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<font size=3 color="#191919">In prison, who knows why? <br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9406.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9406.shtml</a><br><br>
Mohammed Omer, <i>The Electronic Intifada,</i> 19 March 2008 <br><br>
GAZA CITY, 19 March (IPS) - You would think the baby boy named Yousef has
his life ahead of him. But who knows, with a child born to Palestinian
parents from Gaza. What's more, Yousef was born in an Israeli
prison.<br><br>
He is the only one of Fatima al-Zeq's nine children who is with her for
that reason -- she was arrested nine months ago. But these days the baby
is not with her. He developed stomach pain, began to vomit, and has been
transferred to a hospital inside Hasharon prison in Israel. <br><br>
Fatima has written to human rights organizations in Gaza asking for their
help in seeing that the baby is looked after, something she cannot do
herself. <br><br>
Her other children do not know why mother is in prison; the Israelis
haven't told them or the Palestinian authorities. And they declined to
tell IPS. If anything, the Israelis say the arrests are for
"security reasons." <br><br>
According to a Palestinian source, she was arrested because Israeli
authorities suspected she would carry out an attack in Israel, although
no explosives were found on her. Another source suggests that she was
arrested because she is a relative of an Islamic Jihad leader. <br><br>
Fatima had gone to an Israeli hospital to seek treatment, and had a
permit for it, her family members say. But at the checkpoint they
arrested her and threw her in jail. She joins thousands of Palestinians
inside Israeli jails. Prisoners' families are not always told why they
are in prison, whether they have been charged, or convicted, and when, if
ever, they will be released. <br><br>
Seven-year-old Jumana Abu Jazar knows all about this. "My mother
died, and I have no brothers and sisters," she says, looping the
string of a picture frame around a rusting nail in her house in Gaza.
"Father is in jail in Israel. He lives there in a dark cell. I saw
him once." <br><br>
Jumana lives with her grandmother Umm Ala'a in the Rafah refugee camp in
the southern Gaza Strip. Umm Ala'a says Jumana's father "was
arrested by Israeli occupation forces in 2001 on his way back through the
Rafah border. He was accompanying his father, who had received medical
treatment abroad. An Israeli judge sentenced him to 18 years in
jail." <br><br>
Again, the family says that they have no idea what crime he committed.
But one thing is clear; he, and so many others arrested, are not being
punished for firing rockets into Israel. Nor have most of them carried
out what Israel considers terrorist attacks. <br><br>
"His crime is he was Palestinian," Umm Ala'a said. "This
is a tax on life that we all pay." <br><br>
Many Palestinians are convicted on charges never disclosed, but many are
in Israeli prisons without ever being charged. Ahmad Abu Haniyah, youth
coordinator for the Alternative Information Centre, a 20-year-old project
set up jointly by Israeli and Palestinian journalists, was arrested by
the Israelis in May 2005.
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6899.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6899.shtml</a> He was
released in May 2007. The Israelis never told him why he was arrested in
the first place. He was never charged or tried; the Israelis call this
administrative detention. <br><br>
By now most Palestinian families know a relative or friend who has been
held in administrative detention. <br><br>
Israel occasionally releases batches of prisoners as a "goodwill
gesture." This plays well internationally, but these are usually
people close to release date anyway. These gestures benefit few
Palestinians, and fools even fewer. <br><br>
Atia Abu Mussa has been held in the Nafha desert prison for 14 years now;
he was detained when he was 21. Every Monday friends and relatives of
Atia, along with others, gather outside the office of the International
Red Cross in Gaza to hold a vigil for their loved ones. <br><br>
"My son has been on hunger strike for a week," says Ramdan
al-Baba, standing outside the Red Cross office. "He worked as a
guard at [former] president Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah in 2003.
His crime was that he had that job." The conditions in Israeli
prison are dire, he said. "I can't even send him a letter."
<br><br>
Palestinians find themselves unable to invoke <i>habeas corpus</i>, a
provision under the Geneva Convention by which a state must produce
information on the whereabouts of a person within its jurisdiction.
Israel denies this option on the grounds that it is not necessary for
persons under administrative detention. At the moment 863 Palestinians
have been in jail for more than 15 years under such detention, according
to official Palestinian figures. <br><br>
There are a total of 10,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. These
include 90 women and 328 children below the age of 18, according to the
Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees. Forty-six of the
prisoners are members of parliament, mostly members of Hamas. <br><br>
Israeli human rights groups say that security forces called Shin Bet
regularly torture Palestinians in Israeli jails. The two groups B'Tselem
and HaMoked: Centre for Defence of Individuals, tracked 73 prisoners
between July 2005 and July 2006. They reported that Shin Bet routinely
uses "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and
prolonged sleep deprivation" to torture Palestinian
prisoners.<br><br>
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