Former Hunger Striker Samer Issawi Re-Arrested

TMO 

On June 23, 2014 occupation soldiers raided the Jerusalem home of Samer Issawi, one of the Palestinian prisoners swapped in August 2011 in exchange for the release of “kidnapped” Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Issawi had been originally detained in 2002 by the Israeli army in Ramallah as part of Operation Defensive Shield during the Second Intifada. The now free man Issawi was then detained in July 2012 for trying to catch a bus in a Jewish suburb of Jesrusalem. He was held in prison for 17 months but was released with huge celebration last December after his 266 day hunger strike caused global outcry.

His sister Shireen was arrested with their brothers Medhat and Shadi on March 6, 2014. Shireen, an attorney, was accused of “passing messages” from prisoners. Her detention has been extended by an Israeli Court three times. In January 2013 another brother, Ahmad Issawi’s home was bulldozed.

Last Monday his mother, Layla Issawi, posted on Facebook, “Tens of Israeli army officers are in front of our house passing out tickets to everyone passing by. They must be bored.”

A few minutes later, around 7pm, she again posted: “World, they arrested Samer. The military in big numbers raided the house.”

Electronic Intifada reports that Israeli authorities interrogated his younger brother Shadi earlier in the day. He was to tell Samer to come in for interrogation.

Over 500 Palestinians have been detained in a punitive crackdown after three Israelis went missing on June 12, 2014 while hitchhiking between Jewish settlements in Hebron. In addition to Samer Issawi, 52 other former prisoners released during the October 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner swap agreement have been rearrested, according to Gavan Kelly, an advocacy officer for Addameer Prisoner Support Network. Another of the men, Nael Barghouti, has already served 33 years in prison before he was released the exchange, Ma’an News Agency reported.

“Seven of these detainees already went before an Israeli court in Haifa and are being tried on previous charges [from before their 2011 release,” Kelly told The Electronic Intifada, referring to a mandate that allows former Palestinian prisoners to be retried on the same charges after being released from prison. “It is very important to note that the evidence used against [Palestinians] in these military courts is ‘secret.’ And most of them risk being reissued prison sentences that are very long.”

In the past few days, several Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers and Gaza has been repeatedly targeted by aerial bombing causing huge fires.
Many Palestinian institutions have been raided and ransacked in the past few days by the Israeli military: Birzeit University, Al-Quds University and the American Arab University in Jenin, the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Bethlehem-area Dheisheh refugee camp, and even the media offices of Russian Times. The Palestinian Authority accompanied Israeli soldiers in their raid of the Russian TV station.
Israeli authorities repeatedly referred to the US in justifying their actions.

Former chief military rabbi Avihai Ronsky defended Israel’s collective punishment measures: “Only with a sharp blow will we make it clear that Jewish blood is not cheap. The same goes today: only by dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused millions of deaths, did the US bring an end to World War II.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, justified a bill introduced in the Knesset which would allow force-feeding of hunger striking Palestinian political prisoners by saying: “in Guantanamo the Americans are using the method of force-feeding too.”

An Israeli court on June 26 officially extended Issawi’s indefinite detention. Issawi risks having the remaining twenty years of a thirty-year sentence reinstated. 

Attorney Farah Baydadsy told the Electronic Intifada that Issawi “appeared very tired during the hearing on Thursday.”

Issawi’s lawyer told his family that Israel’s intelligence services, the Shabak, have interrogated him nearly non-stop since Monday.

“He could barely lift his head,” Bayadsy said. “He looked like he hasn’t slept at all … and the security was very restrictive, more than usual.”

“The first part of the hearing lasted only fifteen minutes,” she explained. “The judge took a ten-minute break, came back and ended after another ten minutes, rejecting the appeal.”

Issawi siblings Shireen and Medhat also had hearings on the same Thursday in the Israeli district court in Jerusalem that ended in postponement until Sunday, reports Electronic Intifada. Shireen’s family has so far been denied requests to visit her in prison. Mariam Barghouti, 20, a solidarity activist who shared a cell with Shireen, reported that Shireen had become very thin, weighing about 86 pounds. “She said she is experiencing a lot of back pain from the positions she is handcuffed [in].”

“Their mother was crying,” Bayadsy added. “It is the first day of Ramadan, the holy month, and she had to go through this.”

“Because her family has been repeatedly targeted for arrest and imprisonment since Israeli forces occupied their village in 1967, Layla Issawi, better known as Um Rafaat, has not shared a meal with all seven of her living children at the same time in more than a decade, writes Patrick Strickland.

“It’s clear that they are targeting Shireen because of how active she was in raising support for Samer during his hunger strike.” said their mother.

“This is not just my life,” she said. “This is the life of all Palestinian mothers. There are families in Gaza with three or four martyrs each … and Israel has killed some entire families there.”

The number of Palestinian minors held in Israeli jails has risen to 250 detained children following the Israeli military sweep of occupied West Bank waged during the past two weeks.

Samer Issawi Freed: Father and Brother Detained, Released

January 2, 2014 by TMO 

File:  Samer Issawi

World famous hunger striking political prisoner from Jerusalem, Samer Issaw, 34, was released from Shita Prison on December 23, 2013, the day after Israeli troops raided his home and detained his father Tariq and brother Midhat Issawi.

On December 22, Israeli forces gave Samer’s father and brother “notifications” ordering them to report to Israeli intelligence for interrogations. Samer’s father was threatened and warned about causing “problems.” He was prohibited from organizing celebrations for Samer’s release. The men were then let go. They were reportedly present at the big party!

Samer’s sister, Shireen posted a Facebook comment, saying: “I swear to God we will rejoice in the freedom of the hero Samer Issawi.”

In response to the Israeli threats, she said: “We have the right. The world will stay with us, and we will rejoice.”

“Samer Issawi’s family was ordered by Israeli terror police earlier today not to celebrate and to take down the flags raised at their home,” stated the Free Samer Issawi Campaign.

2,000 supporters celebrated joyously upon his release. However, the ongoing electricity crisis in Gaza meant that many supporters couldn’t follow live coverage of his homecoming.

Issawi’s mother, Laila Issawi, said Samer is still very weak and that his condition requires constant vigilant treatment. Due to his 8 month hunger strike, he lost half his body weight. “If I die, it is a victory,” he had said. “If we are liberated, it is a victory.” He is still unable to eat solid foods.

Issawi was one of the 1,027 prisoners released from Israeli prison in the deal for the freedom of Gilad Shalit. He was originally convicted in 2002 of being a Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist.

In October 2011, Issawi, then serving the ninth year of a 30-year jail sentence for involvement in resistance activities against Israel, was released as part of an Egypt-brokered prisoner swap between Hamas and Israeli authorities, reports Al-Ahram news agency. Issawi was rearrested July 2012 under Israel’s so-called administrative detention law, for trying to catch a bus in Kufr Aqab, a village within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem near a Jewish settlement, in what Israeli officials said was a parole violation. His lawyer Andre Rosenthal stated that he had been taking his car to be fixed at a garage in the West Bank.

According to Addameer, as a result of this arrest, Issawi again faced twenty years’ imprisonment by an Israeli military court – on the grounds of secret information not accessible to him or his lawyer.

Demonstrations in support of Issawi’s hunger strike were held throughout Palestine. A protest tent in Issaiyeh, Issawi’s village, was destroyed by Israeli forces more than 20 times, Maath Musleh reported for The Electronic Intifada.On January 7, 2013, a protest organized by the Palestinian activist Hala Numan, took place in Washington, DC in support of Issawi.

As a result of his hunger strike as the resulting publicity, Israel offered to deport him in April 2013 but he refused to be released anywhere but his home in Jerusalem. Lawyer Jawad Boulos said that while “Israel had tried to make him agree to being deported” to any of a number of countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Finland and Switzerland, Issawi had “strongly refused in principle to be deported to any state.”

In January 2013, Israel demolished the house of Samer’s eldest brother, Ra’fat in retaliation. On February 30, 2013 masked Israeli soldiers ordered his father to take all family members outside while they ransacked the house.

Samer’s sister Shireen is an attorney that has worked very hard for his release. Israeli activists and intellectuals intervened to help free him. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on February 13, 2013 regarding the condition of Issawi and 3 other prisoners of Israel engaged in a hunger strike to protest the fact they were being held in prison without being convicted.

After a hunger striking 266 days, coming very close to death, Issawi reached an agreement with Israeli authorities in April, agreeing to end the hunger strike and serve a further eight months, totaling a sentence of 17 months. He had been kept alive through intravenous fluids. Since then, he still has refused solid food and is therefore very weak.

“I wanted to protect the rights of Palestinian prisoners and deter Israel from re-arresting more Palestinians who had been freed in the Shalit deal,” Issawi told Palestinian reporters according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, retired Israeli judge in Ofer Military Court Adrian Agassi has called on Israeli government to kill Palestinian prisoners instead of releasing them, Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights said.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called for the rearrest of Samer al-Issawi, two days after Issawi was released to his East Jerusalem home, claiming that Issawi was guilty of inciting violence:

“Just yesterday, on the day of his release, Issawi called in an interview with Hamas television to continue to kidnap IDF soldiers and said that ‘the release of prisoners will be reached only by kidnappings and prisoner swaps and nothing will be achieved without that,’” Liberman claimed in a statement posted to his Facebook page.

Stephen Lendmann reports: “His grandfather was a founding PLO member. British Mandate authorities sentenced him to death. In 1994, Israeli forces murdered his brother, Fadi. He was aged 16 at the time. It was during a peaceful demonstration. His brother Medhat served 19 years in prison. His other brothers Firas, Ra’afat and Shadi were imprisoned for 5 to 11 years. Issawi’s brother, Shadi, was arrested on February 16 in an Israeli house raid.”

Midhat had just been released from prison on December 10 of this year, his sister Shirin said.

Sister Shirin “was detained for the duration of 2010,” according to Addameer. Shirin was again arrested in December 2012 and banned from attending Samer’s hearings for six months, reported Al-Haq, a Palestinian non-governmental organization for human rights.

The “Free Samer Issawi Campaign” Facebook page, which garnered over 10,000 likes, posted: “Samer is a hero to us, to the entire Palestinian population inside of Palestine and in the diaspora, and to millions of supporters around the world.”

Israeli forces stormed several West Bank neighborhoods in the Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah districts last week, breaking into homes and kidnapping young men.

Two brothers Muhammad Salih Bader, 25, and Islam Salih Bader, 20, held without charge, ended their 38-day hunger strike after Ofer prison authorities decided to transfer them to court for trial.