Every Tuesday morning a line of plastic chairs is set outside the International Red Cross Offices in Tulkarm. A group sit and hold pictures of loved ones in front of them. These are the families of Palestinian prisoners. One of an Ecumenical Accompaniers tasks is to stand with them and offer our support. This morning we speak to the protesters as a camera crew from a local Palestinian News station conducts interviews. I speak with Hamed from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, he translates the story of one mother who waited 1 ½ years to see her son in prison, when she got there the prison guards shackled her legs before letting her go in to see her son.
Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 it is estimated that 650,000-800,000 Palestinians have been arrested and detained. Some estimate that 20% of the Palestinian population has been in prison. If you look at just the adult male population the figure rises to 40%.
The mass imprisonment of Palestinians is not without cause: The wave of violence known as the Second Intifada took place from 2000 onwards included suicide bombers and cost more than 600 Israeli lives. The uprising led the detention of more than 40,000 Palestinians, including 3000 children. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlights Tulkarm as being one of the sources of the violence. Things have calmed now, but the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics estimates that over 7000 Palestinians are currently incarcerated.
Abdi Dalbah is a Palestinian activist and Journalist who works with Palestinians, Internationals and Israelis in opposing the occupation, he spend time in prison for political activism in the late 1990’s. I asked him how long he was in for: “Short time” he says “6 years”.
Abdi has been in prison twice, although he jokes that he was actually in 3 times, once the Israeli authorities raided his home only to be told be his family that he was already in jail. They found him where they had left him and promptly arrested him again. When I asked if he was ever tortured he answers, “Yes, of course”;
Abdi speaks with humour, patience and grace about his time inside but his eyes flicker as he recalls the ordeal. Some of the methods of torture used on Adbi included sleep deprivation, prolonged period spent in the cold, hanging by the hands, beating of the legs, tying of hands behind the back and arching the back over a stool until “you feel your back is broken”. He claims other methods of torture that he heard about include electric shock and spiking food with hallucinogenic drugs. “they also locked me in a toilet for days instead of cell, under law the Israelis are obliged to provide 3 meals a day and 4 cigarettes, so they brought me food to the toilet, I didn’t eat it.”
The Israeli authorities even keep corpses in prison, Abdi tells the story of a mother whose son (Mashoir Arori) died in prison in 1981. A few months ago, after 30 years of struggling with the Israeli prison system, his body was released. The mother’s relief was short lived, DNA tests of the skeleton revealed is wasn’t her son. A few months later, after yet more struggles with Israeli bureaucracy the true remains were finally returned to the village he grew up in. The Palestinian Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs knows of 300 corpse held in Israeli jails for no apparent reason.
A 2007 report by Israeli Human Rights organisation BT’selem claims that torture was still a regular occurrence in the Israeli prison system. They cite beating, painful binding, swearing and humiliation and denial of basic needs. In addition, 100s of Palestinians prisoners are currently held under an emergency procedure known as administrative detention. This allows the Israeli prison system hold suspects for concurrent periods of 6 months without trial or any knowledge of their alleged crimes. It has resulted in 1000s of Palestinians in jails for up to 5 years with no charges, and no knowledge of what they are in for. Both torture and administrative detention are very basic denials of human rights and contrary to international law. Plenty of evidence exists that they happen, but Israel simply isn’t held accountable by anyone.
The Israel Prison Service website describes itself as “ensuring the incarceration of prisoners and those remanded in custody in a secure and suitable environment, while respecting their dignity”. In fact it is discriminatory and willfully neglectful of the normal legal checks and balances which exist to protect prisoners in most Western democracies. This is due to the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory; military law rather than civil is applied. This allows for the detention of prisoners for smaller crimes for a much greater length of time, and allows the scandal of detention of minors to persist. While Palestinians who are arrested come from the Occupied West Bank or Gaza, most of Israeli detention centres are within Israel, this means that families trying to visit loved ones have to get a permit to travel from the West Bank to Israel, the same is true for lawyers looking to represent their clients. Not only does this cause massive problems of access for prisoners, it is also illegal under article 47 of the 4th Geneva Convention.
For Palestinians, the Israeli prison system represents a tragedy on a national scale. A generation of Palestine’s men has been scared by their time in prison. In Tulkarm, the pictures of those still incarcerated hang alongside those of the martyrs almost everywhere you go. They look directly, defiantly at you, a younger version of themselves staring out from a fantasy world where they thought they might have freedom. Just as Israeli teenagers are brutalised by conscription, so it seems that Palestinians have their lives tainted by imprisonment. It is one of the many indignities they face under occupation. Communities mourn the absence of children, men, women and even the dead.
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