Palestine: How hunger strikers “tied the hands of the occupation”: a view from Israeli prison

Ameer  Makhoul,The Electronic Intifada, Gilboa Prison, 9 June 2012

A demonstration in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, Jaffa, 12 May 2012.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

Palestinians have achieved three consecutive victories in the last few months. In October 2011, there was the release of prisoners (the exchange deal involving the kidnapped Israeli soldier).

Then there was a series of individual hunger strikes, which lasted for unparalleled periods of time. These began with Khader Adnan, who went on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of administrative detention.

Adnan’s action spurred an open-ended hunger strike by prisoners, started by more than a thousand prisoners on 17 April. It ended on 14 May, with more than 2,000 prisoners taking part. The strike began a new page in the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, written by the prisoners along with their Arab and international supporters.

The agreement signed on 14 May 2012 between the authorities in charge of the strike and Israel — with Egyptian and international mediation and guarantees — confirmed that the prisoner movement not only scored a major achievement, but realized a clear victory. We can now speak of two periods, the before and after, with the watershed moment being the hunger strike of 2012.

FBI raids seek to criminalize solidarity work in the Palestinian community

FBI raid in the Midwest

The Electronic Intifada, 15 November 2010

Nora Barrows-Friedman and Maureen Clare Murphy

US activists face new repression as political prisoners fight for justice

For decades the United States government has attempted to criminalize work in the Palestinian community in support of their national liberation cause. But in recent years this repression has increased dramatically. The Electronic Intifada spoke with the daughter of Sami al-Arian and the daughter of Ghassan Elashi — both political prisoners in the US — about the impact this repression has had on their families’ lives.

And in an Electronic Intifada exclusive, Hatem Abudayyeh, an organizer and community leader whose home in Chicago was raided by federal agents on 24 September 2010, spoke to the press for the first time about his family’s story.

The Electronic Intifada spoke with al-Arian, Elashi and Abudayyeh as activists across the United States prepare for emergency demonstrations as the subpoenas for three anti-war and solidarity organizers to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago are being reactivated by the Department of Justice.

The three activists are among the 14 who received subpoenas during and soon after coordinated FBI raids on homes and offices across the Midwestern US on 24 September. The government says that the raids and subpoenas are part of an investigation into “material support” of foreign terrorist organizations but it has not arrested or charged anyone. A grand jury, no longer in use anywhere outside the US, is an investigative tool that allows the government to compel citizens to testify even if they are not suspected of any crime.

Military court in Israel extends solitary confinement of PFLP leader

M’an News Agency, October 28, 2010

GAZA CITY — An Israeli military court on Sunday extended the solitary confinement of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat until 21 April 2011, PFLP said.

Sa’adat has already been held in solitary confinement in Ramon prison in Israel for 18 months, PFLP officials said, adding that the latest court decision also renewed a ban on visits for a further three months.

 

The officials described the ruling as unfair, illegitimate and arbitrary, and said it affirmed Israel’s policy of punishing leaders of the national movement in Israeli jails. The PFLP would continue their solidarity campaign and confront the decision inside Palestinian territories and internationally, officials said.

Sa’adat has been imprisoned since 2002, and was sentenced in 2008 to a 30-year sentence.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine quits PLO meetings to protest peace talks with Israel

Armed members of PFLP lead march in Jenin

English.news.cn, 2010-09-26

DAMASCUS/RAMALLAH, Sept. 26 — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) suspended its participation in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) meetings on Sunday to protest direct peace talks with Israel.

“PFLP refuses to work as a cover for the Palestinian National Authority’s (PNA) policy,” Maher al-Taher, leader of the Damascus- based PFLP, said during a sit-in in support of the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails.  The decision of suspending participation in the PLO meetings is a response to the resumption of direct peace talks with Israel, Taher said.

The U.S.-brokered talks started on Sept. 2 are “concessions, especially as the negotiations were imposed as an alternative to the reference of the United Nations and its resolutions,” Khaleda Jarar, a senior PFLP leader, said in a press conference in Ramallah, following a meeting of the PFLP’s Central Committee.

The PFLP is the second largest member of the PLO after the PNA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

The peace talks which are not aimed at protecting the Palestinian refugees’ right to return will actually serve the interests of the United States and Israel, Taher said.