Wednesday, April 17, 2013

EU urged to secure Palestinian prisoner's release from Israeli jail

Death of Samer Issawi could result in violence and damage efforts to revive peace process, foreign policy chief warned

The European Union must take "immediate and concrete steps" to secure the release of a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail who has been refusing food for almost nine months and is in a critical condition, a senior Palestinian official has demanded.

In a letter to Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, Saeb Erekat said the life of Samer Issawi "hangs in the balance" and warned his death could result in serious violence and damage efforts to revive the peace process.

"The fate of Mr Issawi is being followed very closely by millions of Palestinians, Arabs and supporters of justice worldwide. The situation is potentially explosive and any harm that comes to him will undoubtedly lead to a serious eruption of violence that will make any sort of political progress unlikely," wrote Erekat on the eve of Prisoners' Day, marked by Palestinians on Wednesday.

He added: "Should Mr Issawi die, we will … hold the international community partly responsible for its tolerance of Israel's appalling actions which have created this terrible situation."

Three thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails refused meals to mark Prisoners' Day.

Issawi was arrested on 7 July 2012 at a checkpoint and was accused of being in breach of the terms of his release from jail in October 2011 as part of the prisoner swap deal that secured the release from captivity of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Issawi had been sentenced in April 2002 to 30 years in prison for membership of an illegal organisation, attempted murder and possession of explosives.

Since his arrest, he has been held without charge, although he has appeared at special hearings at which any evidence against him has not been disclosed.

Issawi began refusing food on 1 August last year, his mother Laila told the Guardian last month. Her son – who is in the Kaplan hospital in Tel Aviv – was taking water, vitamins and infusions, she said. "I am forbidden from seeing him. I last saw him in court in February but I wasn't allowed to speak to him. All I could see was skin and bone.

"Nothing inside him is functioning. His kidneys are not right, his heart is not right, he has headaches all the time, he can't take himself to the bathroom."

Issawi has lost at least 45kg in weight, and his heart rate has slowed to 28 beats a minute, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners' rights organisation. It said his lawyers had been banned from visiting him in hospital.

Sivan Weizman, spokeswoman for the Israeli Prison Service, said Issawi's condition was stable. She declined to give further details.

His case has generated widespread support and clashes across the West Bank. "Samer has put the prisoners' issue on the table. He shows the whole world that thousands of Palestinian prisoners are in Israeli jails unjustly," said Laila Issawi.

Almost 5,000 Palestinian prisoners are held in 27 Israeli jails and detention centres, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. They include more than 100 who have been in prison for more than 20 years, and 235 children. About 200 are "administrative detainees", prisoners held without charge, including 14 elected members of the Palestinian legislature.

The issue of prisoners is a visceral one among Palestinian families, nearly all of whom have experienced the jailing of a relative. Of Laila Issawi's eight children, six – "including a daughter" – have spent time in prison, and a seventh was shot dead aged 16 by Israeli soldiers. Laila Issawi, 65, spent six months in prison in the 1970s accused of "supporting terrorism" after treating wounded militants as a nurse.

Earlier this month, there were clashes and protests in the West Bank following the death from cancer of a 64-year-old prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh. Palestinian officials accused Israel of negligence in his diagnosis and treatment.

In a message to Israeli activists and intellectuals, posted last week on Facebook, Issawi wrote: "I invite you to visit me in the hospital and see me as a skeleton handcuffed to the bed. Three exhausted jailers around me eat and drink by my bed. The guards follow my pains and gradually growing weight loss. Occasionally they look at their watches and ask: 'How can such a body have anything left to survive?'

"I haven't heard a single one of you intervene and try to silence the voice of the growing death as all of you have turned into gravediggers, wearing military uniforms: the judge, writer, intellectual, media, merchant, academic, poet. I am unable to believe that an entire society has turned into the jailers of my death and life, to the protectors of the settlers who are pursuing my dreams."

A group of intellectuals, including the celebrated authors Amos Oz and AB Yehoshua, pleaded with Issawi to end his hunger strike.

"We are horrified by your deteriorating condition," the message said. We feel that the suicidal act you are about to commit will add another facet of tragedy and desperation to the conflict between the two peoples, a conflict that peace-seekers on both sides wish to end. Please, Samer Issawi, don't pile more despair on the despair already in existence."

In an article published by the Guardian last month, Issawi wrote that his hunger strike was "my last remaining stone to throw at the tyrants and jailers in the face of the racist occupation that humiliates our people … If I die, it is a victory; if we are liberated, it is a victory, because either way I have refused to surrender to the Israeli occupation, its tyranny and arrogance."


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Harriet Sherwood 17 Apr, 2013


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/17/palestinian-prisoner-israeli-jail
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