JULY 2004

THE PRISON
Is there Another 'Abu Ghreib" Prison in Israel?
June 22, 2004

Lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoners society, Raed Mhamid, who visited several detainees in Jalbo' prison, said several rape attempts were conducted by Jailors against some detainees. Mhamid added that the detainees were placed in solitary after resisting and rejecting these attempts.

Meanwhile, Mhamid added that the detainees whom he managed to meet informed him that the situation is boiling, and that the soldiers are forcing the detainees to strip in order to be searched, and that soldiers repeatedly ordered some prisoners to strip and placed them in a tight cell.

On one hand, Mhamid said that soldiers when they want to perform the daily count force the detainees to leave the bathrooms or showers naked, and during prayer time, they force the detainees to stop the prayers in order to count them. The detainees also informed Mhamid that the health situation in detention in continuously deteriorating, and that the administration is banning them from medication while some detainees are in serious need of monthly checkups and continuous medications. Concerning food, the detainees informed the lawyer that it is of very bad quality and insufficient, which forces the detainees to buy their own food from the canteen with very high prices.
Mhamid added that the administration is imposing hard procedures concerning visitations including lawyer visitations with their detainees; the lawyers are not allowed to meet the detainees in private, instead the meeting is conducted during normal crowded visitation hours.

On the other hand, the families are forced to wait for long periods in hot area which lacks seats, toilets, and water, and when they manage to visit the detainees, they are not allowed to give them clothes, especially that they lack different kinds of clothes especially underwears.

Jalbo' detention camp is part of Shatta prison, opened recently, and composed of five branches, detainees each branch includes 15 rooms, each room contains 8-9 beds, which forces at least one detainee to sleep on the ground. There are 608 prisoners in Jalbo' prison at the moment some of them suffer bad health conditions. The report also listed the names of prisoners who met with the lawyer during the last visit, and a brief description about their conditions:
1. Jamil Mohammad Al-Tinih, Bethlehem, sustained several gunshot injuries during his arrest, in need of immediate medical operations.
2. Ali Mirshid Salhab, Bethlehem, wounded in his leg and pelvis, need medical operation.
3. Ghanim Salih Ghanim, Tulkarem, wounded in his foot, suffers from bone fragments, in need of medical attention and follow up.

The world still did not wake up from the shock of the mistreatment by the American and British soldiers of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghreib prison. Luckily enough there were photos in Abu Ghreib proving the crime, however; there aren't in this case. Nothing can prove this except the memories of the prisoners who have been subjected to such harsh treatment.

It seems that maltreatment of prisoners is a fashion these days for the lack of accountability. The question is who will sensor and hold perpetrators accountable if sometimes the judges are the ones who give the orders? In such cases, a neutral committee should investigate and should have the power to implement what is justice. Local commentators said some soldiers will be punished and will be the escape goat to cover on the bigger ones. Since those behind Abu Ghreib scandal are going to get away with it, one can see no reason why there will not be one or more in Israel. In fact, there might be some already.


THE MOTHER
Um Ghazy dreams of hugging her son away from prison walls
Yanabee' - Gaza
Translated By, Saed Bannoura, IMEMC, June 2004

"I dream about hugging my son freely, far away from prison bars, but soldiers banned me even from visiting him" With this sentence Fatima Al-Nims, 60 years old, described her longing to her son, who is sentenced to 16 years for resisting the occupation. Fatima, Um Ghazy [Um Ghazy ="the mother of Ghazi"] was sitting at the Red Cross office in Gaza, with complete silence, nodding her head, looking at her sons' picture, said in a tone filled with bitterness and sadness; "I have been waiting for long 16 years, for the day of my sons' freedom, dreaming of him knocking the door and saying "Am Home", dreaming of hugging him for several hours, and crying", the mother said.

Silence sheds again, then she bursts, "Son, my heart is burning, I am a mother, they took away my boy, and threw him in the darkness of the prison" Listening to her words, bitterness, and grief, she continues, "They arrested him in 1985, after accusing him of killing a settler, since then.they have been moving him from one detention to another."

The mother, talking while living in another world, imagining her son, told the story of her son, and details of his arrest, "A huge military force attacked our home, knocked but didn't wait for us to open, they barged into the place and searched it, then arrested my son.I begged them to leave him, and asked them "What do you want? Why are you taking him away?" Yet they did not answer, but one of them said, "We want to talk to him, just 15 minutes and he will be back." "The 15 minutes became an hour, and this hour extended to 15 years", she added.

She stopped talking, all of a sudden, and looked at the other mothers who gathered at the Red Cross, they have imprisoned sons, Husbands, several family members, and continued. "No one can imagine the pain, the long nights, a mother goes through until she raises her sons, and see them grownups, his father died when he was only two years old, later on I married his uncle, and he lived with his other brothers, in our extended home, I used to dream of seeing him an adult, married, I dreamt about seeing his kids, but. they (the army) banned us even from dreaming." She added. With a sad bitter tone, the mother added; "I am a mother who had her son taken away from her, do you know what that means? How it feels?! And added, "but. we should never surrender, one day he will be free, but I want to see him and hug him before I die, I want to touch him far away from the wires of the prison, and the eyes of the soldiers and their guns, but they banned me from visiting him under security claims? I don't even know what that means! Did I carry bombs or Molotov Cocktails; I really don't what kind of justice is present in this world".

Um Ghazi still remembers the day where she was banned from visiting her son under claims that she is not his mother, "I was surprised, the soldier stopped me and said "go back wherever you came from, you have nobody here to visit", and when I asked him about the reason, he replied coldly enough and said, "He is not you son", I shouted and said, "what are you talking about, did I buy him from the market?!, yet they insisted and I wasn't allowed to visit him", she added. "Last time, when I was supposed to visit him, I was banned again, they told me its for security reasons, I felt like am burning, I waited until other patents visited their sons, I rushed to them and asked them about him, any information which could clam me down, even for some seconds"

Um Ghazi now, goes continuously to any protest at the Red Cross, to express her rejection to the arrest of her son. I come here every Monday, in solidarity of our sons, and demand their freedom, no one can hear you if you don't speak load enough, don't they have sons like us, don't they miss their sons, why are they doing this to us and our families, all the words which exist in this world, cannot express the true feelings of a mother who is waiting for the day of her son's freedom" Yet, one question remains here, can Um Ghazi forget the image of her son behind bars, can words really express what she feels?! More than 2300 mothers, daughters, wives, are facing the same destiny, family members of Palestinian and Arab detainees imprisoned in Israeli detention camps, still face the same conditions and misery,

Will the day come, where they can all sense and smell freedom, will it...if so when?!


THE WALL
The Nightmare Comes True
Op-Ed by: Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, June 12, 2004

I thought it was terrible. I was wrong. It is far, far worse! - These words sum up my feelings at that moment. I was standing on a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint. Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint. Very soon this road will be transformed. It will be widened to three lanes and be reserved for Israelis: on both sides of it, 8-meter high walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cut off from each other. This is a small part of the new reality that is rapidly being created on the West Bank and that is changing the country we knew and loved beyond recognition.

I was standing near the edge of a-Ram. Once this was a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments have prevented the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new homes, the severe overcrowding has forced a mass exodus to a-Ram, which has grown into a town of 60 thousand inhabitants. Most of them are officially still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blue identity cards of inhabitants of Israel. This allows them to come to Jerusalem, a drive of 10 minutes, work there, tend to their businesses, go to the hospitals and the universities there.

This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is due to start any minute now - not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from all the townships and villages to their west - their relatives, the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they live.

But this is only part of the story. Because the wall (or in some places a barrier, consisting of a fence, trenches and roads) will completely surround a-Ram from all sides. The sole exit from this walled-in area will be a narrow bridge connecting it with the adjacent area to its east, consisting of several Palestinian villages, which will be surrounded by another barrier. This enclave will have a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. Through this it will be possible for a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, God willing, by a roundabout route of some 30 kilometers, instead of the ten minutes or so it took before the occupation. A few kilometers to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou (where five Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against the wall). This area is rapidly becoming another enclave, completely surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out will be a tunnel to be built under road No. 443 - the settlers' road of which the section I mentioned before will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have long since been cut off by trenches or piles of dirt, one can enter only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease to exist. If a villager from Bidou has some business in a-Ram, he will have to go through the tunnel to Ramallah, turn to the enclave east of a-Ram and enter a-Ram by the narrow bridge, a semicircle of about 40 kilometers instead of a drive of a few minutes.

A-Ram will be especially hard hit. Because of its location, it has developed in the last few years into a kind of transshipment point for goods travelling from Israel to the West Bank and vice versa.
Israelis and Palestinians do business there. All this will end with the wall. The means of livelihood for many of its 60 thousand inhabitants will disappear. This is only one example of what is happening now all over the West Bank, turning it into a crazy quilt of walled-in enclaves, "connected" by bridges, tunnels or special roads, which can be cut off at any moment at the whim of the Israeli government or of a local army officer - and, all around them, roads-for- Israelis-only, expanding settlements and military installations. Every Palestinian town - Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilia, Bethlehem, Hebron and others - will become the "capital" of a tiny enclave, cut off from all the others, from their "hinterland" and villages, except by tortuous roundabout routes. Fifty-five percent of the West Bank will be Israeli, the Palestinian enclaves will amount to 45% (about 10% of historical Palestine).

This is no longer just a nightmarish future prospect - it is happening now, visible to the naked eye, while Sharon babbles about a "disengagement" to happen sometime in the future in one small part of the occupied territories. Practically no Israeli has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer from his home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on far side of the moon.

The media are not interested, nor is the world.

This is the peace Sharon has been dreaming about. This is the "Palestinian State" George Bush promised. This is a cornerstone of the new democratic Middle East. It will lead, of course, to bloodshed on an unbelievable scale. No people on earth will submit to such a life. For thousands and thousands of young Palestinians, a martyr's death will be preferable. And sometime in the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall, which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much suffering, the human spirit will prevail.

the children
A Shell that Took the Smile of Those Innocent Eyes
Nijma Assaf - Amman Jordan, June 18, 2004

Moments of silence, a killing silence, control the place, calmness interrupted every short period with moaning, the atmosphere was so damp, I felt that she will choke at any moment, since she could even take a clear breath without tears. With a sound so dim and low, filled with bitterness "Abeer" started telling her story, the story of martyrdom, of angles, the last moment of the live of her two angles.

The son of Abeer "Shaheed" [Martyre] as she chose to call while telling her story, and his sister Malak [Angel; her real name is Wa'ed). Abeer remember the sad moments, the calmness before the blast, the moment before a tank shell blasted in the first floor of her home, in Ramallah, on the last day of April, 2004. The blast claimed the lives of her two children, taking away two innocent flowers, Shahid, the seven years' old child, and Malak, 4 years old, in addition to a young man who was living in the lower floor, when the blast occurred.

Abeer, soaked with tears, and a heart which became too tired to pound, said: "when Shahid came back from school, he sat in front of the TV with his sister, Malak, and watched some Cartoon, then Shahid went outside to play, football with his friend Hasan, in a small yard in front of our home. my child loved soccer, loved to watch soccer cartoons and games, he loved Saturday because it included sports at school", she added. The mother, stopping each time to take her breath, continued, "at 7:30 in the evening, he came back home, and asked me to prepare a sandwich for him, and so I did, and gave him his milk, after eating and drinking his milk, he went to play with his brothers, laughter filled the home"

"I asked them to go to bed, but they said that they want to see their father when he comes back from work, Shahid wanted to see him, talk to him and play with him.and when their father came, and saw them, they asked him to buy them some food [Falafel] and went to their rooms to play, while I went to do some laundry." The mother paused.shed tears, and drew a breath, overloading her tired body. "At this moment I heard a huge explosion, I didn't know what happened, I heard my kids calling me, Mama.Mama., and they were appealing, I used all of my power and entered their room.it was so dark, I scream and called their names.but no one replied, suddenly I heard the sound of my daughter, and started to hope and pray that they are well." Abeer, telling a story with a heavy burden and sadness, crying one, drying her tears, hardly breathing, continued. "I felt something, as if it is a heaving thing stopping me from taking any step forwards, I started to call and scream, help me, anybody help, my kids, I appealed everybody to save my kids under the wreckage of our home"

"A short while passed and rescues teams arrived, they rescued my while I was screaming, my kids...save them.I begged them not to transfer me to a hospital before I see my kids, but they told me to calm down, everything is going to be alright." Abeer paused again, and this time blasted, crying and screaming, yet determined to tell the story of a cold blooded crime. "I arrived to the hospital in the ambulance, never stopped calling for my kids, but nobody answered; I felt that there is something wrong, I jumped out of the bed in the hospital, the voice of Wa'ed was still in my ears,

"The rescuers were still searching for the children, until they found my son, but he was dead, and continued their search for Malak, until they found her body, she was dead too, and when my husband returned, he saw our home, a complete wreckage, and naturally expected a disaster. On the second day, the husband came to the hospital, and when he entered the room where his wife is she directly asked about her kids, he said, after a moment of silence, that they are in the Intensive Care Unit, but shortly after that he told me, "We should accept the destiny and informed me of their death" I insisted to see them, to see my angels, she added, "when I saw their faces, smashed, deformed I touched them and asked them to forgive me.to forgive me for not being able to save them, and asked their father to burry me next to them."

I planted roses on their tombs, yellow and white roses, Shahid loved the white color and Malak always loved the yellow".. They were angles, bright filled with dreams of a better future, like all kids had their own small world, which known no hatred, a small rosy world, crushed and scattered by one shell, the two kids had a special relation which united them, among their other sisters and brothers, they were always together, filling the home with joy. They did not carry guns, not even stones.they only carried their small toys, in the safest place for any kid, the bedroom, but one shell of destruction ended their dreams, ended their lives, the lives which never new that a game with toys, is not a game of blood.
Translated by: Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

Letters to the Editor now accepted at opinion@imemc.org. Please keep opinion pieces below 1200 words.
Statement from Detained Activist Ann Petter

"I am a 44 year old artist from New York, and I have been denied entry into the state of Israel for security reasons.
If I am a threat to security, then we need to redefine both threat and security. Security must mean keeping a tight grip on the information the public has access to. And a threat to security would be anyone with eyes, ears, a brain and a heart that still function, someone who might use them to challenge the status quo. Traditionally, it has been the artist's job to threaten security in this manner.

I'd like to thank the boys at the General Security Service for believing that art is such a powerful weapon. Perhaps I can charge more money for it now. Meanwhile, I'd like very much to enter this country as planned. I'd like to see my friends, Israelis and Palestinians. I'd like to meet with other artists. I'd like to participate in peaceful demonstrations. I believe all of this is quite normal in a democracy."
By Ann Robinson Petter