Deeply disturbing news from Israel: Mohammad Othman, human rights activist, who has been detained for two months by Israelis after a trip to Europe on which he detailed abuses of Palestinians, faces three months more detention without any allegations lodged against him. What is "administrative detention." Here is Susie Kneedler’s report from an Ohio event:
Ala Jaradat, human rights activist of Addameer, spoke last week to 100 people at Ohio State University’s Committee for Justice in Palestine about the campaign against the Israeli military’s practice Administrative Detention.
On any day, the IDF can throw Palestinian people into lock-up: arrest in the middle of the night, no charges, no trial, no knowable release date, no way to defend oneself, but plenty of torture, coerced confessions, and fraudulent verdicts of guilt. The inability of the arrested to ascertain the accusations or defend against them sounds just like the nightmare despotism Kafka depicted in the The Trial.
An estimated 40 percent of Palestinian men in the Occupied Territories have been imprisoned in Israeli jails, and each arrest is a tragedy all its own, chopping a family apart. Anyone—including children—can be nabbed at any time and kept forever for any violation of the 1600 arbitrary "military orders" that stunt Palestinian life: carrying a prohibited symbol like the Palestinian flag, even just the shape without the "colors"; wearing a keffiyeh; digging a well without permission; walking on an Israelis-only road that was routed precisely to cut people’s houses off from their fields. The military dictator can change the rules at any moment and arrest anyone for what was legal only minutes before. All these “lawful” injustices are unlawful. Such disruption of anything like normalcy for the people of Palestine does nothing to enhance Israel’s safety, though “security” is the Israeli government’s endless excuse. Israel punishes Palestinians for merely surviving—wearing, carrying, saying, the “wrong” thing, or walking the “wrong” path, whereas it permits Israeli Jewish colonists to steal land, the uproot fruit groves, assault children as well adults, and even murder. (Gideon Levy reported lately on yet more precious olive trees, planted by the Palestinian farmer’s "great-great-grandfather," uprooted by illegal Israeli colonists.)
Addameer shows a map of all the prisons. These jails in Israel are doubly illegal, for International Law prohibits Israel from transporting Occupied Palestinians into Israel for confinement: “The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that ‘Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein’ (Article 47).” But Addameer reveals that “There are only two military detention centers and one military detention camp located within the OPT.”
Readers of this site know many of these facts, but the American public doesn’t and, worse, hasn’t got a clue that we in the U.S. help pay for every cell. For Jaradat told us another ugly truth. The Israeli government now requires that the 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners themselves finance being falsely imprisoned. Michael Liebert, of American Jews for a Just Peace, asked during the question time how Israel could afford the immense expense of locking up such an unconscionable number of people. Ala Jaradat told us that Israel does not need to pay, but instead ensures that its "private" contractor jailers profit from stowing all those souls in dungeons. The Israeli government provides nothing but bars and guards. It deprives people even of basic medical care. Many of the confined suffer irreparable injury and lingering debilitation.
The IDF knowingly incarcerates human beings in conditions not fit for human habitation: “Israel can "legally" "intern 20 inmates in a cell no larger than 5 meters long, 4m wide and 3m high. This space includes an open lavatory.” Addameer contrasts that 20 square meter cubicle with “the minimum standard in American and European prisons [which] is 10.5 square meters per detainee. Prisoners may be confined indefinitely to such cells for 23 hours a day." That’s twenty times as many people stuffed into twice the space.
The jails themselves are often inhumane. Animal pens and barns have been used, as well as “archaic prisons from the British mandate period [that] have been reopened, such as the Ketziot Military Detention Camp in the Negev desert," Addameer said. "Old, threadbare tents have been set up within this detention camp, exposing detainees to extreme weather conditions. Zinc huts house rudimentary hygiene facilities. At Ofer Military Detention Camp, located south of Ramallah, oil soiled hangars formerly used for military vehicles serve as holding areas for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Negev, Ofer and Megiddo are all infested with flies, parasites, rats and other vermin.”
But that’s not the worst Ala Jaradat told us. The Israeli government forces the jailed to supply their own food, soap, and clothes—or, rather, to fork out money for them. And Israel prohibits the victims’ families from supplying those necessities to their loved ones. Prison prices are more than thirty percent higher than Israeli prices. The courts also levy fines, forcing prisoners to pay for the infrastructure of their restraint: electricity, water, as well as the very guards, bars, and handcuffs that fetter them.
I asked Mr. Jaradat about the U.S. media’s failure to cover Israeli immuring so many in such ghastly conditions. Mr. Jaradat reminded us that only we can change the policies of “our” government and “our” press, that our speaking out to friends, politicians, and news organizations is the only way we can change our country’s support for tyranny.
“Addameer” means “Conscience” in Arabic. We need the conscience to keep talking about what we learn, to free ourselves from obedience to the Israeli claims and—much more crucially—the Palestinian people from serfdom. We have to stop using the rulers’ euphemisms like “detainees” and “detainment centers” to describe bondage. Being “detained” means to be delayed at the drugstore, not thrown away for years. Our ability to exchange facts that circumvent the censors, is the best hope for freeing Palestine from the jail of Occupation, and ourselves from the shame of bankrolling it.
