory spaces expanded by the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s in both the Global North and South, including anti-colonial national liberation movements. Epistemological and pedagogical transformations were particularly significant in challenging Eurocentric and colonial education as well as claiming community control over the curriculum. This was noticeable in the United States particularly in Oceanhill-Brownsville and at San Francisco State University where the 1968 Student Strike demanded a college for 3rd world studies. The 1968 SFSU student strike went beyond the free speech movement to produce a radical transformation of the curriculum. It also opened spaces for initiating and building the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies as a pedagogical, scholarly and communal site that challenges colonial, Islamophobic, Orientalist and Zionist hegemonic knowledge on Arab and Muslim communities, in general, and Palestine, in particular.
The emergence of Palestinian autonomous universities, their accreditation, and standards of excellence and innovation has been part and parcel of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and liberation movement that impacted Palestinian education under Israeli colonial rule in both the ’48 and the ’67 areas as well in refugee camps and the Palestinian exilic Diasporas. Palestinian struggle for decolonizing the curriculum for future generations resonates with similar struggles elsewhere, such as the South African uprising against Bantu Education in 1976, the rejection by the American Indian Movement of Boarding schools in North America, and the insistence on resisting the “English Only” instruction in Puerto Rico and other colonized sites in the Western Hemisphere. Black Studies
Decolonizing the curriculum was effected by and contributed to the emergence of social movements that were in turn harshly suppressed by state apparatus. Examples are abound from Latin America to the Philippines, Indonesia to Mexico, and Central and South-West Asia to North Africa and Southern Africa. Palestine was not an exception. Throughout Palestinian history, Israel has targeted and harshly suppressed campus activism as well as the infrastructure of Palestinian education. For example, during the 2002 reinvasion, Israel destroyed several schools and educational institutions, including the buildings of the Palestinian ministries of Education and Higher education. During the 1987 Intifada, Israel closed Palestinian universities and schools for several years and proceeded to ban popular clandestine education and punish educators and parents who violated this ban. Not a single commencement at any of the Palestinian universities has ever enjoyed a full graduating class.
Targeting Palestinian education has been a strategic goal of the Israeli state and its research and academic institutions. Teaching Palestine –its history, geography, colonization, generations, and resistance–as an emancipatory pedagogical and advocacy project outside of Palestine has also been targeted. At San Francisco State University and elsewhere in the academy, educators of Palestine and advocates for justice in/for Palestine have been subjected to relentless campaigns that seek to silence, intimidate and bully teachers and students who study, research and engage in the praxis of Palestine. Aimed at creating a chilling effect of new McCarthyism, these campaigns are launched by a well-funded and politically connected Israel lobby network intent on stemming the expanding tide of support for justice in/for Palestine on US college campuses. These attacks are not divorced from similar campaigns in the US academy that target dissenting and critical voices of neoliberalism and the rise of Trump and his Alt-right administration.
Targeting Palestinian education has also been increasingly evident in pressures applied by U.S. and other international donor agencies, such as the World Bank, to impose revisions in Palestinian curriculum in return for funding Palestinian Authority institutions. The goal is to reverse the anti-colonial grounding of Palestinian education that accompanied the rise of the Palestinian liberation movement. Similarly, in its attempts to re-write history, the U.S. white supremacist industry has intensified its campaign to reinstate the pre-1960s Eurocentric and colonial education to normalize as “neutral” genocide, slavery, racism, exclusion and exploitation. In both cases (and many others) the goal is to erase resistance legacies, de-educate future generations and produce docile citizenry that does not question the unjust status quo.
Teaching Palestine will therefore bring together participants who will historicize and contextualize the praxis of Palestine in its multiple manifestations and nuanced dialectics. It will provide a much needed space to think through how to move between the inside of the classroom and the outside of campus, and above all hold ourselves accountable to a complex, nuanced and exciting intellectual line of inquiry. Building on multi-site conversations inside and outside the academy, scholars, advocates and activists will weave theory and praxis in pedagogical, intellectual and community imaginaries, teaching about justice-centered knowledge production on Palestine.
To insure reciprocity in intellectual/community exchange and deepen the sense of solidarities, Teaching Palestine conference participants will spend 1-2 days at each of the sites of the sponsoring universities in a formal conference setting and informal interaction with communities on and off campus (villages, refugee camps and town as well as faculty, students and staff). In the process, conference participants will visit geographies of Palestinian anti-colonial indigenous resistance.
We invite international participation that is historically contextualized and currently relevant to discuss justice-centered knowledge production in ways that intentionally invoke and take into account opportunities and limitations of comparative analysis. We particularly seek participants from the global North and South with the understanding that the North exists in the South and vice-verse to challenge the boundaries of what teaching and learning mean, in settings including but not limited to scholarly associations, university classrooms, other classrooms, prisons, formal and informal union/labor settings, social movement and activist contexts, and informal and formal teaching and learning spaces.
Please submit a 300 word abstract of individual presentations or 500 word proposals (along with individual abstracts) of pre-organized panels, roundtables, workshops or other creative format by November 15, 2017. Bios of 250 words of all participants are required by the time of submission.
For more information please email conference co-organizers:
Three Palestinian prisoners are continuing their hunger strikes in Israeli jails, demanding their release from administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial.
Marking 100 years of the Balfour Declaration, we present an important discussion on the British role in the creation of Israel, with guest speakers Palestinian activist Saed Assaf and FRFI writer Bob Shepherd.
Palestinian journalist 
Organized by: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies