By: Fadi Abu Saada
Published Friday, March 16, 2012 in Al-Akhbar English
Tens of thousands of Palestinians and their families have suffered from the humiliation brought on by a single law, one that Israel uses to jail people without charges.
Ramallah – There is no doubt that the historic hunger strike by Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, a leading member of Islamic Jihad – which lasted for 66 days – cast a light on the injustice of the occupation’s administrative detention law.
Now female prisoner, Hana Shalabi, is doing the same. She has just completed 28 days of an open-ended hunger strike which began with her arrest on February 16. She is striking in protest against her arrest, method of interrogation, and strip search.
British Origins
The British were not content with the calamitous Balfour Declaration which led to the Palestinian catastrophe. They went further with their injustice with a set of unfair laws in Palestine which live on today.
The Israeli occupation forces found such measures to be perfectly suited for their needs, so they began to implement them immediately.
One of these is “administrative detention,” which allows for the detention of Palestinians for up to 6 months without a charge. Worse yet, the period can be repeatedly renewed, completely circumventing due process.
According to the Palestinian prisoner affairs ministry, Israeli military law explicitly sanctions administrative detention.
Initially, the law was sanctioned because orders for administrative detention were carried out under “emergency laws” promulgated by the British mandate in 1945. But in 1979, Israel passed a new law adopting the same powers as the emergency law.
A record number of administrative detainees were held during the first intifada. Between 1987 and 1994, 20,000 orders for administrative detention were issued.
During the second intifada (2000), Israeli military courts recorded more than 19,000 such detentions.
According to Amnesty International, Khader Adnan is one of over 300 Palestinians currently held in administrative detention, including one man held for over five years and 24 Palestinian Legislative Council members.
The Biggest Hunger Strike
In the last few days, the prison administrations at the Gilboa, Shatta, and Megiddo facilities carried out DNA tests on prisoners under threat of force.
This is one of the reasons why Palestinian prisoners have just put “the final touches on the biggest open-ended hunger strike to be witnessed in Israeli prisons. It will start in April,” according to Waed, who works for the Society for Detainees and Ex-Detainees.
According to the prisoners, the strike will be a decisive turning point and will go on until their demands are met.
One of their most important demands is an end to the policy of solitary confinement, particularly for those who have been subjected to isolation for a long time.
There are some other crucial complaints such as medical neglect, administrative detention, and visitation rights.
Visitors, for example, have to wait many months to obtain the approval of the occupation forces. Their family relationship and the minute details of visitors’ personalities are scrutinized.
However, things do not just end with an Israeli permit. Visitors must then contend with the arduous road to the prison, where family members are subjected to humiliating searches at Israeli checkpoints.
Prisons in the south, such as Ramon and Nafha, are a major nightmare for the people of Bethlehem and Hebron.
If they were to obtain a permit to visit, they know that they have to cross the Zahiriyya and al-Shamaa checkpoints south of Hebron.
Because of the deliberate humiliation of prisoners’ relatives, these checkpoints have become a flash point between the family members and the occupation soldiers.
According to eyewitness statements made to the prisoners affairs ministry by close family members: “The soldiers on these checkpoints search the families on purpose. They strip men and women naked. This generates widespread complaints among the families.”
The account continues by noting that “a number of people refuse the searches…so they cannot complete their trip, because these checkpoints are the gateways to the prisons in the south and the families have to go through them.”
Prisoners’ families in the areas of Bethlehem and Hebron announced that they will stop visiting their loved ones if this humiliating treatment continues.
Although more than one meeting has been held with the International Red Cross, one of the organizers of the visits who coordinate with the Israeli side, nothing has changed.
The representative of prisoners in Ramon, Jamal Al-Rajjoub, who is serving a life sentence, says: “Our dignity is more important to us than anything. We don’t want visits where our wives and sisters are humiliated.”
The Zahiriyya military checkpoint is a model for tens of checkpoints all over the occupied West Bank, where prisoners’ families are abused and humiliated.
These visits have become a harsh punishment for the families, a journey of bitterness and hardship.
Furthermore, a large number of these relatives, who spend long hours at the checkpoint, in extreme cold or heat, go back home after refusing to endure such prolonged misery.
Some have their permits torn up by the soldiers without any reason. The measures also make it impossible for the sick and elderly to visit prisoners.
One of the saddest stories is the one of prisoner Mounif Abu Atwan’s mother.
She was humiliated at the Zahiriyya checkpoint, suffered severe exhaustion, and fainted. She died right after her visit to her son.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Richard Falk:Hana Shalabi: A Brave Act of Palestinian Nonviolence
The following piece, by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, was first published on his blog:
(photo by Joe Catron)
No sooner had Khader Adnan ended his 66 day life threatening hunger strike than new urgent concerns are being voiced for Hana Shalabi, another West Bank hunger striker now without food for more than 24 days. Both strikes were directed by Palestinian activists against the abusive use of administrative detention by Israeli West Bank occupying military forces, protesting both the practice of internment without charges or trial and the degrading and physically harsh treatment administered during the arrest, interrogation, and detention process.
The case of Hana Shalabi should move even the most hardhearted. She seems a young tender and normal woman who is a member of Islamic Jihad, and is dedicated to her family, hopes for marriage, and simple pleasures of shopping.
She had previously been held in administrative detention at the HaSharon prison in Israel for a 30 month period between 2009 and 2011, being released in the prisoner exchange of four months ago that freed 1027 Palestinians and the lone Israeli soldier captive,Gilad Shalit. Since her release she has been trying to recover from the deep sense of estrangement she experienced in prison, and rarely left her home or the company of her family. As she was returning to normalcy she was re-arrested in an abusive manner, which allegedly included a strip-search by a male soldier. On February 16, 2012, the day of this renewal of her administrative detention, Hana Shalabi indicated her resolve to start a hunger strike to protest her own treatment and to demand an end of administrative detention now relied upon by Israel to hold at least 309 Palestinian in prison. Her parents have been denied visitation rights, Hana Shalabi has been placed in solitary confinement, and her health has deteriorated to the point of concern for her life. Impressively, her parents have committed themselves to a hunger strike for as long as their daughter remains under administrative detention. Her mother, Badia Shalabi, has made a video in which she says that even to see food makes her cry considering the suffering of her daughter.
Despite the calls to Palestinian from liberals in the West these extraordinary hunger strikes have met with silence or indifference in both Israel and the West. Israeli authorities declare that such a posture is a voluntary action for which they have no responsibility. The UN has not raised its voice, as well. I share the view of Khitam Saafin, Chairwoman of Union of Palestinian Woman’s Committee: “The UN must be responsible for the whole violation that are going on against our people. These prisoners are war prisoners, not security prisoners, not criminals. They are freedom fighters for their rights.” The plight of Hana Shalabi is also well expressed by Yael Maron, a spokesperson for the Israeli NGO,Physicians for Human Rights- Israel: “The story of Hana Shalabi, like that of Khader Adnan, before is in my opinion a remarkable example of a struggle that’s completely nonviolent towards one’s surroundings..It is the last protest a prisoner can make, and I find it brave and inspiring.”
To engage in an open ended hunger strike, especially for a person who is not in a leadership role, requires a deep and abiding dedication to right a perceived wrong of the greatest gravity. It is physically painful and dangerous to bodily health, as well as being psychologically demanding in the extreme. It presupposes the strongest of wills, and usually arises, as in these instances, from a sense that any lesser form of resistance is futile, and has a long record of failure. In the end, it is an appeal to the conscience and humanity of the other, and a desperate call to all of us, to understand better the cartography of abuse that abusive imprisonment entails, which I would imagine is pervasively humiliating for a religiously oriented young Islamic woman. To risk life this way without harming or even threatening the oppressor is to turn terrorism against the innocent on its head. It is potentially to sacrifice one’s life to make an appeal of last resort, an appeal that transcends normal law and politics.
We can only fervently hope and pray that Hana Shalabi’s heroic path of resistance will end with her release and the restoration of her health. For Israel’s own moral wellbeing it is time, really long past time, to renounce reliance on administrative detention and to do more than this, to end forthwith its varied crimes of occupation. At this point the only possible way to do this is to withdraw unconditionally behind the 1967 borders, and to start peace negotiations from that altered position. It is politically unimaginable that Israeli leaders will heed such a call, but it is morally unimaginable that Israel will survive its impending spiritual collapse if it does not do so.
(photo by Joe Catron)
In the meantime, we who are beyond these zones of occupation, abuse, and imprisonment must not only stand and watch as this tragic drama plays itself out. Wherever we are, whatever we can do, we need to act, to appeal, to shout, and to denounce the inhumanity of allowing such cruelty to be enacted before our watching eyes.