Seeing Israel’s prisons through Palestinian eyes
Published Aug 27, 2009 9:03 PM
By Sharon Eolis
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip, populated by 1.5 million Palestinians, is virtually an open-air
prison—a place of punishment and exile for Palestinians. No one can
officially get in or out of Gaza unless given permission at border checkpoints
that are opened at the whim of Israel and Egypt. If your name is not on a
pre-existing list, you can’t get into Gaza or leave it.
Mothers in Gaza show pictures of their imprisoned sons.
WW photo: Judy Greenspan
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At the end of the recent Viva Palestina U.S. convoy, a Palestinian man with a
U.S. passport tried to bring his family out of Gaza so they could travel back
to the U.S. Although his spouse and children have U.S. passports, Egyptian
border guards refused to allow the bus through the checkpoint with them
aboard.
Convoy delegates tried to carry the children across the border, but security
guards refused to allow this and held the bus up for over an hour. Only those
who had been on the bus when it entered Gaza were allowed to return. The
Palestinian delegate had to leave his family behind when he returned to
Egypt.
Prisons in Israel
In addition to the open-air prison of the Gaza Strip, more than 11,000
Palestinian women, men and children are incarcerated in Israeli maximum
security facilities like Nufha, Haderim, Jalamy, and Ashkalon, among
others.
In Gaza City, a group of Palestinian women with family members languishing in
Israeli prisons described for convoy visitors the horrific conditions in these
concentration camps.
Muhammad Hassamand, the spouse of one of the women, has spent 23 years in
prison. His sons, one 12 and another 15, cannot see their father. His spouse
said, “We didn’t go to them. The Israelis came to our land. We are
the indigenous people. There are more than 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails
[compared to] one Israeli soldier.”
Another elderly woman told of losing her eyesight since her son went to prison
10 years ago. “I lost my eyes from crying all day and night for my son.
My son has been sentenced for the rest of his life. He has spent more than 20
years in prison. For more than 10 years, I didn’t see him in my eyes, and
now I can’t. I want to see my son. We want our efforts and your efforts
to help release him.”
Another woman said, “My husband has been held in an Israeli prison for 22
years, and I have never been allowed to visit.” She thinks her son is
also incarcerated in Israel, but she doesn’t know if he is alive or
dead.
Since 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians—20 percent of the total population
in the occupied territories–have been arrested. The vast majority are
men—approximately 40 percent of the total male Palestinian
population.
Since the second Intifada began in 2000, more than 70,000 Palestinians,
including at least 850 women, have been arrested by Israel, according to
Abdullah al-Zeghari, director of the Bethlehem branch of the Palestinian
Prisoners’ Society.
Many believe that imprisonment and torture are a core element of the Israeli
occupation’s strategy of collective containment and punishment of the
Palestinian people.
Anyone who the Israelis think will resist the occupation is in danger of being
imprisoned. This includes nonmilitary political activists, community
organizers, paramedics, doctors, journalists, teachers and students as well as
resistance fighters.
Torture and death in Israeli jails
According to the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, B’Tselem, more than 85 percent of Palestinians detained
since 1967 have been subjected to torture, and at least 197 have died in
prison. Medical negligence was the cause of 50 deaths. The rest were from
torture or executions.
Until 1999 nearly all Palestinian prisoners were tortured for information based
on the Landau Ministerial Committee (1987) policy that allowed “moderate
physical and psychological pressure.” This was after an Israeli High
Court of Justice ruling prohibited the use of several forms of torture.
The police and army, however, continue to use prohibited methods, similar to
the treatment prisoners have been subjected to at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and
Guantánamo Bay prison.
Forms of torture used include beatings, kicking, strip searches, sleep
deprivation, verbal abuse and psychological threats, including those against
family members. Prisoners have been bound to chairs in painful positions or
forced to crouch in a frog-like position.
Prisoners have been kept in solitary confinement or held in tents in the desert
in extreme temperatures. Prisoners’ food has been placed next to the
holes used as toilets. Inmates have been denied access to hot water or change
of clothing.
All these conditions are against United Nations’ basic human rights
standards.
Medical negligence
More than 1,600 prisoners suffer from chronic diseases but are denied care. The
prison administration refuses to give permission for surgery for such
life-threatening conditions as cancers and kidney transplants. It also refuses
to allow medicine from families, physicians or the Red Cross.
Administrative detention, where a person can be held for extended periods of
time with no trial or formal charges, is a violation of international and human
rights law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Administrative detention in Israel was originally based on the British Mandate
Defense (Emergency) Regulation of 1945. It allowed police to hold a prisoner
based on confidential information that the detainee and her/his lawyer are not
allowed to see. While a detainee is allowed an appeal, the confidential nature
of the “evidence” makes a fair trial impossible.
This practice is still in effect in Israel. According to Israel Prisons
Service, as of May 31 there were at least 449 Palestinian administrative
detainees. This number was as high as 849 in November 2007. Palestinian
detainees have been held under administrative detention orders from six months
to eight years.
Women and children
Presently 63 women political prisoners are held in Hasharon and Damoon prisons.
Some are as young as 14. They are subjected to humiliating treatment, including
strip searches, sometimes in the presence of men.
Pregnant women are forced to deliver their babies in prison cells where these
infants continue to live with their mothers for years. Since 1967 the Israeli
army has captured more than 10,000 Palestinian women. Eight hundred were
kidnapped during the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
The Israeli Defense Forces have kidnapped a total of 7,600 children, male and
female, since 2000. Some were as young as 12 years old. According to IPS
February 2009 reports, there were 374 Palestinian children in jail; 50 were
under 16 years old.
The Israeli army considers children age 16 to be adults. This is in violation
of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a
signer.
These children are also subjected to torture and forced confession. Many are
held in jails with adult prisoners and subjected to sexual and physical
violence. They may be denied family visits, deprived of medical care, and
suffer from theft of personal belongings. They are also deprived of education,
recreation facilities and culture, and are tortured during attempts to coerce
them to collaborate with Israel.
Like Black and Latino/a prisoners in the U.S., most incarcerated Palestinians
are held in jails far from their homes. Since Hamas was elected in 2006, Israel
has outlawed family visits to prisoners.
Also like the U.S., Israel has enacted a new status called “unlawful
combatant.” This legalizes the detention of Lebanese and Arab prisoners
even when there is no evidence for trial. This law is now applied to the people
of Gaza.
Palestinians in Gaza hold one Israeli soldier prisoner. They have offered to
exchange him for those held by Israel. While using this prisoner as an excuse
for its wars on the people of Gaza, Israel has refused to negotiate any
prisoner exchange.
Palestinian prisoners have a long history of resistance in Israeli jails. They
have organized hunger strikes to protest violent attacks on prisoners and
denial of visits and medical care. In some cases thousands of prisoners have
participated. The Israeli police and security forces have responded with great
brutality.
The prisoners demonstrated their solidarity with the rest of Gaza during the
July 2006 war on Lebanon and during the Israeli war and massacre in Gaza that
began in December 2008.
The Palestinian people are requesting that the international community call
protests and launch long-term campaigns to end the incarceration of
Palestinians in Israeli prisons as part of full liberation for the people of
Palestine.
Eolis is an anti-Zionist Jewish woman who was a delegate on the Viva
Palestina U.S. convoy to Gaza this July. Many statistics come from the blog of
the International Campaign of Solidarity with the Palestinian
Prisoners.
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