Jesse Rosenfeld reporting for The Daily Nuisance:
After almost four months in Israeli custody without charge, nearly half that time spent in the legally dubious administrative detention, Mohammad Othman left the prison walls behind, taking his first free steps in months, before crossing Israel’s wall, heading home.
“I’m still in shock about being free, but am so happy and relieved,” the youth coordinator from the Stop the Wall campaign told me on the phone while riding with his brother to see his family in the West Bank for the first time in months. “We were constantly under surveillance in the jail; the Israelis were always trying to get information to incriminate us with. I was in a cell with other people, but couldn’t trust talking politics with anyone.”
Othman was beaten, threatened with death and subjected to various forms of psychological torture during his interrogation and detention, according to his lawyer. Indeed, his experience is becoming a reality for an increasing number of Palestinians involved in community organizing and popular resistance to the occupation.
Stop the Wall, a Palestinian movement based on grassroots popular resistance to Israel’s wall in the West Bank, has faced increased military pressure as it strengthens its connection to the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The same fate has been made for Palestinians living along the wall’s route, fighting ghettoization and annexation of their land.
Just 24 hours before Othman’s release another lead organizer with Stop the Wall, Jamal Juma, was released from nearly a month of changeless detention and interrogation. Juma was taken from his Jerusalem home on December 15 and, despite having an ID from the city – entitling him to similar rights on paper as Israeli citizens – he was brought before military courts and held under the same terms as a West Bank Palestinian under military rule.
However, the same international attention and connection to a global movement that is landing activists in prisons, is one of the few factors providing some refuge from the relentless Israeli campaign to break them. Speaking anonymously for security reasons, one Stop the Wall activist credited the releases of Juma and Othman to the broad campaign both locally and in the West.
“We had pressure for their release coming from all directions and it must have had an effect,” said the activist. “But we’re not going to stop now that they’re released, this campaign [against Israeli detention] will continue and now we have more people to lead it.”
You can read the entire report here. Upon being released Juma’ issued the following statement:
“Like for the other Palestinian human rights defenders in Israeli jails, there was never a case in the courtroom. Not a single charge has been put forth. The reason for my arrest was purely political – an attempt to crush Stop the Wall and the popular committees against the Wall. Therefore, the reasons for my release are also outside the courtroom: The impressive support of international civil society has moved governments and used the media to an extent that made our imprisonment too uncomfortable.
"This international solidarity has given our popular struggle against the Wall further strength. We are deeply thankful for all the efforts. Yet, the latest arrests and continuous repression show that we have not yet defeated the Israeli policy as such, as Israel remains determined to silence Palestinian human rights defenders by all means".
"We therefore need to ensure that the campaign for the freedom of all anti-wall activists and Palestinian political prisoners continues to grow. We have to combine our energies to ensure that the root cause – the Wall – will be torn down and the occupation will be brought to an end.”
