The Israeli prison administration is trying to break the hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Imad Batran, held under administrative detention without charge or trial, said the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission on Thursday, 31 March.
Batran has been held under administrative detention on multiple occasions; in his last imprisonment without charge or trial, he conducted a 105-day hunger strike for his release. He began his current hunger strike on 25 February.
He has been repeatedly transferred from prison to prison; in the past week he was transferred from Megiddo prison to Asqelan prison and then again today to solitary confinement in Elah prison.
In the case of Sami Janazrah, also held under administrative detention without charge or trial, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society reported that he is now being held in isolation in the Naqab desert prison. Striking since 3 March, he is now suffering pain in the kidneys, chest and teeth. Janazrah reported to his lawyer that Israeli authorities had spoken to him about agreeing to not renew his detention, but that there were no commitments and that his strike is ongoing.
Another Palestinian prisoner has joined the growing hunger strikes – Mohammed Daoud, 34, a Palestinian refugee living in Dheisheh refugee camp, has now been on hunger strike for eight days. Daoud is one of the prisoners released in 2011 in the prisoner exchange with the Palestinian resistance; he was re-imprisoned last November and his former sentence reimposed with no charges against him under vague grounds of “security.” Daoud is now being held in solitary confinement in Ofer prison; he was serving a 10-year sentence, of which he had served five before his release in 2011. The Israeli military has now ordered the reimposition of the remaining five years of his prior sentence. There are dozens of former, re-arrested prisoners facing similar circumstances.
7000 Palestinian prisoners
700 child prisoners per year since 2000
800,000 Palestinian prisoners since 1967
99.74% of Palestinians brought before Israeli military “justice” are convicted
On the international day of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, we invite you to a gathering of solidarity with thousands of Palestinians arbitrarily imprisoned in Israeli prisons.
The program of the afternoon:
Performances for children
Letters to the prisoners
Solidarity photo exhibition
Exhibition: If I were a Palestinian…
7000 prisonniers palestiniens
170 enfants prisonnier actuellement
700 enfant prisonnier par an depuis l’an 2000
800.000 prisonniers parlestiniens depuis 1967
99, 74 % des personnes inculpés par la “””””justice””” israélienne sont condamnés.
Dans le cadre de la journée internationale pour les prisonniers palestiniens, nous vous invitons rassemblement de solidarité avec les milliers de Palestiniens emprisonés arbitrairement dans les prisons israéliennes.
Au programme de l’après-midi : ( dès 14H)
– Animation pour les enfants
– Messages à destinations des prisonniers
– Photomaton solidaire
– Exposition : ” Si j’étais palestinien.ne”
– Prise de parole
Family and friends of the martyr Omar Nayef Zayed call on the Palestinian people and the solidarity movement to join in a protest outside the Sofia central courthouse, to urge the acceleration and thorough completion of the criminal investigation, disclosure of the forensic report and accountability for the death of Omar Nayef Zayed. We want the truth and the whole truth!
Join the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon for the launch of a series of protests outside the offices of organizations and corporations that use G4S security corporation, which provides security services, control rooms and equipment to Israeli prisons, checkpoints and police training centers.
Demand that UNICEF drop its G4S contracts and prohibit any further contracts with G4S until it entirely leaves Israel and ends its relationship with the Israeli security state.
Sunday, 10 April 7:00 pm Franz-Mehring-Platz 1 Seminarraum 1 10243 Berlin
Join the Democratic Palestine Committees of Berlin to honor the life of Omar Nayef Zayed, killed in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria on 26 February, on the 40th day after his death.
Palestinian prisoners in Etzion detention center in the southern West Bank announced that they were engaging in an open hunger strike beginning Thursday, 31 March, in protest of the worsening conditions inside the prison.
Several weeks ago, 18 prisoners engaged in an open hunger strike demanding transfers to other prisons. Etzion is a detention center typically used only for short-term and temporary confinement of Palestinians arrested by Israeli occupation forces; due to the ongoing mass arrests, Palestinians are being held in the overcrowded detention center for lengthy periods of time.
Amina Tawil of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for studies said that Palestinians detained in Etzion are subject to ongoing harassment and beatings by occupaion soldiers, and daily inspections and ransacking of their cells. They are denied medical care and are transported via “Bosta” to the military court in trips that take over four hours.
Palestinian lawyer Hussein al-Sheikh reported testimonies of prisoners beaten at Etzion during detention and interrogation. Sameh Abu Sall, 19, from Al-Aroub refugee camp, was beaten with fists, kicks and rifle butts after his home was invaded after midnight, said al-Sheikh, and he was taken to the Etzion center. Ahmed Raed Jadallah, 18, from Ramallah area, was beaten for four hours after being brought to Etzion by occupation forces, said al-Sheikh, who said that this also involved fellow prisoners Mohammed Othman and Samer Othman, from the same village.
Al-Sheikh reported that there are dozens of young men in Etzion facing charges of “incitement” for posting on Facebook.
An escalating number of Palestinian prisoners is being held in solitary confinement in Israeli jails, reported the Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for Studies, noting that there are now 21 Palestinian prisoners being held in isolation.
On Wednesday, Palestinian prisoners from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad announced that they would be escalating their protests of isolation; they will refuse meals on Sunday and Wednesday next week and then plan for a three-day hunger strike the following week, to be followed by an open hunger strike if there is no action. This follows on a series of protests that began last week.
Several prisoners, including long-isolated Nahar Saadi, who has been in solitary confinement for three years, are on open hunger strike against isolation. Long-term solitary confinement is a form of torture, as noted by UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez. The end of the use of isolation was a demand of the mass hunger strike of 2012, when thousands of Palestinian prisoners refused food for one month; at the end of the strike, 19 isolated Palestinians, including prominent leaders like PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat, were returned to general population.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for Studies noted that two prisoners, Essam al-Furukh and Ramzi Obeid, both serving life sentences, were newly transferred to isolation in Eshel prison. Nahar Saadi has been in isolation since May 2013, soon followed by Hussam Omar and Musa Soufan, both isolated in Megiddo prison since August 2013.
Noureddine Amer, Abdul Rahman Osman, Issam Zeineddine, Faris al-Soueid, Shukri Khawaja, and Abdel-Azim Abdulhaq have all been isolated for over two years as well.
Last Friday, Mohammed Ahmad ‘Adi, 58, of Beit Ummar near al-Khalil, was put in solitary confinement after he delivered a Friday sermon at prayer inside Ofer prison. He was threatened with transfer to isolation in Megiddo prison and ordered to solitary confinement for three months for giving the sermon that the occupation officials described as “inciting”. Imprisoned since 22 February 2016, he suffers from cancer and heart disease, and was scheduled before his arrest for open heart surgery and surgery for tumors of the colon at Al-Ahli hospital in Al-Khalil.
The center and his family emphasized the urgency of his case, given his health situation.
30 March 2016 marks the 40th Land Day, a day of Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism and celebration of the connection of the Palestinian people to the land that continues despite expropriation and dispossession. The day marks the anniversary of the mass upsurge inside Occupied Palestine ’48 on 30 March 1976, in response to an Israeli state attempt to confiscate over 20,000 dunums of land from Palestinians in the Galilee; like today, Israeli “citizenship” has never spared Palestinians from land confiscation and dispossession on their soil.
Thousands of Palestinians in ’48, those with Israeli citizenship imposed upon them by the state, who remained on the land after 80% of Palestinians were expelled in the Nakba, rose up with a general strike and mass popular protests in the most visible resistance to the Israeli state and its policies of dispossession since the Nakba. They were met with massive state violence, and the killing of six Palestinians – Kheir Mohammad Salim Yasin, Khadija Qasem Shawahneh, Raja Hussein Abu Rayya, Khader Eid Mahmoud Khalayleh, Muhsin Hasan Said Taha and Raafat Ali Al-Zheiri – by the Israeli army as they marched to defend their land.
Just as Palestinians in ’48 face state violence, land confiscation, and the racist policies of Zionism, they also confront imprisonment, arrests and repression. There are currently 75 Palestinian “security” prisoners from Occupied Palestine ’48, housed with fellow Palestinians and facing the same restrictions and denial of rights. Karim Younis, the longest-imprisoned Palestinian prisoner, is from Occupied Palestine ’48 as is his cousin Maher; indeed, six of the seven Palestinian prisoners imprisoned over 30 years for their role in the Palestinian resistance are from Occupied Palestine ’48: Karim and Maher Younis, Walid Daqqa, Rushdi Abu Mukh, Ibrahim Abu Mukh and Ibrahim Bayadseh. Palestinian theater Al-Midan in Haifa was subjected to state scrutiny, repression and denial of funds for its exhibition of Palestinian culture, which included the theatrical performace of a short story by Daqqa.
Karim Younis
They have been consistently denied release in both prisoner exchanges with the Palestinian resistance and in Oslo-negotiations-based prisoner releases, as the Israeli state attempts to separate them as “Israeli citizens” from their fellow Palestinian prisoners in releases and labels them a “domestic matter“. At the same time, they are housed with fellow Palestinian prisoners, denied family visits, forced to see family only through glass, and held in solitary confinement while Israeli “criminal” prisoners – and even the rare Israeli Jewish prisoner held as a “security” prisoner for extreme-right violence – are granted temporary releases, their sentences limited and lowered, and allowed lengthy family visits, furloughs, and conjugal visits.
Palestinian prisoners from Occupied Palestine ’48 include the long-time prisoners held since the 1980s as well as Lena Jarbouni, the longest-serving woman Palestinian prisoner; Ameer Makhoul, the imprisoned director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations; and Asmaa Hamdan, the 19-year-old Palestinian woman ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial for sending a text message to her family.
Lina Jarbouni
The roots of the Israeli military system currently imposed upon Palestinians in the West Bank were derived from British colonial military orders imposed on Palestine – and then on the martial law imposed on Palestinians in occupied Palestine ’48 until 1966, used to undermine all attempts of Palestinians organizing inside their occupied homeland to organize and defend their land.
For example, the Al-Ard movement, which was composed of Palestinians in ’48, founded in 1958, was outlawed in 1964; its very name highlighted the centrality of the land and the struggle to preserve of its Palestinian and Arab identity. The criminalization of the movement only reinforced the defense of the land as central to a movement of indigenous people struggling to defend “the imprisoned land” from colonization.
Cultural resistance was critical for the Palestinians of ’48. Describing the growth of resistance poetry, Ghassan Kanafani wrote, “Many popular poets were put in prison or confined under severe restrictions. And as the trend of popular poetry grew and expanded, the occupying forces extended their tyrannical, measures, killed some poets and prohibited all Arab gatherings. Such measures could not anyhow uproot this trend of resistance but rather kept it dormant for almost five years to burst anew with intense force and vitality.” Poets like Samih al-Qasim and Mahmoud Darwish were imprisoned; the resistance poetry of the prison became a major contribution of the Palestinians of ’48 to Palestinian culture.
Palestinian organizations were outlawed while Palestinians were denied freedom of movement, speech and association; at the same time, the confiscation of Palestinian land continued in an ongoing Nakba; by 1993, over 80% of lands under the control of Palestinians after the Nakba in Israel were confiscated. Palestinians in ’48 were, and are, an integral part of the modern Palestinian revolution as well as fellow victims of Israel’s repression and racist violence.
Palestinians in ’48 are at the center of organizing Palestinian support for all prisoners; as most Palestinian prisoners are held within the 1948 occupied areas, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Palestinian political leaders and activists engage in visits, demonstrations outside prisons, and campaigns of support. The Palestinian movement in ’48 has played a critical role in supporting, publicizing and defending Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli hospitals, including Mohammed al-Qeeq, Khader Adnan, Mohammed Allan and many others.
Today, 40 years later, Palestinians throughout occupied Palestine continue to resist and confront settlement expansion, land confiscation, racism, Zionism and apartheid. From the expansion of settlements, to the destruction of villages and the confiscation of land, to the ban on Palestinian agricultural products entering Jerusalem, to new racist laws proposed daily atop a racist foundation, the Israeli state continues – and is intensifying – its policy of attempting to sever the Palestinian people from the land of Palestine.
Land Day is a day of anti-colonial struggle for all Palestinians: for Palestinian prisoners, struggling for freedom in their homeland; for Palestinians in ’48, struggling against apartheid, racism, and dispossession; for Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, struggling against ethnic cleansing, occupation, home demolitions, land confiscation and settlement construction; for Palestinians in Gaza, struggling against siege and the occupation of the skies, seas and borders; for Palestinians in exile and diaspora everywhere, struggling for the right of return and the liberation of the land of Palestine. It is also an international day of anti-colonial struggle that salutes the struggles of indigenous people in North America, Australia, New Zealand and everywhere confronting settler colonialism, genocide and racism, and the liberation movements everywhere confronting imperialism and exploitation of land, people and resources.
As the extreme-right Zionist government of Netanyahu, Ayelet Shaked, Naftali Bennet, Miri Regev, Moshe Ya’alon, Gilad Erdan, Uri Ariel and their compatriots intensify the repression of Palestinians in ’48 and throughout Palestine, it is critical more than ever to intensify our efforts to defend the Palestinian people and Palestinian land, including the campaign to free all Palestinian prisoners. The international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and the Palestinian call that has inspired and led that campaign, highlights the struggle of Palestinians in ’48 for justice and equality as central to Palestinian freedom and justice in Palestine. On the 40th Land Day, we must escalate global boycott and BDS campaigns and the international isolation of Israel – and the corporations, like G4S, that profit from its oppression and racism.
The occupation of Palestinian land is the central facet of the settler colonial Zionist project in Palestine; Land Day marks the unity of the Palestinian land, people, and cause, everywhere inside and outside Palestine, for defending and liberating the land and people of Palestine.
Palestinian women prisoners held in Damon prison are facing particularly harsh conditions, reported Palestinian lawyer Hanan al-Khatib on Monday, 28 March. 17 of the 25 women held in the prison, opened several months ago after the overcrowding of HaSharon prison, are sharing one room.
The one room includes only one toilet which is insufficient for the needs of the women; several of the women prisoners sharing the room are ill. The prison is also very cold and the women do not have access to winter clothing and blankets.
Furthermore, the women prisoners held in Damon prison, noted Khatib, are subject to constant transfers by ‘Bosta’ whenever a hearing is scheduled in their cases before the military courts. They are first transferred to HaSharon and then to the military court, with the same procedure upon their return. At times, they are held at HaSharon for an entire weekend if their hearing takes place on a Thursday or Sunday, preventing them from any stability. WOFPP reports that “this means that they are deprived of any kind of routine, and this together with the difficult transportation conditions and the move from prison to prison lead many of the women to want to give up attending their own trials – something about which they do not always have a choice.”
Regarding the Bosta, Leena Jawabreh, former Palestinian prisoner, wrote, “She is transferred in the ‘Bosta,’ the designated vehicle to transfer prisoners to the military courts. It is in fact a mobile cell with a metal chair. It can barely accommodate one person in a sitting position, and the windows are blacked out. The prisoner is chained by her hands and feet, and the shackles hurt her wrists every time she moves and leave marks on her body. The Bosta is used without any mercy from the occupation. She is subjected to all kinds of humiliation, verbal abuse, and mockery by the soldiers who transport her.”
Three new Palestinian prisoners have joined the ongoing hunger strikes against administrative detention – Israeli imprisonment without charge or trial – and solitary confinement, reported the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission. Palestinian lawyer Karim Ajwa said that Abdul-Ghani Safadi had joined Sami Janazreh, Imad Batran and Abdul-Rahim Sawayfeh on hunger strike in protest of their administrative detention without charge or trial.
In addition, Issam Zaineddine of Nablus and Abdullah al-Mughrabi of Jerusalem joined Nahar al-Saadi on hunger strike against long-term solitary confinement. Over 14 Palestinians are currently held in isolation; Saadi has been isolated for three years. Mughrabi, imprisoned since 2014, was scheduled for release in March but he was instead transferred first to interrogation, and then to solitary confinement, in February. Zaid Bseisi went on hunger strike for three days last week in protest of isolation; in principle his return to Nafha prison after a recent transfer to Gilboa prison was agreed to by the prison administration on Wednesday.
In addition, Palestinian prisoners associated with Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are extending their campaign inside the prisons against administrative detention; following a two-day hunger strike last week, prisoners in Nafha, Naqab, Ramon, Eshel and Ofer prison will return meals one day in the coming week. They are demanding an end to isolation for Saadi and all fellow prisoners in solitary confinement, in particular four in Eshel prison, Hosni Issa Khaizaran, Munir Abu Rabie, Saeed Saleh, and Ahmed Abu Jazar, as well as ending newly-imposed sanctions on the prisoners, opening new rooms and stopping overcrowding, noting that prisoners in Ofer are now sleeping on the floor.
The Israeli prison administration is trying to break the hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Imad Batran, held under administrative detention without charge or trial, said the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission on Thursday, 31 March.
