On December 10, Medhat Tareq al-Issawi, the brother of long-time hunger striker and fellow Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi, was released from Israeli prisons after spending 22 months.
Medhat Issawi was jailed on charges of membership in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He has spent over 20 years in Israeli prisons over varying period and is a DFLP leader.
Samer Issawi refused food for over 200 days after he was re-arrested following his release in the October 2011 prisoner exchange. Issawi was freed from his 30-year sentence in the prisoner exchange agreement of October 2011 after serving nearly 10 years, he was re-arrested on July 7, 2012, in an area within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, and accused of violating the terms of his release by leaving Jerusalem.
Medhat Issawi and his daughter. Via @Sireenessawi on Twitter
Samer Issawi finally ended his hunger strike when Israeli authorities agreed to release him after serving 18 months, on December 22, 2013. Palestinian and international pressure on Israel supported Samer’s hunger strike as people around the world expressed their solidarity with Samer’s struggle against unjust imprisonment.
Fadi Issawi, Medhat and Samer’s brother, was killed by Israeli soldiers – shot in 1994, just a week after his 16th birthday. During Samer’s hunger strike, his sister Shireen, who often served as the spokesperson for his case, was arrested for 24 hours, held for 10 days under house arrest, and her law license was suspended for six months. The home of Ra’fat Issawi, another brother of Samer, Medhat and Shireen, was demolished by Israeli authorities in January 2013.
Layla Issawi, Samer, Medhat, Shireen, Fadi and Ra’fat’s mother, visited Samer on December 10 after Medhat’s release. While she was there, she sent a message to Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
To the Secretary General of the Popular Front Ahmad Sa’adat,
Goodbye my brother, noblest of men, I saw you yesterday during my last visit to my son Samer before his release; I see you always when I visit, and I cried, because I will not see you – and God knows when I will see you again? I long for freedom for you and all of the prisoners. Congratulations on the anniversary of the founding of the Popular Front!
Um Samer al-Issawi
The trial of Palestinian political prisoner Mona Qa’adan, 42, from Jenin, was postponed for the tenth time on December 9, postponed until December 19 with no reason given by the Salem military court.
Qa’adan, who previously served three and one-half year in Israeli prisons, was re-arrested on November 13, 2012 after her release from occupation prisons in October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange agreement. Since her arrest, she has been denied family visits, even from family members with permits for visitation.
Former prisoner Tareq Qa’adan, the brother of Mona, told Ahrar center for human rights that it was the tenth time the Israeli military courts rescheduled the trial of his sister. While Tareq was imprisoned, Mona engaged in solidarity hunger strikes to support his demands.
Mohammad and Islam Badr, brothers, and Thaer Abdu, have been transferred to hospital from Ofer prison on December 12 and remain on hunger strike. They launched their hunger strike on November 16 after they were each sentenced to administrative detention. Palestinian political prisoners held in administrative detention are held with no charge or trial, for up to six month renewable periods, on the basis of secret evidence.
All were arrested in mass sweeps in late October. Both Mohammad and Islam Badr have lost over 12 kilograms in weight since the beginning of their strike. The three hunger strikers have been isolated from their fellow detainees and all of their personal belongings were removed from their room in Ofer. They were denied extra blankets and bedding held in a very cold room in Ofer, such as to make drinking water uncomfortable. Prison guards entered and aggressively raided their room at least five times daily under a pretext of inspection.
They are demanding an end to their detention without charge or trial and striking to demand their freedom, taking only water and salt.
In addition, all of the administrative detainees in Israeli prisons are continuing coordinated steps to protest their detention and continuing restrictions and deprivations of their rights. The Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights reported that administrative detainees in the Negev have been denied family visits for two months and have been prevented from receiving newspapers and books, as well as being denied recreation outside their section for a week. In Megiddo prison, 6 detainees have been isolated because of their continuing protest.
Raafat Nassif told the Solidarity Foundation that administrative detainees will begin returning their meals on Mondays and Thursdays as the third state of their collective protest. Previously, administrative detainees were striking one day a week. Other steps will be taken in the future up to and including an open-ended hunger strike, he said.
Mohammed Badr, Islam Badr, and Thaer Abdu, three Palestinian administrative detainees, are continuing their hunger strikes, reported Palestinian lawyers. They are demanding an end to the use of administrative detention and in particular, their detention without charge or trial.
Mohammed and Islam are brothers; all three have been striking since November 16. All three are held in one room, room 14 at Ofer military prison; their personal belongings have all been confiscated and they have only bedding and a blanket for each of them.
Administrative detainees have been stepping up their protests and are now returning meals twice a week until December 30, in protest of the use of detention without charge or trial, as well as boycotting court hearings for administrative detainees.
Palestinian administrative detainee Akram al-Fassisi, held without charge or trial, suspended his hunger strike after over 50 days of striking on November 26, 2013. He had been on hunger strike since September 29, protesting his imprisonment without charge or trial. He suspended his strike in Assaf Harofe hospital after serious deterioration in his health status.
His administrative detention order was renewed for three months on November 16, 2013, after two six-month renewals. He was detained on November 16, 2012. Administrative detainees are held without charge or trial for ongoing renewable periods of up to six months.
The Electronic Intifada reported that Israeli occupation authorities issued an arrest warrant for a 4-year-old child, Muhammad al-Majid, a Palestinian Jerusalemite, on November 28.
EI reported that the Wadi Hilweh Information Center reported in Arabic:
Amid their frenzied campaign of arresting children in Jerusalem, Israeli forces raided the home of Zine al-Majid in the Saadia area of the Old City last week in order to arrest his son Muhammad, who is four years old.
The boy’s father told Wadi Hilweh Information Center:
“A big force raided our house at dawn on Thursday, and demanded to know the names of my children. So I told them and they said, ‘we have an arrest order for Muhammad.’ I was shocked and asked one of them if he was sure. Muhammad is only four years old! But the officer was not convinced and asked me to wake him up, and after he saw him he backed down from carrying out the arrest.
The father added: “I told the officer, ‘you want to arrest him; should I send milk and diapers with him?’”
He said that the officer questioned him about his son and his son’s friends and if he was in the neighborhood, under the pretext that an Israeli settler had been injured. He threatened to summon and interrogate the child if the accusations were established
“For children like four-year-old Muhammad al-Majid, there is no safety even inside their houses, as Israeli occupation forces can invade any time of day or night.
As of 30 September, 179 Palestinian children were imprisoned and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, according to DCI,” EI reported.
A solidarity evening with Palestinian political prisoner Mansour Mowqada was held in Salfit on November 29, calling for his release and that of his fellow sick prisoners. The mayor of Salfit, Said Shukour, said that the call of sick prisoners was an urgent humanitarian issue requiring international action.
Mowqada uses a wheelchair, has tumors, and must use “plastic stomach” and colostomy bags for digestion and excretion. He receives mostly painkillers at Ramle prison clinic, which has been described as a “tomb for the living” for the 20 prisoners with the most severe health conditions. He lost the use of his legs when he was shot by Israeli occupation forces in 2002 and has spent the entire time since his arrest in the Ramle prison clinic. He is 42 years old and is serving a 30-year sentence.
Palestinian sick prisoners continue to protest and call for freedom. Some additional particular cases of sick Palestinian political prisoners whose health status is deteriorating and are not receiving sufficient treatment include:
Nabil Natsheh, who has been held in administrative detention since March 27, 2013, has cancer of the lymph nodes. He was diagnosed in 2010 before his arrest and was receiving chemotherapy in Beit Jala.
Natsheh has been suffering from high blood pressure and severe shoulder pain.
Yousef Nadjeh suffers from epilepsy and memory problems. He has kidney problems, swelling in his legs and extremities and has lost balance due to head pain. He requires crutches to walk and fell in Ofer military court due to his ill health.
Fuad Shoubaki is 84 years old. He was arrested in 2006 and is serving a 20 year sentence. He has an enlarged prostate and was recently admitted to Hadassah hospital for treatment. He needs eye surgery, which has a 95% success rate, but needs a private doctor to enter to complete the surgery. He is planning to petition the Supreme Court to be allowed a private doctor.
Yahya Salameh has an enlarged tumor in his right shoulder and has not received surgery to remove it, despite numerous promises from the Ramon prison clinic.
Imad Shoukeir has bullet fragments in his body from when he was shot in 2002 by Israeli forces and continues to suffer severe pain from the presence of the bullet fragments.
Over 70 Palestinian political prisoners were moved between Eshel, Beer Sheva, Nafha and Ramon Prisons on November 30, reported the Palestinian Prisoners Studies Centre.
The purpose of these transfers is to create instability and uncertainty among the prisoners and to dispel protests and organizing among the prisoners confronting the policies of the prison administration. Prisoners reported in a telephone conversation with the centre that there are increasing restrictions being imposed upon the prisoners and that prisoners have been meeting to protest the administration, particularly to highlight the cases of the sick prisoners and administrative detainees held without charge or trial.
On November 19, sick prisoners in Nafha began boycotting the prison clinic and refusing medication in order to highlight the particular urgent needs of sick prisoners and protest medical neglect.
The political prisoners reported to the centre that this campaign of transfers is, in their eyes, designed to undermine planned protests and may be only the first step in a series of mass transfers to undermine organizing within the prisons. It should be noted that transfers take place via “Bosta” in which prisoners are transported shackled to iron chairs in poorly ventilated transport vehicles. The experience of the “Bosta” has been protested repeatedly by Palestinian political prisoners and many have been injured in rough and aggressive transfers.
Particular tension has developed in the Negev prison, reported the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, around the same two issues: administrative detainees held without charge or trial and medical neglect and health deterioration of sick prisoners. The same “Bosta” transport is used to move sick prisoners to hospitals or the Ramle prison clinic and takes several hours, increasing their suffering.
Murad Saad is one sick prisoner held in Negev; he has tumors in several parts of his body and was denied treatment through over two years of health complaints and continues to wait for any real treatment. Political prisoners held in the Negev have reported abusive and violent inspections and raids of cells under the pretext of searching for mobile phones as well as insect infestations inside the prisons.
In addition, the administration of the Israeli Hawara detention center forced a number of Palestinian prisoners, under the guard of the Israeli soldiers, to clean up the prison while their feet are shackled for three hours, the Palestine Information Center reported on November 30.
On November 27, Palestinian Authority security services detained former prisoner and hunger striking hero Khader Adnan, as he defended his cousin Farouk Moussa from political arrest from PA security forces in Arraba.
Khader Adnan was later released, but Farouk Moussa remains detained. The political detention of Palestinian activists is part of the practice of security coordination between PA security forces and the Israeli occupation forces, which has frequently led to arrests and detention of Palestinian resistance activists or people pinpointed by Israel or the PA by Palestinian Authority forces.
Khader Adnan engaged in a historic hunger strike in 2012 in protest of his administrative detention without charge or trial. His 66-day strike secured an agreement for his release and played a major role in sparking a series of hunger strikes that has followed in the year and a half since Adnan’s strike.
Image via Warrior Publications https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/
Indigenous peoples in New Brunswick, Canada have been engaged in an extensive struggle to defend their land and resources from large corporations and extractive industries. In particular, SWN, a US based corporation, is looking to engage in exploration and testing for potential hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on Mi’kmaq and Elsipogtog territories. These practices have been shown to be highly devastating to the environment, and enrich the corporations involved while further impoverishing Indigenous people while poisoning the land and water.
In response, the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society alongside their people and allies have set up a blockade to prevent the SWN trucks from entering their land. They have been attacked on multiple occasions by the RCMP. As BASICS News describes, “Jim Pictou is a member of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, “the homeland security of the Mi’kmaq nation.” Today, the Mi’kmaq, whose ancestral lands span much of the Atlantic region of Canada, are at the center of a developing resistance to hydraulic fracturing – or ‘fracking’ in New Brunswick, the process by which high-pressure water and chemicals are injected into the ground to remove natural gas from shale rock. The resistance to fracking in New Brunswick has seen the development of a broad united front of native and non-native people.”
In the course of defending the land, several Warriors continue to be held as Political Prisoners by the Canadian state. They have been held in solitary confinement (now released from solitary due to mass support), taken from their cells, beaten, and abused for defending their land. They are asking for letters of support! Please write to: Coady Stevens, Aaron Francis, Germain Junior Breau, and James Sylvester Pictou at:
Palestinian Youth & Student Solidarity with Mi’kmaq Blockade
A statement of solidarity initiated by the Progressive Student Action Front – Palestine and the Palestinian Progressive Youth Union. Endorsements welcome:From one stolen land to another, we express our highest solidarity with the Mi’kmaq and Elsipogtog people, the Mi’kmaq Warriors Society and the members of their blockade, defending their lands and confronting colonial resource extraction and profiteering. The blockade, which began September 30, closed Highway 134 in New Brunswick, in the Canadian state, in order to prevent devastating resource extraction (hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”) by SWN Resources, a large U.S. corporation.This blockade is a powerful action of Indigenous people exerting their right to their land, to protect it and prevent its exploitation and destruction taking place, and demanding justice, dignity and decolonization. SWN Resources claims the blockade has cost it $60,000 daily as it attempts to carry out natural gas exploration in the area for hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a destructive process to extract shale gas that is devastating to the environment and water.
The Mi’kmaq Warriors Society and their allies at the blockade were attacked on October 17 by approximately 200 armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who besieged the blockaders, releasing tear gas, tasering protesters, using police dogs and firing rubber bullets. At least 40 land defenders, including Elsipogtog Chief Arren Sock, Mi’kmaq Warriors, and reporters, have been arrested.
Indigenous people in Canada have faced genocide and crimes against humanity, including cultural genocide in residential schools, forced displacement, containment on reservations, controls on movement, and massive land theft and expropriation. They have been resisting for hundreds of years on their land, continually confronting settler colonialism and occupation.
As Palestinians, we also face a settler colonial occupier. We also face occupation, apartheid, resource exploitation, the destruction of our olive trees and the theft of our land and labour for a colonial settler project based on the dispossession, expulsion and oppression of our people. We are struggling to bring settler colonial rule to an end, along with the occupation and apartheid that it creates, and for the right of return of Palestinian refugees, expelled from their homeland for over 65 years.
The Canadian settler colonial state has been one of the foremost international supporters of our settler colonial occupier, Israel. Canada supported the partition of our land, and is now constantly heard in international arenas supporting Israeli wars against Palestinians and Arabs, attacking Palestinian rights, and labelling itself Israel’s best friend. Canadian state officials denounce Palestinian efforts to hold Israel accountable under international law for its crimes against Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine – at the same time that Canada attempts to quash and suppress international efforts by Indigenous people to seek justice, accountability and decolonization.
From Palestine to Turtle Island, we have one struggle, and we affirm our solidarity and common resistance!
Progressive Student Action Front (Palestine)
Palestinian Progressive Youth Union
Students for Justice in Palestine – National, ad hoc steering committee
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights-UBC
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights – Calgary Chapter
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at Western University
General Union of Palestinian Students – San Francisco
Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University (SAIA York)
Students for Justice in Palestine at Brooklyn College
Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers University – Newark
Toronto Students for Justice in Palestine
Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine
Students for Justice in Palestine – Cornell University
Students for Justice in Palestine – Columbia University
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign Vancouver
Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign
Join us on the streets of Manchester to demand the release of Palestinian political prisoners, held captive by a racist, apartheid state. Bring pictures, flags, kuffiehs and voices! We will have an open mic for all who want to speak out.
Israel holds over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, including around 200 children. More than a third of males from the West Bank have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, as Israel invades, shoots and snatches anyone they think may be a ‘resistance activist.’ The prisoners and their communities frequently protest against their treatment, which has included physical and psychological. They are political prisoners who should be released. As hunger striker Samer Issawi writes from jail,
‘Israel could not continue its oppression without the support of western governments. These governments, particularly the British, which has a historic responsibility for the tragedy of my people, should impose sanctions on the Israeli regime until it ends the occupation, recognises Palestinian rights, and frees all Palestinian political prisoners.’
During 24 hours in October, Israeli forces bombed targets in Syria and Gaza, with no condemnation from Britain. Palestinian suffering increases as apartheid Israel launches murderous invasions into the West Bank and strangles Gaza. As it talks about ‘peace’, Israel builds thousands of settlement blocks in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. A movement in Britain to isolate Israel would put more pressure on the apartheid state and aid the struggle for a free and independent Palestine.
On December 10, Medhat Tareq al-Issawi, the brother of long-time hunger striker and fellow Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi, was released from Israeli prisons after spending 22 months.
