The Palestinian Feminist Collective demands the immediate and unconditional freedom of Palestinian political prisoner and revolutionary leader Khalida Jarrar, who teaches us that “hope in prison is like a flower that grows out of stone.”
Read the letter Khalida Jarrar sent to be read at her daughter Suha’s funeral after Israel refused her request to be released from prison to attend.
Israel has denied a request to release Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar following the sudden death of her daughter. Israel reportedly is not even allowing Jarrar a phone call with her family.
Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar was arrested from her home in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on October 31, 2019, and has since been held in Israeli detention without charge or trial, under Israel’s widely condemned policy of administrative detention.
Palestine Writes Literature Festival was an exhilarating relief from the pandemic. Writers including Naomi Shihab Nye, Ibtisam Barakat and Ghada Karmi spoke of indigeneity, dispossession, erasure, settler colonialism, oral history, collective memory, the right of return, Palestinian queerness, radical feminism, and the burning need to explore and document all of this in art, film, and writing.
In a letter that was smuggled out of Israel’s Damon prison to be shared at the Palestine Writes festival, political prisoner Khalida Jarrar shares the essential role literature plays for Palestinian prisoners struggling the retain their humanity and remain connected to the outside world. “Our struggle for liberation inside prisons starts with protecting resistance literature,” Khalida writes.
From Ramzy Baroud’s groundbreaking book on Palestinian prisoners: “I have nothing to apologize for,” Mohammed al-Deirawi told the Israeli judge who sentenced him. “I will never apologize for resisting the occupation, defending my people, fighting for my stolen rights. But you need to apologize, and those who demolish homes while their owners are still inside are the ones who must apologize.”
The detention of Palestinian legislator and feminist Khalida Jarrar is, in many ways, unexceptional. In Israel, where mainstream political discourse is decidedly anti-democratic, the detention of Palestinians, including lawmakers, without charge or trial is an everyday occurrence. No evidence has been brought against Jarrar, and yet there is every chance that she could spend the rest of her life in the Israeli military detention system.
Suha and Yafa Jarrar have come to accept that their family is never safe. Being the daughters of Khalida Jarrar, a well-known leftist lawmaker in the occupied Palestinian territory, brought its challenges, but the young women are proud of their parents for their involvement. “No matter how hard it has been, we could never fault our mother for her involvement in politics, even if it can be dangerous, it is something she is passionate about and she always encouraged us to follow our passion,” Suha says. “So we will always support her in hers.”
Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar returned to her West Bank home in Ramallah today after more than a year in an Israeli prison on charges related to her political activism. Jarrar was arrested in April 2014 first under an administrative detention order, a form of imprisonment without charge. In December of that year she signed a plea deal for a 14-month sentence after a lengthy hearing. After a tearful reunion with her husband, mother, and supporters at the checkpoint, Jarrar then traveled to her house in Ramallah. Once in her backyard amid shrubs and fruit trees Jarrar described her legal ordeal, and the long journeys she made to Israel’s military court to stand trial.