Palestinians in Gaza are still on lockdown and the UN is warning of a humanitarian catastrophe – the illegal settlements are still being built on the West Bank while occupation violence intensifies – the refugees are denied the most basic of rights – and Israel continues to hold over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
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On 23 August, three days after his graduation as a lawyer, Salah Hamouri, a 32-year-old French-Palestinian dual citizen, was again seized by the Israeli army at his home in Jerusalem. Toay, he remains imprisoned, subject to administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or tril.
During the evening, we will also hear the testimony of Fadwa Khader, president of the Sunflower Association. A friend of the Hamouri family, she lives in Al-Ram and will speak to the situation in Palestine, especially that of political prisoners.
Le 23 août dernier, trois jours après avoir obtenu son diplôme d’avocat, Salah HAMOURI, un Franco-Palestinien de 32 ans a été une nouvelle fois arrêté par l’armée israélienne à son domicile de Jérusalem.
Salah HAMOURI reste en prison ! L’ordre de mise en détention administrative du ministre de la défense a été rejeté par la Cour mais l’acharnement continue : il est condamné, situation totalement inédite, à purger la fin de sa peine précédente, soit trois mois !
Salah HAMOURI avait été libéré en décembre 2011 trois mois avant la fin de sa peine de sept ans d’emprisonnement, dans le cadre de l’échange de 1027 prisonniers politiques palestiniens contre le soldat franco-israélien Gilad SHALIT.
Au cours de la soirée nous entendrons également les témoignages de Fadwa KHADER, présidente de l’association SUNFLOWER. Amie de la famille HAMOURI, qui réside à Al Ram (Jérusalem), elle témoignera de la situation en Palestine et particulièrement de celle des prisonniers politiques.
Au lendemain de la journée internationale de la paix, Amitié Palestine solidarité propose d’amplifier la campagne pour la libération de tous les prisonniers politiques et de Salah Hamouri.
Tuesday, 19 September 4:30 pm-6:30 pm Short Term Parking at O’Hare Airport International Terminal 5
Organized by the Rasmea Defense Committee
#HonorRasmea
We now have the departure date for our dear Rasmea Odeh. She will be leaving the U.S. for Jordan on Tuesday, September 19th, 2017.
She was officially sentenced in August by Judge Gershwin Drain, who did not allow her to make a final statement in open court, but the Rasmea Defense Committee published that statement here, and now we are asking supporters to join us at O’Hare Airport on September 19th for Rasmea‘s final send-off.
This is our last opportunity to say goodbye before she is forced to depart the U.S. after an almost four-year legal and political struggle, a struggle in which the defense committee organized day and night for #Justice4Rasmea, educated thousands about her case and the cause of Palestinian liberation, and made the name Rasmea synonymous with all of the other major social justice fights in the country.
As she and the defense committee have said many times, regardless of where she lands, Rasmea will never stop working and organizing for justice and for the liberation of Palestine and other oppressed communities.
On September 19th, she will be moving on to the next chapter of her life, and we invite you to be with us that day.
WHEN:Tuesday, September 19th, 2017, from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM
WHERE: Short-term parking lot at O’Hare Airport International Terminal 5
Severely wounded Palestinian child Haitham Jaradat, 15, from Sair near al-Khalil, has had his detention extended by the Ofer military court for 11 days, even after he lies in intensive care in Shaare Tzedek medical center, shot with a bullet in his back that penetrated his abdomen and stomach. His lawyer, Karim Ajwa, said that he has had part of his intestines removed and is using artificial respiration, although he can see and hear. Despite his desperate and life-threatening medical condition, he is shackled to the hospital bed, Ajwa reported.
Along with Jaradat, the military court also extended the detention of Laith Muammar Daraghmeh, 18, from Tubas; Daraghmeh was also shot with a live bullet, in his case during a violent “arrest raid” as occupation forces invaded his city, and is too injured to attend the court hearing.
Both of these cases are particularly poignant following the death of Raed Salhi, shot six times by Israeli occupation forces who invaded his home in Dheisheh refugee camp, accusing the unarmed youth – a camp activist involved with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – of “fleeing.” Salhi, from an impoverished refugee family in the camp, was targeted in a violent arrest raid that his comrades and family have underlined as an assassination raid, especially following threats from notorious Israeli commander “Captain Nidal” to “shoot him in front of his mother.”
After nearly a month in intensive care, in a coma, hooked to artificial respiration, throughout which his detention was repeatedly extended, he was held under armed guard, and he was denied visits from his family, he died of his injuries on 3 September. His body was withheld from his family for several days until they filed a court challenge for his return, when he was buried in a mass funeral of resistance that marched through Bethlehem and Dheisheh.
Ajwa, a lawyer for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission who now represents Jaradat, also represented Salhi. Haitham, 15, was accused of “attempting a stabbing” at the Kiryat Arba settlement when he was shot by occupation forces, after settlers claimed he was running towards them with a knife. No occupation soldiers or illegal settlers were injured. Haitham was interrogated on video as he lay injured on the ground after being shot by Israeli occupation forces, during which he asked for water and said that he had come “to commit suicide.”
Meanwhile, Laith Daraghmeh was shot in the left leg with live ammunition on 13 September as occupation forces invaded Tubas in a pre-dawn raid, also reminiscent of the attack on Dheisheh in which occupation soldiers fatally wounded Salhi and shot another Palestinian refugee youth, Abdel-Aziz Arafa, in the leg.
The ongoing detention of Haitham and Daraghmeh comes as Abdel-Nasser Ferwana, head of the Prisoners’ Studies and Documentation Unit, said that occupation forces have arrested 927 children so far since the beginning of 2017, while over 300 children remain imprisoned in Israeli jails. Palestinian children in Israeli interrogation and detention have been subject to numerous forms of torture and mistreatment, including humiliation, physical abuse, psychological threats and cruelty and denial of access to lawyers or their family, as well as the use of solitary confinement in order to extract confessions or seek information from minor children. 22 Palestinian teens have been held without charge or trial under administrative detention in the past two years.
Paris protest against the labor law changes, 12 September
An Israeli military court ordered Salah Hamouri to six months imprisonment without charge or trial under administrative detention on Thursday, 14 September, reinstating the order against him by ultra-right, racist Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman. Hamouri, 32, a French-Palestinian lawyer, human rights defender and former prisoner who works as a field researcher at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, had been sentenced by the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court to a three-month sentence, the remainder of his original prison sentence before he was released in 2011 in the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange.
Hamouri was seized by occupation forces from his home in Jerusalem on 23 August 2017 in a pre-dawn raid, only three days after he passed the Palestinian bar exam to become a lawyer. He was shortly thereafter ordered to six months in administrative detention, indefinitely renewable imprisonment without charge or trial. On 5 September, however, rather than confirming the order as written, the court ordered him to serve out the remainder of his sentence from the time of his release in 2011, a three-month period. While this sentence was indeed shorter, his lawyers, family and supporters around the world highlighted that it remained unjust, unaccountable, arbitrary and unacceptable.
However, the Israeli prosecution appealed the sentence, calling for the administrative detention order to be reinstated. On 12 September, a hearing was held on the appeal. While previously the ruling had been announced as delayed, on 14 September, the higher court ruled in favor of the prosecutor’s appeal, ordering Hamouri to administrative detention for six months, an indefinitely-renewable and nearly unchallengeable sentence in the Israeli courts. A new confirmation hearing for the order will take place on 17 September. There are nearly 500 Palestinians held without charge or trial out of nearly 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails; because these orders can be renewed indefinitely, Palestinians have spent years at a time in administrative detention.
This outrageous decision was met by supporters of Hamouri in France issuing urgent statements and demands that French President Emmanuel Macron take action on the case of Hamouri, a French-Palestinian dual citizen subject to arbitrary imprisonment without charge or trial that is subject to indefinite renewal. This is only the latest in a long campaign of harassment to which Hamouri has been subject; he was banned from the West Bank for several months, preventing him from attending law school classes. His French wife, Elsa Lefort, was denied entry to Palestine while pregnant and is now banned from entering Palestine.
The Association France-Palestine Solidarite wrote, “ENOUGH! How many twists, deferrals, changes in tactics, prisons or tribunals, provisional convictions, new convictions, announcements of release or administrative detention, orders of the Minister of Defense, appeals of the prosecutor, provisional decisions, how many blows to the heart will Salah Hamouri still have to undergo before the President of the Republic realizes that on the other side of the Mediterranean there is a real scandal, a denial of justice, a violation of basic human rights which should have already attracted his attention since 23 August?…Salah Hamouri must not stay one more day in jail; it is your responsibility!”
A number of French parliamentarians, writers, activists and trade unionists have joined in the call for freedom for Salah Hamouri, and dozens of protests have been organized across the country and internationally. Contingents of support for Hamouri have also been part of mass demonstrations against the state of emergency in France and proposed neoliberal, austerity-minded changes to French labor law.
**
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network reiterates its urgent demand for the immediate release of Salah Hamouri and all Palestinian prisoners and for the French state to act immediately to defend the rights of their citizen and take action for Salah Hamouri’s freedom. This arduous and endless process of injustice and arbitrary imprisonment without charge or trial is not only an attack on Hamouri, but on all Palestinians who continue to struggle, resist and seek their freedom. This is clearly an attempt on the part of the Israeli state to target an effective, local and international human rights defender working for Palestinian freedom.
The French state must take real action to demand freedom for Salah Hamouri, the Palestinian human rights defender. From the jails and the courts of the occupation to the cities and campuses of the world, he is a consistent and clear voice against oppression and for liberation. Free Salah Hamouri! Libérez Salah Hamouri!
3. LIKE AND SHARE the Facebook page for Salah Hamouri, which will be regularly updated with news and actions to demand Salah’s freedom: https://www.facebook.com/freesalahhamouri/
4. ORGANIZE protests and actions to demand Salah’s release and that of his fellow Palestinian prisoners. Events are scheduled in multiple cities – add your own! Email us at samidoun@samidoun.net
One of the most difficult aspects of imprisonment that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails face is medical neglect and mistreatment. While cases like those of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh and Jaafar Awad are well-known, Palestinian prisoners struggle daily with access to proper medical care. They frequently report being given only painkillers if they receive treatment at all as well as lengthy delays in receiving necessary procedures.
Currently, Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Bisharat, 32, from the town of Tammun. He has reportedly been returned to the Assaf Harofeh hospital after he again lost consciousness. He is suffering from renal failure and kidney disease in both of his kidneys. He had been returned from Assaf Harofeh hospital to the Ramle prison clinic last Thursday but continued to suffer from poor vision, difficulty speaking and severe weight loss. He is currently held in the intensive care unit, Asra Media reported. Bisharat is serving an 18-year sentence; he has been imprisoned since August 2001, at the age of 16.
Bisharat’s life is at urgent risk; he is one of the most severely ill Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. His family noted that he must receive dialysis three times a week and he and his family were prevented from testing for the possibility of a kidney transplant from a living donor. Among other severely ill prisoners is Moatassem Raddad, 35, suffering from colon cancer, severe pain and infections
In this context, we present the below essay by Palestinian prisoner and prisoners’ movement leader Kamil Abu Hanish on medical neglect and mistreatment in the occupation prisons, focusing on the case of Jalal al-Faqih:
Racism and medical mistreatment in the occupation prisons By Kamil Abu Hanish
The catastrophic health conditions of Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails require in-depth studies to reveal and expose the crimes committed by one of the most prominent institutions of the occupation over the prisoners for the past decade. This article seeks to sound the alarm for all involved, focusing on the situation in recent years in regard to Palestinian prisoners’ health. The prisoner Jalal al-Faqih, who has been detained since 2003 and is sentenced to life imprisonment at age 37, suffers from several health problems, including back pain and hemorrhoids, for years. This struggler is frequently in the clinics and hospitals of the prison service without succeeding in extracting his human right – the need for surgery for his hemorrhoids. Every time, the prison administration in Gilboa prison, where he has been held for years, procrastinates and delays while al-Faqih’s situation worsens.
Since the beginning of 2015, they have been preparing him for the surgery in the language of numbers. He visited the prison clinics about 70 times between 2015 and 2016. In the same period, he was referred for further treatment 15 times, and each time, they hint at an approaching date for surgery. This date was treated as a highly important security secret and left as one promise after another, his condition worsening all the while until the life and health of the prisoner was in danger.
After pressure exerted by the prisoners on the prison administration, they informed Jalal that his operation will take place in November 2016. Jalal approached the date with assurance but his hopes were disappointed. The months of November and December 2016 passed, and we entered the new year 2017. Every day, the administration further procrastinated and invokes the argument that it is not in charge of the surgery, but instead the hospitals and their bureaucracy are responsible for. The struggler has no choice but to go for an open hunger strike to seek a date for surgery. He was promised treatment in February without a specific date, but then al-Faqih was ordered to undergo further tests prior to treatment, which means a journey of severe suffering before the procedure. In the first week of February, Jalal was taken for tests in Afula hospital and a week later taken to a final test in the Ramle prison clinic, on a dangerous road journey where dozens of prisoners are crammed in the transport vehicles.
Jalal must go on this hellish journey standing on his feet with his hands and feet shackled because he cannot sit on the cold iron seats for the full eight-hour journey. The transport vehicles stop at a number of prisons before they arrive at Ramle prison and are held overnight in the prison cells, which are not suitable for people suffering from health conditions.
The next morning, they took him from the cell to the hospital to meet with the doctor, who only sat behind his desk, flipping through te papers of Jalal’s medical file without examining him or asking any questions. After two minutes of this inhumane interview, he was told again to come out despite Jalall’s protest. He found himself shackled again, returned to the cell, to stay another night, and the disastrous journey back again to prison the next day, returned to us with a much worsened health condition after this journey of more than sixty hours of suffering to be viewed by the doctor for the period of a few minutes only.
After a few days of suffering and on the morning of 22 February, Jalal was told that he must prepare quickly to travel to Afula hospital for the operation. The operation was carried out the next day on Thursday, 23 February, and the hospital management did not accept to host him for more than one night. He was removed on the morning of Friday, 24 February, after a complicated procedure to remove internal and external fissures and damage. In the normal circumstances of a similar operation, the patient stays at least a week in the hospital. However, in the “democratic, human-rights-respecting Israeli” hospitals, the prisoner stays only one night. The prisoner Jalal was returned once again. His situation was difficult after the operation and we thought that he needed several days of care and attention by his comrades and he will start to recover. However, his condition worsened day by day and he suffered day and night.
On the seventh day after the operation, his condition worsened and his pain was unbearable. After a two-hour delay, the clinic transfered the prisoner for treatment and then shocked him again, as the doctor refused to examine him in the clinic and only provided him with pills. Jalal refused to return to his section without a medical examination. The doctor then threatened to throw him in the cells, and in front of this fascist doctor, a security officer and several jailers appeared and raised the stretcher on which Jalal was laing, lifting it vertically from the front and throwing him to the ground despite his extreme pain and then sending him to the section. He told us from his pain and tears what happened to him, which instantly raised a tense atmosphere as prisoners closed the section and demanded the administration would be responsible for what will happen in the prison if Jalal is not immediately transferred to the hospital.
The prison administration was forced to move Jalal to the hospital after calling an ambulance, and there he was subject to new tests and found to have infections and given new medications, mostly painkillers, and returned him on the same day. The atmosphere was tense on that day, as the prison administration and its officers attempted to contain prisoners’ anger and justify what had happened and to emphasize their own human feelings after being confronted with their lack of care. Especially after his condition is now improving, slowly, day by day.
The case of the prisoner Jalal is one of hundreds of such difficult cases in the occupation prisons. This is an example of what has become known as a deliberate policy of medical or health neglect or negligence, which has led to the martyrdom of dozens of prisoners in past years.
The policies and violations by the prison administration against the Palestinian prisoners are expressed as a form of retaliation. The doctors in the clinics are cold as well as lacking necessary medical qualifications, and we also note their lack of human care, which is one of the most important elements of the medical profession.
The concept of medical neglect is not a passing concern and only harms the prisoners. It is a daily fact of human rights violations and crimes. This is a call upon the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission and all human rights organizations to engage in a serious investigation into what is happening in Israeli jails. They can begin to take statements from thousands of former prisoners and hundreds who are still in prison to uncover all of the terrible facts that expose the crimes of the occupation and its repressive institution, the Prison Service, against the prisoners, for more than five decades. We must start by compiling hundreds or even thousands of files that will expose Israel’s false democracy and its crimes against humanity and hold it accountable for prosecution.
Kamil Abu Hanish is the leader of the prison branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Abu Hanish, from Beit Dajan, is serving nine life sentences in Israeli prisons for his role in the Palestinian resistance, especially during the second Intifada. He is known as a writer on political, social and economic affairs and has written several books, including poetry collections and short stories, all written behind bars in occupation prisons.
Khawla Hammad has been a stateless refugee in Lebanon for 69 years. At the age of sixteen, she was expelled from her village of Kabri, in Palestine. Now she is 84 years old, and and still a refugee in Lebanon, with no citizenship in any country at all. Israel expelled most of the population in 1948, and has prevented them from returning to their homes. Kabri and hundreds of other towns and villages were levelled to the ground, a crime that Palestinians call al-Nakba (the Catastrophe).
But Israel did not stop there. It repeatedly attacked Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, killing three of Khawla’s children among many others. Before the Nakba, Khawla’s father also lost his life as a Palestinian freedom fighter. Khawla has a message that she wants to bring to North America. So does 23-year-old Palestinian refugee, journalist and translator Amena Elashkar, whom many of you know from the 2016 Nakba Tour. She and her parents were born as stateless refugees in Lebanon and have never lived in their own country.
Khawla and Amena have a different message from other Palestinians. They are not living under Israeli occupation. Israel does not allow them to visit their homes, much less live there. As exiles, they have a different perspective from Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the part of Palestine that became Israel.
Hear Khawla and Amena speak!
This is an event of the North America Nakba Tour
This event is co-sponsored by:
NYU Students for Justice in Palestine
NYC Students for Justice in Palestine
NYU Law Students for Justice in Palestine
NYU Law National Lawyers Guild
Al Awda – NY
Students for Justice in Palestine @ St. Joseph’s College
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Labor for Palestine
American Muslims for Palestine — Upper NY
American Muslims for Palestine — NJ
To learn more about the North America Nakba Tour in your city visit http://nakbatour.com
Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro, who is facing 18 charges by an Israeli military court for his popular advocacy against illegal settlements in al-Khalil, was also jailed on September 4 by Palestinian authority security after posting critical commentary about the PA to Facebook, before his release on bail on September 10.
Stand with Amro to demand that Israel and the PA end their prosecution of him, that Israel free 6,128 Palestinian political prisoners, and that Hewlett Packard companies end their contracts with Israeli prisons and detention centers, occupation and security forces, and checkpoints and settlements.
Help build a growing international campaign to boycott HP over the companies’ support for Israeli crimes.
Support the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian Resistance, and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
ManiFiesta is an annual celebration of solidarity held at Bredene Sur Mer in Ostende, Belgium. There are a number of events and activities for Palestine taking place at the 2017 ManiFiesta.
Samidoun will be participating in tabling at the event along with the Boycott Israel tent and Plate-Forme Charleroi-Palestine as well as tabling for Raj’een Dabkeh Troupe and other Palestinian community initiatives.
In addition to constant tabling throughout the festival, events for Palestine at ManiFiesta include:
All day – Making a giant pie for Palestine to sell to support the “Medicine for the People” partner clinics in Gaza and Batir, which partner with clinics in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek https://www.facebook.com/events/1470080676408998/
A number of events will be taking place at the annual Fete de l’Humanite in La Corneuve – Paris, especially highlighting the cases of French-Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender Salah Hamouri and imprisoned Lebanese struggler for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Many organizations, including AFPS, CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, AFD, UJFP, BDS France and others, will be hosting tables and tents at the festival, as will Palestinian chef Rania. Events of particular interest are highlighted in bold below.
Some of the events for Palestine and Georges Abdallah taking place at the festival include:
Friday, 15 September:
6:30 pm, Village du Monde: Solidarity Evening with Political Prisoners in Palestine, Turkey, the United States, Morocco and Djibouti. With speakers: Palestine (Elsa Lefort, wife of Salah Hamouri; Taoufik Tahani, former president of the Association France-Palestine Solidarite; Yasser Qous, former prisoner and Addameer activist); Turkey (Sylvie Jan); United States (Johanna Fernandez); Djibouti (Berenger Tourne); Morocco (Ouadie El Hankouri, Olfa Ouled)
Saturday, 16 September:
11:00 am, Stand of Loiret: Solidarity with the Palestinian people, with Fadwa Khader of the Sunflower Association
11:30 am – 12:30 pm, AFPS Stand: Solidarity event with Salah Hamouri, featuring a discussion with Elsa Lefort, activist and the wife of Salah Hamouri.
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm, BDS stand: UJFP and cinema – 10 clips about racism
2:00 pm, Stand for Jeunes Communistes 94: The role of women in struggles in France and internationally. Speakers include Elsa Lefort and Fadwa Khader.
2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, AFPS Stand: The role of French businesses with the Israeli colonization project
Palestinians in Gaza are still on lockdown and the UN is warning of a humanitarian catastrophe – the illegal settlements are still being built on the West Bank while occupation violence intensifies – the refugees are denied the most basic of rights – and Israel continues to hold over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
On 23 August, three days after his graduation as a lawyer, Salah Hamouri, a 32-year-old French-Palestinian dual citizen, was again seized by the Israeli army at his home in Jerusalem. Toay, he remains imprisoned, subject to administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or tril.
Severely wounded Palestinian child 
Khawla Hammad has been a stateless refugee in Lebanon for 69 years. At the age of sixteen, she was expelled from her village of Kabri, in Palestine. Now she is 84 years old, and and still a refugee in Lebanon, with no citizenship in any country at all. Israel expelled most of the population in 1948, and has prevented them from returning to their homes. Kabri and hundreds of other towns and villages were levelled to the ground, a crime that Palestinians call al-Nakba (the Catastrophe).
ManiFiesta is an annual celebration of solidarity held at Bredene Sur Mer in Ostende, Belgium. There are a number of events and activities for Palestine taking place at the 2017 ManiFiesta.
A number of events will be taking place at the annual Fete de l’Humanite in La Corneuve – Paris, especially highlighting the cases of French-Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender Salah Hamouri and imprisoned Lebanese struggler for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.