The Abuse of Palestinian Political Prisoners

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Throughout the decades of Israeli military occupation, Palestinians from all walks of life have been illegally detained by Israel. Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories. Now, considering the fact that the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians detained forms approximately 30% of the total male Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories.

According to Stop the Wall, of the 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners currently being held captive by Israel, 450 are children and 125 are women. And of these, almost 2000 have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up, humiliated, ill-treated and held in poor conditions as a collective punishment for the attacks on Israelis by members of Palestinian armed groups. Many are currently held in “administrative detention” which means they have not been charged with any crime and they can be jailed for up to 6 months with their detention indefinitely renewable. These prisoners face brutal forms of torture and mistreatment during their arrest and detention, and are consistently denied family and lawyer visits and groups like the Prisoner’s Society of Tubas, strive to release these facts to the international community.

When I spoke to the director of the Prisoner’s Society in Tubas, whose objectives are to offer support and advice to the families of prisoners as well as appealing for representation and freedom for the prisoners themselves, he told me: For every Palestinian arrested, it is the story of a life torn apart and an entire family broken. Yet what is so distressing to them is that the international community remains relatively silent in the face of Israel's illegal detention of Palestinians and the fact that these detainees are often subjected to horrific forms of torture.

I spoke to this gentle and kind man who told me he was arrested in 1984 for being a member of a non violent political party. He was given a life sentence but was released after serving 9 years when the Oslo agreement was signed. He spent his first 18 days of capture chained naked to a chair. Heavy metal music was played from speakers next to his ears and he was regularly beaten. During his initial detention he did not know where he was and was allowed no contact with his family or legal representatives. He wept as he told me that when he was finally released he didn’t even recognise his son or his youngest brother. The irony of this situation is that his youngest brother (in the photo that his daughter is holding) has now been kept without trial for the last year in a detention centre.

The Geneva Conventions, the International Convention for Political and Civil Rights and the Convention against Torture and Cruel and Inhuman Treatment, all prohibit the use of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, without exception and Israel has consistently violated international laws in this regard. Detention conditions enforced by Israel do not conform to the UN Minimum Standard Rules of the Treatment of Detainees, nor to the Basic Principles of the Treatment of Prisoners. In fact few Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories who have been arrested or detained by the Israeli security forces enjoy even the basic rights owed to them by the 4th Geneva Convention.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories who are arrested by Israeli security services are under a system of military justice. Under this system Palestinians may be arrested without warrant and without ''reasonable suspicion'' that a person has committed any criminal offence. The arresting body, does not need to directly inform families of those arrested, but instead provides information to Israeli non-governmental organizations such as the Centre for the Defense of the Individual, which families may contact, if they are even aware of the organizations' existence.

The director introduced me to an old man, in his 70’s who told me the story of his two sons who were both arrested at a checkpoint. One was shot and killed on the spot following what was only described as ‘an incident’ by the IDF and the other was beaten around the head with a rifle butt before being arrested. This beating has lead to the development of a degenerative neurological disorder requiring expensive medication. While his son remains awaiting trial in ‘administrative detention’ without even the right to speak to his father, the Israeli forces are now charging the old man extortionate amounts of money for his son’s medical attention. He doubts he will ever see his son alive again.

The director of the Prisoners Society told me that the arrests and the fear of detentions in Tubas have affected every single person. Numerous homes in the community have been raided without warning and Men, women and children have all been arrested on suspicion of various crimes against Israel. The extended families of suspects have been rounded up and detained as collective punishment, and students are regularly arrested and stopped from attending university. From Tubas alone, 22 students are currently being detained and throughout the Palestinian territories, approximately 1 in 10 students has been imprisoned.

Whilst we were at the University I met this seemingly shy 26 year old woman who had just spent a year in an Israeli detention centre. Her crime was to be under suspicion for intent to harm an Israeli soldier or settler. During her time in prison she told me how she had been regularly beaten by male and female guards and dumped naked in baths of cold water with her head held under the surface and how when she went on hunger strike, over access to a single pen, she had been thrown in solitary confinement with a tear gas canister rolled in after her.

However the most disturbing thing she told us was how her pregnant cell mate had been forced to give birth shackled to her bed and surrounded by armed male guards. For the first few months of the baby’s life it was not even recognised as an individual and thus was not given any clothing or food of its own. The mother and her cell mates all shared their food and clothing with the baby till it was finally taken away by the family after months of campaigning.

The lack of humanity in Israel’s actions is palpable.

Nevertheless, despite the constant fear and despite the war of attrition against them, the Palestinians still proudly resist. The common denominator between every single prisoner I interviewed was the amount of hope they had for the future. Hope that they could get on with their lives and put their horrific experiences behind them, hope that one day there would be peace and the shroud of apartheid might be lifted.

In commemoration of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on April 17th, numerous prisoner solidarity events emerged in the region of Tubas and we were fortunate enough to visit an emotional play that depicted the abuse of Palestinians within the prison system, and this was put on by the prisoners association within the walls of an old Israeli detention centre. Prisoners Day was also marked by numerous demonstrations throughout the Occupied Territories with families demanding the release of political prisoners and some of the prisoners themselves staging hunger strikes to raise awareness of their plight. For 8 years, the Prisoner’s Society of Tubas has been organizing such events, emphasizing the plight of Palestinian prisoners within Israel’s unjust legal system and they need all the help they can get.

I spoke to the Tubas director at length about cultivating links with the local Amnesty International group in Brighton and he was very excited about the letter writing campaign we will be setting up to show solidarity with the prisoners and their families. Amnesty will also be lobbying both the Israeli and the UK governments about the treatment of prisoners, and I believe that our own Brighton Tubas group will be heavily involved in this process. We are not alone either, as numerous international support and advocacy organizations and human rights groups have also launched campaigns around prisoners' rights as the number of Palestinians in Israeli detention centers grows with each passing day.

However the thing that became abundantly clear during our trip to the West Bank was the fact that it was not just the people in the detention centers who were the prisoners, it was every single man woman and child living in Palestine. Despite the overwhelming beauty of the landscape, you were never far from a reminder that Palestine is without a doubt, the world’s largest open prison. The countless barbaric check points, the soldiers, the guns, the hatred and the suspicion are behind every corner and it is obvious that freedom is a luxury well beyond the grasp the average Palestinian.

There is absolutely no doubt that peace in the region will never be attained as long as Palestinians are continuously denied their fundamental rights to live as free human beings.