Following a weekly sit-in by the families of Palestinian political prisons inside Gaza’s International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), hundreds rallied outside to welcome former administrative detainee and hunger striker Hana Shalabi to Gaza.
(Photo: Joe Catron)
(Photo: Joe Catron)
Shalabi, age 30, was exiled to the besieged Gaza Strip from her home in Burqin, Jenin for three years by Israel, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and following Israel’s denial of her access to legal counsel and medical advice, as part of an agreement ending her 43-day hunger strike.
(Photo: Joe Catron)
After her arrival, Shalabi told government officials, "I am in my country and among my family." Today's rally illustrated the broad support she and her hunger strike enjoy in Gaza, with visible participation by every major Palestinian party.
(Photo: Joe Catron)
(Photo: Joe Catron)
(Photo: Joe Catron)
(Photo: Joe Catron)
In addition to praising Shalabi's struggle against administrative detention and denouncing her exile, speakers addressed the urgent need to build Palestinian and international support for Ahmad Al-Hajj Ali, a 72-year-old Member of Parliament and administrative detainee now on the 14th day of his hunger strike, and to mobilize on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners' Day.
(Photo Joe Catron)
Sending her to Gaza is a disgrace.
link to electronicintifada.net
“Today, Hana al-Shalabi, who spent 43 days on hunger strike to protest her detention without charge or trial by Israel, was banished to the Gaza Strip for three years, under a highly controversial deal that Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights- Israel have said is illegal under international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
In the course of this appalling act, Israeli occupation forces used Twitter to commit an additional breach of international law and Hana al-Shalabi’s rights.”
testing
Joe–Great photo work! Please post this album on Google+ too as you did ‘Gaza Joins the March to Jerusalem’. Google+ is a great forum for photography.
Thanks! It’s up here.
link to picasaweb.google.com
Sorry, I just noticed that you specified Google+. (In my defense, it’s late here!) Same album, different Google platform:
link to plus.google.com
No problem Joe–I shared one of your photos from Gaza on G+. I think I have over 400 photographers following me on G+, even though I’m not a photographer myself, just because I share a lot of photography there.
she’s really beautiful. i thought perhaps they enhanced her beauty in the posters but it doesn’t look like it from that photo of her. she radiates.
Yes, she radiates Light, her actions transcending all religious differences, that so often seem to operate in our world to divide people from one another. Acts of nonviolent resistance, acts of self sacrifice, there is something powerful in them that words simply cannot do justice to and cannot adequately describe and that reason cannot easily account for. Acts of nonviolent resistance like those Hana Shalabi embraced, transform, transform those who embrace such actions, and they have the power to transform our world. If only we could embrace them more fully, make them the center of our lives every day, all of us. Then, the world would be such a different place. Imagine what it could be!
Israel sent Hana into exile… Really? From one stolen piece of land to the next? As with the Kardashians, I hope [one day] I’ll be able to open my web browser and not have to read anything about either of them.
This is horrible.
Israel will simply bomb Gaza sometime soon and kill her in the bombing. Mark my words.
When you rig the game, you decide the outcome.
But hey guys, blah blah blah China! Why are you focusing on Israel! Antisemites!
After the way they treated Gilad Shalit, the Palestinians have no standing to complain about violations of the Geneva Conventions, literally no standing. If you don’t obey the GCs, you aren’t protected persons according to the GCs themselves.
‘Literally,’ huh?
Maybe you should go on a hunger strike yourself, to protest. You know, instead of complaining on some blog where nobody cares?
If you don’t obey the GCs, you aren’t protected persons according to the GCs themselves.
Were that true, Shalit would not have been entitled to protection in the first place, and Israelis would have had “no standing to complain”.
Gilad was traded for 1000 prisoners and was able to walk away with his life. You ethnocentric chauvinism may be clouding your sound judgement here.
“After the way they treated Gilad Shalit, the Palestinians have no standing to complain about violations of the Geneva Conventions,”
This is where you demonstrate that you are a bigot. The fact that one set of people who are Palestinian did something that you think was wrong does not entitle the Israelis to mistreat a different person who is also Palestinian. But I guess the Arabs all like alike to you, eh?
No, that’s where I demonstrate that I respect the Palestinians’ political choices. They chose Hamas to govern them in a free election, Hamas chose to violate the GCs when it came to Gilad Shalit and on many other matters, therefore the Palestinians are not protected persons because of what their chosen government does.
As for Arabs in general, most (maybe all?) Arab countries are High Contracting parties of the GCs and their prisoners are legally entitled to GC protection either way, even though not morally entitled because their intent in attacking in 1948 and 1967 was to destroy Israel and keep its lands. Ironically, the GCs treat high contracting parties that break the GCs better than non-GC members who break the GCs.
Well, their prisoners who fight in uniform or with other visible signs that they are fighters and not civilians are protected. As was common in WWII, spies and saboteurs (who fight in civilian clothing) are not protected as POWs.
“No, that’s where I demonstrate that I respect the Palestinians’ political choices. They chose Hamas to govern them in a free election, Hamas chose to violate the GCs when it came to Gilad Shalit and on many other matters, ”
Sorry, bigot. Even if your twisted excuse for Israeli brutality reflected the law regarding the Geneva Conventions (spoiler alert: it doesn’t), Hana Shalabi is from Jenin, so anything that Hamas did in Gaza to the terrorist Shalit is irrelevant to the treatment owed by the Zionist entity.
Nope, Woody and Shmuel have it right. Your bigotry and your ignorance of the Geneva Conventions are what you highlight in your hypocritical arguments.
First off, from the International Red Cross list of signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention:
link to icrc.org
So, Palestinian governments have signed the Geneva Convention. Your ignorance of this easily Googled fact shows your argumentative laziness.
And secondly, your carping about Shalit’s lack of Red Cross visits as a violation of the Convention that somehow in your mind negates any GC protection for Palestinian civilians under occupation shows your glaring hypocrisy.
Israel, and Israeli high ranking military officers, have admitted to killing numerous unarmed Egyptian POWs (some soldiers, some civilians) during the 1956 and 1967 Wars, a major violation of the Geneva Conventions that makes denied Red Cross visits absolutely pale in comparison. If your logic was not a hypocritical one, then these egregious violations by Israel should elicit a similar response from you, as, after all, Israelis ..
” chose the Labor Party to govern them in a free election, The IDF, under the auspices of the ruling Labor Party, chose to violate the GCs when it came to Egyptian POWs and on many other matters, therefore the Israelis are not protected persons because of what their chosen government does.”
So, since Israel violated and continues to violate the Geneva Conventions for multiple decades now, then Shalit is not a protected person, right? He had no right to Red Cross visits? He’s damn lucky he wasn’t just summarily executed, right? That’s what your argument would say, if you weren’t such an obvious bigot. But of course it can’t say that because then it would fall in on itself. You couldn’t whine and moan about missing Red Cross visits if you really believed that being a citizen of a country that violates the GC’s actually negates any protection it provides, because you could never bring up the GC in relation to the treatment of Israeli citizens due to Israel’s continuing violations of it.
If you can’t say the very same stupid comment about Israelis that you just made about Palestinians, they you’ve just made your bigotry crystal clear to one and all here. Not that most of us couldn’t already spot your hypocrisy a mile away.
So, seriously, Fred, do you honestly believe that Israelis deserve no protection under the Geneva Conventions because they have repeatedly elected governments that violated them? Or do Israelis once again get separate, more favorable, rules?
“Shalabi, age 30, was exiled to the besieged Gaza Strip from her home in Burqin, Jenin for three years by Israel”
Is Gaza the prison camp for West Bank Palestinians? I was unaware you could be exiled to Gaza from the WB.
>> Shalabi, age 30, was exiled to the besieged Gaza Strip from her home in Burqin, Jenin for three years by Israel …
All hail the Jewish state.
On Shalabi’s exile to Gaza, see Richard Falk: link to foreignpolicyjournal.com
There you go “from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not”. Gaza is not an “other” country from the West Bank. Neither of them is a country, but to the extent they are a quasi-country, they are a single quasi-country. BTW, this can’t be what is meant by “collective punishment” or no one would ever be able to lock up any criminal with a family, ever. Also, she’s not a protected person.
There you go indeed.
this can’t be what is meant by “collective punishment” or no one would ever be able to lock up any criminal with a family, ever
Falk is not referring to incarceration here, but to Shalabi’s complete isolation from her family, particularly during the period of her convalescence.
she’s not a protected person
Of course she is. Can you cite any respected, non-Israeli experts on IHL that would define her status otherwise?
I can cite you the part of the Geneva conventions that defines protected persons and specifically excludes those who are (a) not citizens of a High contracting party and (b) do not obey the GCs anyway.
“Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.”
The Palestinians are not party to the GCs and they don’t accept or apply the provisions thereof. Therefore, by their own terms the GCs don’t apply to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians
“Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it.”
To the extent that Palestine is a state at all, they refuse to be bound by the convention, therefore, by the GCs own terms, they are not protected by it.
Geneva Convention protections are a carrot for following the GCs, if you don’t obey the GCs, which the Palestinians don’t _and_ are not party to them, you get the stick instead of the carrot.
As to her isolation, that is her punishment, not her families. Like all punishments of anyone with a family, it impacts more than one person, that doesn’t make it “collective punishment”. “Collective punishment” means directly punishing people for something they had nothing to do with. Like shooting 100 villagers because the resistance blew up an ammo dump.
The ICRC (guardian of the Geneva Conventions) would seem to disagree with your “interpretation” of IHL. Not only does the ICRC consider Palestinian inhabitants of the OT protected persons, but it even extends such protection to Israeli settlers, present in the OT in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
link to icrc.org
link to icrc.org
Fred: Go back to Hasbara Central and warn them you are in over your head here. Shmuel, tree, and Woody have squashed your ignorant comments using only a little of the international law and Israel/Palestine history that they know. They insist on more informed debating partners.
Or are you actually merely trolling?