An Israeli court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli anti-apartheid activist Neta Golan, after she refused to appear in court in solidarity with a months-long boycott of Israeli courts by Palestinian administrative detainees.
The magistrate court in Ashdod issued a warrant for Golan, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), on February 21st after she refused to appear before the court for a hearing regarding an indictment against her.
The case against Golan is in regards to her participation in solidarity protests on the Gaza border in 2020.
In her letter to the court, Golan wrote: “This act is in solidarity with the 500 Palestinian administrative detainees who are currently detained without a time limit, without an indictment and without their or their lawyer’s access to the suspicions against them…I join the detainees demand that Israel stop it’s extensive and cynical use of administrative detention against Palestinians.”
Since January 1st, 500 Palestinian administrative detainees, who are being held in Israeli prison without charge or trial, have engaged in a collective and comprehensive boycott of Israeli military courts.
As part of the boycott, the detainees have refused to participate in court procedures and hearings on all levels, while their legal counsel have also refused to participate in court procedures on their behalf.
“The court that allows me rights as a Jew by virtue of my ethnic origin, and does not offer the same rights to indigenous people of another origin, is part of a discriminatory system that aims to encourage the preservation of a Jewish majority between the river and the sea,” Golan wrote in her letter to the court.
“The same system commits criminal acts for the purpose of maintaining a regime of control by one racial group over another racial group and their systematic oppression. This is the definition of the crime of apartheid. And I’m not willing to cooperate with this crime,” she said.
In her letter, Golan highlighted the case of Palestinian teenager Amal Nakhleh, who has been imprisoned by Israel under administrative detention for over a year, and suffers from a rare auto-immune disease.
Nakhleh is one of 500 Palestinian prisoners currently in administrative detention, and one of 180 Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel.
Detainees protest punitive measures in Israeli prisons
In addition to the boycott being carried out by administrative detainees, Palestinian prisoners across Israeli prisons have been engaging in boycotts over the past weeks, in protest over Israel’s “collective punishment” of prisoners.
The boycotts began on February 6th, after the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) decreased the amount of time and number of prisoners allowed outside at once for yard time, in violation of previous agreements between the prisoners and the IPS.
Since then, prisoners have been refusing to leave their cells for their allotted yard time, also called “Fora.”
Over the past few weeks, Al Jazeera reported that IPS authorities threatened prisoners with solitary confinement in Hadarim prison, conducted raids and assaulted prisoners in Ofer prison, and subjected prisoners to arbitrary searches in the Nafha prison.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has condemned the actions of the IPS, saying “the administration’s attempt to impose more control over the duration [of fora], as well as the number of prisoners, is part of the attempts to impose more control and oversight on prisoners.”
PPS noted that historically, through countless strikes and boycotts, increased yard time has always been high on the list of demands of prisoners.
PPS noted that yard time plays an important role in prison life, as it “effectively transforms this space [prison] into a forum in which knowledge, struggle and social relations are built, and contributes to organizing the daily life of the prisoners, in addition to the importance of the prisoner’s physical and psychological health.”
“A central goal [of IPS] is to strike the prisoners’ collective life framework at the organizational and detention levels, and to reduce the role of leadership frameworks …. which will negatively affect the prisoners’ ability to organize their organizational, detention, cultural, social and educational programs.”
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“The initiators of the ECI originally filed for registration in July 2019, but the Commission initially refused to register it, on the grounds that the initiative sought a sanction. The European Court of Justice nullified this decision in May 2021, finding that the Commission had failed to consider the initiative as a general commercial measure. This decision prompted the Commission to reverse course, register the Initiative, and recognize its own authority to regulate trade with settlements.
“The EU and member states should prohibit settlement trade to comply with its obligation under the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch said. The illegality of settlements under international humanitarian law is well established and stems in part from their close link with discrimination and economic harm to the local population, as set out in the International Committee of the Red Cross’s 1958 commentary on the Geneva Convention.
“Human Rights Watch has documented this phenomenon in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), where Israeli authorities have for decades imposed harsh military rule over millions of Palestinians while governing hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israeli settlers under Israeli civil law. To establish and maintain the settlement enterprise, Israeli authorities have confiscated more than two million dunams (2,000 square kilometers) of Palestinian land. Israeli authorities have confined Palestinians to living in dozens of disconnected enclaves, demolished thousands of Palestinian homes, and imposed sweeping restrictions on the freedom of movement and basic civil rights of millions, among other grave abuses.
“Such systematic repression lies at the heart of Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, as Human Rights Watch and many other Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations have documented.
“Countries have a duty under international humanitarian law not to legitimatize, even if inadvertently, the transfer of civilians into settlements in the occupied territory. Nor should they deny the reality of ongoing military occupations and therefore, the application of international humanitarian law, whatever the claims of the occupying power.”
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Europe Needs to Ban trade with Israeli Squatter Settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories (juancole.com)
“Europe Needs to Ban trade with Israeli Squatter Settlements in ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ Human Rights Watch”
EXCERPT: “(Brussels, February 21, 2022) – “The European Commission should prohibit EU trade with settlements in occupied territories globally, Human Rights Watch said today as it signed onto a European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI). The citizen-led initiative, registered with the European Commission in September 2021 and initiated on February 20, 2022, calls for adopting legislation to prohibit products originating from unlawful settlements from entering the EU market and to ban EU exports to settlements.
“The transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population to a militarily occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, is a war crime. Trading in products produced in settlements in occupied territory or with them helps to sustain these violations of international humanitarian law. It also entrenches the human rights abuses that often stem from settlements, including land confiscation, natural resource exploitation, and displacement of and discrimination against the local population.
“’Settlements unlawfully rob local populations of their land, resources, and livelihoods,’ said Bruno Stagno, chief advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch. ‘No country should be enabling the trade in goods produced as a result of land theft, displacement, and discrimination.’
“The EU should also ban trade that contributes to unlawful resource extraction in occupied territories, which is also a violation of international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch said.
“Human Rights Watch joins more than 100 civil society organizations, grassroots movements, trade unions and politicians in backing the Initiative. It utilizes a provision designed to enable European citizens to direct the European Commission to consider proposed legislative action. If it amasses a million signatures, the Commission will be legally obliged to consider a ban on the trade of settlement goods.” (cont’d)