organization:popular front

Does Being ’Zionist Feminist’ Mean Betraying Women for Israel? - Tikun Olam תיקון עולם
▻https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2017/03/16/zionist-feminist-mean-betraying-women-israel

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March 16, 2017 by Richard Silverstein Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I wrote a critique of Emily Shire’s diatribe against the Women’s Strike Day USA protest. She especially singled out platform statements supporting Palestinian rights. Shire, a professed Zionist feminist, dismissed the criticisms of Israeli Occupation contained in the event platform as irrelevant to the issue of women’s rights. Then she launched into an attack on one of the conveners of the Strike Day, Rasmea Odeh. Shire alleges that Odeh is a convicted terrorist and former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated terror group.

A comment Deir Yassin published yesterday here got me to thinking further about this issue. I researched Rasmea’s case and the torture she endured. My view is this is precisely the sort of case and individual any women’s movement should embrace. Here is a summary of the facts of the case. In 1969, a cell of the PFLP planted bombs at a Jerusalem Super-Sol. They exploded, killing two Hebrew University students.
shin bet torture

Afterward, security forces arrested Odeh and jailed her without charges or access to counsel. She was tortured, by her account, for 45 days. Here is how she described her treatment in testimony to a UN commission on torture in Geneva:

…”They beat me with sticks, plastic sticks, and with a metal bar. They beat me on the head and I fainted as a result of these beatings. They woke me up several times by throwing cold water in my face and then started all over again.”

In addition to this physical torture, Odeh also faced sexual torture. Her father, a U.S. citizen, was also arrested and beaten, “and once they brought in my father and tried to force him under blows to take off his clothes and have sexual relations with me.” Later, interrogators “tore my clothes off me while my hands were still tied behind my back. They threw me to the ground completely naked and the room was full of a dozen or so interrogators and soldiers who looked at me and laughed sarcastically as if they were looking at a comedy or a film. Obviously they started touching my body.” In her father’s presence, interrogators threatened to “violate me” and “tried to introduce a stick to break my maidenhead [hymen].” Shackled naked from the ceiling, interrogators “tied my legs, which were spread-eagled, and they started to beat me with their hands and also with cudgels.”

Every method described in her account is known from previous descriptions of the treatment of Arab terror suspects. We know, for example, that Doron Zahavi, an IDF AMAN officer, raped Mustafa Dirani in Prison 504. The beatings and positions she describes are also previously described in testimony by the Public Committee to Prevent Torture in Israel. Therefore, it’s not just conceivable that Rasmea endured the treatment she claims, it’s almost a certainty. Especially given that two Israelis were killed in the bombing.

In summary, the Shin Bet tried to force her father to rape her. The interrogators themselves raped her and further degraded her sexually. And her father was tortured as a means of compelling her to confess. If this isn’t a perfect portrait of a cause that all feminists should embrace, I don’t know what is. So when Shire claims that Palestine is the farthest thing from what Women’s Strike Day’s mission should be, she’s engaging in willful blindness to the plight of another woman. A woman who happens to be Palestinian.

Rasmea was tried and convicted in an Israeli military court, which features military judges and prosecutors using rules that favor the prosecution and shackle the hands of the defense. It can rule any evidence secret and so prevent the defense from seeing it, let alone rebutting it. Such a conviction could never withstand scrutiny under U.S. criminal procedures or even Israeli civilian courts.

Further, Shire justifies her denunciation of Odeh by noting that Israel denies torturing Rasmea. So you have an Israeli security apparatus which is well-known for lying when evidence against it is damning. And you have Rasmea’s testimony, supported by scores of accounts by other security prisoners as to their treatment under similar circumstances. It reminds me of the story of the husband who returns home to find his wife in bed with another man. The man jumps out of bed and says: “Hey, this isn’t what this looks like. Nothing happened. I swear it. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?” Emily Shire prefers to believe the agency that lies to her with a straight face. In doing so, she shows that she is a Zionist first and foremost; and a feminist second, if at all.

As for the citizenship application infractions which the Justice Department is exploiting in order to expel her from the U.S.: she had been tortured once by Israel. Her decision to hide her previous conviction was surely founded on a fear that she might be deported once again back to Israel or Jordan (where Israel had sent her after her release from prison). The Jordanian security apparatus collaborates closely with Israeli intelligence. The former is quite handy with torture itself. Further, the U.S. judge in her first trial prohibited her attorney from raising torture as part of her defense. Her second trial will explicitly permit such testimony. Though I’m not privy to the defense strategy, I hope it will demand that a Shabak officer who participated in her interrogation testify at trial. And if his testimony diverges from the truth, I hope there is means to document this and hold him accountable. It would be one of the first times such an agent would be held accountable legally either inside or outside Israel.

In the attacks against Rasmea, it’s certainly reasonable to bring up her participation in an act of terrorism: as long as you also examine the entire case against her. She admitted participation in the attack. But she denied placing the bomb in the supermarket. Despite her denial, this was the crime for which she was convicted. Further, Rasmea was released after serving ten years as part of a prisoner exchange. If Israel saw fit to release her, what is the point of using her alleged past crime against her today?

As for her membership in a terror organization, she has long since left the militant movement. Her civic activism is solely non-violent these days. Further, virtually every leader of Israel for the first few decades of its existence either participated directly in, or ordered acts of terror against either British or Palestinian targets. Why do we grant to Israel what we deny to Palestinians?

It may be no accident that two days before Shire’s broadside against the U.S. feminist movement (and Rasmea) in the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune published another hit-piece against her. The latter was credited to a retired Chicago professor. Her bio neglected to mention that she is also a Breitbart contributor who is the local coördinator for StandWithUs. This sin of omission attests either to editorial slacking or a deliberate attempt to conceal relevant biographical details which would permit readers to judge the content of the op-ed in proper context.

The Tribune op-ed denounces Jewish Voice for Peace’s invitation to Rasmea to address its annual conference in Chicago later this month. As I wrote in last night’s post, what truly irks the Israel Lobby is the growing sense of solidarity among feminist, Jewish, Palestinian, Black and LGBT human rights organizations. Its response is to divide by sowing fear, doubt and lies in the media. The two op-eds in the Times and Tribute are stellar examples of the genre and indicate a coordinated campaign against what they deride as intersectionality.

#Palestine #femmes #résistance #zionisme

Le mouvement Hamas doit prendre garde !
Abdel Bari Atwan - 9 mars 2019 – Raï al-Yaoum – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine – Lotfallah
▻http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/le-mouvement-hamas-doit-prendre-garde

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Il existe effectivement un projet visant à déstabiliser Gaza, mais ce n’est pas une excuse pour frapper les manifestants.

Il ne fait aucun doute que le mouvement Hamas a commis des erreurs à Gaza. Il a dirigé la bande de Gaza de manière partisane et sectaire, en faisant appel à ses loyalistes et en s’aliénant ses opposants, voire même ceux qui étaient neutres. Il s’est ainsi donné une longue ligne d’adversaires : cela commence à l’intérieur de Gaza avec les opposants locaux qui appartiennent au mouvement Fatah et certains groupes islamistes radicaux opposés au maintien du calme ; puis cela passe par Ramallah où l’Autorité palestinienne (AP) veut reprendre la mains sur la bande de Gaza à ses propres conditions, la principale étant de désarmer la résistance ; et cela se termine à Tel-Aviv, où l’État israélien d’occupation est de plus en plus inquiet de la résistance armée de Gaza, des missiles et des manifestations de masse.

Malgré tous ces défis, rien ne peut justifier la façon très laide, insultante et brutale avec laquelle la police du Hamas a traité les manifestants alors que ceux-ci cherchaient à exprimer leur colère face à la dégradation des conditions de vie dans le territoire sous blocus. Ces manifestants utilisaient des moyens purement pacifiques pour protester contre les impôts et les taxes qui pèsent sur eux, l’inflation qui rendre la vie impossible et, plus important encore, le taux de chômage des jeunes de 60% ou plus qui les incite à prendre la mer et à risquer leur vie pour tenter de migrer.

Le Hamas a raison de dire qu’il est confronté à un complot aux multiples facettes visant à remettre en cause son pouvoir à Gaza en déstabilisant le territoire et en le faisant exploser de l’intérieur. Le chef de l’Autorité palestinienne, Mahmoud Abbas, et ses assistants ne cachent pas leur intention d’atteindre cet objectif en multipliant les pressions sur les habitants de la bande de Gaza. C’est la raison pour laquelle ils ont largement rogné sur les salaires des fonctionnaires – y compris les partisans du Fatah -, forcé des milliers de personnes à prendre une retraite anticipée et cessé de payer la facture de carburant de la seule centrale électrique de la bande côtière. Israël – confronté à des missiles de plus en plus efficaces, des ballons et des cerfs-volants incendiaires, des Marches du retour et des dommages croissants à sa réputation internationale – est naturellement le principal comploteur.

Chaque fois que j’appelais des parents ou des amis dans la bande de Gaza, quelle que soit leur conviction politique, ils se plaignaient de moments difficiles et de la difficulté à joindre les deux bouts. Mais tous, même les partisans du Fatah, étaient d’accord sur un point : le Hamas avait instauré la sécurité et mis fin à l’anarchie qui régnait avant sa prise du pouvoir par son célèbre coup de force de 2007. (...)

Israel releases PFLP leading member Khalida Jarrar
Feb. 28, 2019 12:25 P.M. (Updated : Feb. 28, 2019 12:25 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782702

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JENIN (Ma’an) — The Israeli authorities released leading member of the PFLP and former Palestinian lawmaker, Khalida Jarrar, early Thursday, after being held under administrative detention for 20 months.

Jarrar was released at the Salem Israeli military checkpoint, in the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin, in the early morning hours to prevent family and activists from organizing a welcome ceremony for her.

Israeli forces had detained Jarrar on July 2nd, 2017, a year after her release, and confiscated her personal belongings including a computer and a mobile phone; her detention was renewed four times.

Jarrar, a leading member of the PFLP, deputy at the PLC (Palestinian Legislative Council), heads the PLC’s prisoners’ committee and acts as the Palestinian representative in the Council of Europe, an international organization promoting human rights and democracy around the world, was previously detained in 2015 and had spent 14 months in Israeli jails.

#Khalida_Jarrar

Reminder: Israel is still holding a Palestinian lawmaker as political prisoner indefinitely
Haaretz.com - Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar has been incarcerated in an Israeli jail without a trial for 20 months. Another period of ‘administrative detention’ will soon expire. Will she come home?
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 14, 2019 5:20 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-reminder-israel-is-holding-palestinian-lawmaker-as-political-priso

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.5688892.1550157544!/image/1018316866.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/1018316866.jpg

Ghassan Jarrar says his life is meaningless without Khalida. In his office at the children’s toys and furniture factory he owns in Beit Furik, east of Nablus, its chairs upholstered with red fake fur, the face of the grass widower lights up whenever he talks about his wife. She’s been incarcerated in an Israeli prison for 20 months, without trial, without being charged, without evidence, without anything. In two weeks, however, she could be released, at long last. Ghassan is already busy preparing himself: He knows he’s liable to be disappointed again, for the fourth successive time.

Khalida Jarrar is Israel’s No. 1 female political prisoner, the leader of the inmates in Damon Prison, on Mt. Carmel, and the most senior Palestinian woman Israel has jailed, without her ever having been convicted of any offense.

The public struggle for her release has been long and frustrating, with more resonance abroad than in Israel. Here it encounters the implacable walls of the occupation authorities and the startling indifference of Israeli public opinion: People here don’t care that they’re living under a regime in which there are political prisoners. There is also the silence of the female MKs and the muteness of the women’s organizations.

Haaretz has devoted no fewer than five editorials demanding either that evidence against her be presented or that she be released immediately. To no avail: Jarrar is still in detention and she still hasn’t been charged.

She’s been placed in administrative detention – that is, incarceration without charges or a trial – a number of times: She was arrested for the first time on April 15, 2015 and sentenced to 15 months in jail, which she served. Some 13 months after she was released from that term, she was again put under administrative detention, which kept getting extended, for 20 consecutive months, starting in mid-2017: two stints of six months each, and two of four months each.

The latest arbitrary extension of her detention is set to end on February 28. As usual, until that day no one will know whether she is going to be freed or whether her imprisonment will be extended once again, without explanation. A military prosecutor promised at the time of the previous extension that it would be the last, but there’s no way to know. Typical of the occupation and its arbitrariness.

In any event, Ghassan is repainting their house, replacing air conditioners and the water heater, hanging new curtains, planting flowers in window boxes, ordering food and sweets in commercial quantities, and organizing a reception at one checkpoint and cars to await her at two other checkpoints – you can never know where exactly she will be released. A big celebration will take place in the Catholic church of Ramallah, which Ghassan has rented for three days on the last weekend of the month. Still, it’s all very much a matter of if and when.

Reminder: On April 2, 2015, troops of the Israel Defense Forces raided the Jarrar family’s home in El Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, and abducted Khalida, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

She was placed in administrative detention. In the wake of international protests over Israel’s arrest without charges of a lawmaker who was elected democratically, the occupation authorities decided to try her. She was indicted on 12 counts, all of them utterly grotesque, including suspicion of visiting the homes of prisoners’ families, suspicion of attending a book fair and suspicion of calling for the release of Ahmad Saadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who has been in prison for years.

The charge sheet against Jarrar – an opponent of the occupation, a determined feminist and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee – will one day serve as the crushing proof that there is not even the slightest connection between “military justice” and actual law and justice.

We saw her in the military court at Ofer base in the summer of 2015, proud and impressive, as her two daughters, Yafa and Suha, who returned from their studies in Canada after their mother’s arrest, wept bitterly with their father on the back benches of the courtroom. No one remained indifferent when the guards allowed the two daughters to approach and embrace their mother, in a rare moment of grace and humanity, as their father continued to cry in the back. It was a scene not easily forgotten.

Three months ago, she was transferred, along with the other 65 female Palestinian prisoners, from the Sharon detention facility where she’d been incarcerated to Damon, where the conditions are tougher: The authorities in Damon aren’t experienced in dealing with women and their special needs, Ghassan says. The showers are separate from the cells, and when a prisoner is menstruating, the red fluid flows into the yard and embarrasses the women. But at the same time, he says, the prison authorities are treating Khalida’s health situation well: She suffers from a blood-clotting problem and needs weekly medications and tests, which she receives regularly in her cell.

“You are my sweetheart” is inscribed on some of the synthetic-fur toys in the production room in Beit Furik. There are dolls of Mickey Mouse and of other characters from the cartoon world, sporting bold colors, along with padded rocking chairs and lamps for children’s rooms, all designed by Ghassan and all bespeaking sweet innocence and creativity. He’s devoted much less time to his factory since his wife’s incarceration. Of the 19 employees he had, only seven remain, one of whom, a deaf woman, is his outstanding worker. It’s a carpentry shop, an upholstery center and a sewing workshop all under one roof. Ghassan sells most of his products to Israel, although he’s been denied entry to the country for years.

Now his mind is focused on his wife’s release. The last time he visited her in prison was a month ago, 45 minutes on a phone through armor-plated glass. During her months in prison, Jarrar became an official examiner of matriculation exams for the Palestinian Education Ministry. The exam papers are brought to the prison by the International Red Cross. Among others that she has graded were Ahed Tamimi and her mother, Nariman. Ahed called Ghassan this week to ask when Khalida’s release was expected. She calls her “my aunt.”

The clock on the wall of Ghassan’s office has stopped. “Everything is meaningless for me without Khalida,” he says. “Life has no meaning without Khalida. Time stopped when Khalida was arrested. Khalida is not only my wife. She is my father, my mother, my sister and my friend. I breathe Khalida instead of air. Twenty months without meaning. My work is also meaningless.”

A business call interrupts this love poem, which is manifestly sincere and painful. What will happen if she’s not released, again? “I will wait another four months. Nothing will break me. I don’t let anything break me. That is my philosophy in life. It has always helped me.”

Ghassan spent 10 years of his life in an Israeli prison, too. Like his wife, he was accused of being active in the PFLP.

In the meantime, their older daughter, Yafa, 33, completed her Ph.D. in law at the University of Ottawa, and is clerking in a Canadian law firm. Suha, 28, returned from Canada, after completing, there and in Britain, undergraduate and master’s degrees in environmental studies. She’s working for the Ramallah-based human rights organization Al-Haq, and living with her father.

Both daughters are mobilized in the public campaign to free their mother, particularly by means of the social networks. Khalida was in jail when Yafa married a Canadian lawyer; Ghassan invited the whole family and their friends to watch the wedding ceremony in Canada on a large screen live via the Internet. Ghassan himself is prohibited from going abroad.

During Khalida’s last arrest, recalls her husband, IDF soldiers and Shin Bet security service agents burst into the house by force in the dead of night. They entered Suha’s room and woke her up. He remembers how she shouted, panic-stricken at the sight of the rifles being brandished by strange men in her bedroom wearing black masks, and how the soldiers handcuffed her from behind. As Ghassan replays the scene in his mind and remembers his daughter’s shouts, he grows distraught, as if it had happened this week.

Not knowing know what the soldiers were doing to her there, and only hearing her shouts, he tried to come to his daughter’s rescue, he recalls. He says he was almost killed by the soldiers for trying to force his way into Suha’s bedroom.

After the soldiers took Khalida, preventing Ghassan from even kissing her goodbye, despite his request – he discovered his daughter, bound by plastic handcuffs. After he released her, she wanted to rush into the street to follow the soldiers and her captive mother. He blocked her, and she went to the balcony of the house and screamed at them hysterically, cries of unfettered fury.

Last Saturday was Khalida’s 56th birthday. It wasn’t the first birthday she’d spent in prison, maybe not the last, either. Ghassan’s face positively glows when he talks about his wife’s birthday. He belongs to a WhatsApp group called “Best Friends” that is devoted to Khalida, where they posted his favorite photograph of her, wearing a purple blouse and raising her arms high in the courtroom of the Ofer facility. The members of the group congratulated him. Umar quoted a poem about a prisoner who is sitting in his cell in complete darkness, unable even to see his own shadow. Hidaya wrote something about freedom. Khamis wrote a traditional birthday greeting, and Ghassan summed up, “You are the bride of Palestine, renewing yourself every year. You are the crown on my head, al-Khalida, eternal one.”

#Khalida_Jarrar

Felicia Langer. Remembering Israel’s human rights law trailblazer, a Holocaust survivor who called to boycott Israeli products

A communist labeled ’the terrorists’ attorney,’ Felicia Langer called her clients ‘resistance fighters.’ In 1990 she gave up and left for Germany, where she died over the summer

Ofer Aderet SendSend me email alerts
Nov 06, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-remembering-israel-s-human-rights-law-trailblazer-1.6632132

After the Six-Day War, attorney Felicia Langer opened an office near the Old City in Jerusalem and began representing Arabs. Langer was a strange type in the local topography: a Jewish Holocaust survivor with a Polish accent who adhered to European manners and believed in the ideology of communism.
“Her engagement with Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip was perhaps the strangest thing in the Middle East,” wrote attorney Michael Sfard. Her acquaintances saw in her a pathfinder in legal battles that advanced the human rights of Palestinians. Her enemies saw in her a traitor and accessory of terrorists.
>> Holocaust survivor and Palestinians’ rights lawyer Felicia Langer dies in exile at 87
She was born in the city of Tarnov, Poland in 1930 as Felicia Amalia White. In World War II she fled with her family to the Soviet Union, where her father died. After the war, she returned to the land of her birth and married Holocaust survivor Moshe Langer. In 1950 they immigrated to Israel – “not because of Zionist ideology,” according to her, but to live near her mother.
Archival documents attest to the tense relationships between her and the Israeli establishment. In 1968 an intelligence officer in the military government in Hebron testified before the Legal Attaché of the West Bank that she “held extreme left-wing opinions.” In 1975, the Foreign Ministry reported that the Shin Bet security service viewed her legal activities as being guided by political motivations to harm “the state and the image of the state.” She faced threats to her life throughout her career. Occasionally, she felt compelled to hire a bodyguard.
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Langer fought the expulsion of Palestinian leaders, housing demolitions of terror suspects, administrative detentions (imprisonment without charges), and torture. “She never hesitated to accuse the establishment of crimes and to represent her clients as victims of an evil regime,” wrote Sfard.

When they called her “the defense attorney of terrorists,” she replied that her clients were not terrorists, but “resistance fighters.” “A people under occupation has the right to wage violent struggle,” she said. Among her famous clients was the mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shakaa, one of the leaders of resistance to the occupation, whose expulsion Langer succeeded in preventing. Other clients included the parents of the attackers of Bus 300, who sought to sue the state for killing their sons, and a young Dutch woman who was detained at Ben-Gurion International Airport after she gathered intelligence for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Langer maintained that she was just a “small cog.”
In 1990, she immigrated to Germany, after handling what she estimated to have been 3,000 cases. “I could no longer help the Palestinian victims in the framework of the existing legal system and its flouting of international law, which is supposed to protect the people that I defended,” she said in an interview with Eran Torbiner. “It is forbidden to be silent; silence also can kill,” she said, in explaining her call for the boycott of Israeli goods. As a German citizen, she called on Germany to fight the occupation.
Langer lived in Tübingen, teaching and writing books. Critics were angered by her comparison of Israel to the Nazis, and accused her of hypocrisy for ignoring the crimes of communist regimes. When she was asked once to describe her “love of homeland,” she answered: “Hatred of occupation.” In June, Langer died of cancer at age 87.

Ofer Aderet
Haaretz Correspondent

Return to Haifa.

Filmed in Tripoli. Based on Ghassan Kanafani’s novel. Performed with the participation of over 3000 Palestinian refugees themselves, dressed in the very clothes the were wearing at the moment of forced exile. Interspersed with actual footage from the events themselves. Funded by the PFLP. It is perhaps where we first hear Kanafani’s most incredible statement: “A person is a cause.” Although in the film, the characters also do not remember who said that, a piece of self-deprecating irony that only a prophet like Kanafani could create.

We don’t just inherit our ancestors stories, but also their suffering. We are obligated not just to remember them, or commemorate them, but to continue their struggles. - Asim Rafiqui

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FRyGCMLkt0&feature=youtu.be

WOW ?

«Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful)»

by Marc Ribot (feat. Tom Waits)
from the album ’Songs Of Resistance 1942 - 2018’
▻https://youtu.be/50GvkAO0OIg

Israel renews detention of Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar
June 16, 2018 3:01 P.M.
▻https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780244

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RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — The Israeli authorities renewed the administrative detention of leading member of the PFLP Khalida Jarrar for three months for the third consecutive time.

The Israeli military court of Ofer approved the renewal order that would keep Jarrar in detention for three more months.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said that the renewal of Jarrar’s detention would not stop her from continuing her initial role in resisting the occupation.

The PFLP said in a statement that “this is an attempt to absent influential leaders from events and developments in Palestine.

The renewal of her detention comes two weeks before Jarrar’s release date. (...)

#Khalida_Jarrar

The biography of the founder of the Palestinian Popular Front makes it clear: The leftist leader was right -

Israelis considered George Habash a cruel airline hijacker, but Eli Galia’s new Hebrew-language book shows that the PFLP chief’s views would have been better for the Palestinians than Arafat’s compromises

Gideon Levy Apr 13, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-biography-makes-it-clear-this-palestinian-leftist-leader-was-right

George Habash was Israel’s absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title “Dr.” before his name — he was a pediatrician — was considered blasphemous.
Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn’t recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? — there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero.
What’s there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist Front who was no different from all the rest of the “terrorists” from Yasser Arafat to Wadie Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.
Now along comes Eli Galia’s Hebrew-language book “George Habash: A Political Biography." It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy.
Presumably only few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It’s a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there’s not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it’s fascinating.
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Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn’t to be taken for granted.
Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that’s dogmatism, what’s pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn’t budge an inch — and who of course isn’t considered dogmatic.

The exodus from Lod following an operation by the Palmach, 1948.Palmach Archive / Yitzhak Sadeh Estate
In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel’s crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel.

He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It’s impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.
The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory.
What good have all of Arafat’s compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22 percent of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.
In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that’s how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn’t agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its positions if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that.
Unfortunately, Habash was right. It’s hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it’s impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.

Members of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers, 1987, including Yasser Arafat, left, and George Habash, second from right. Mike Nelson-Nabil Ismail / AFP
The Palestinian Che Guevara
Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: “Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British .... The Jews’ relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good” (p. 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on.
But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: “I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle” (p.22).
On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli reader understand how he felt?
Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: “I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.”
“The Palestinian Che Guevara” — both of them were doctors — made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: “I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that’s what happened” (p. 41).
Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the Middle East and he replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well.
He also had to leave medicine: “I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don’t regret it .... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.”

Militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Jordan, 1969.1969Thomas R. Koeniges / Look Magazine Photograph Collection / Library of Congress
The only remaining weapon
This book isn’t arrogant and it isn’t Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn’t necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what’s not worthy of veneration, and he doesn’t have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation.
And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: “The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence .... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence” (p.125).
But this path too met with failure. “The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,” wrote Habash, “was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world .... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement’s monopoly on the mass media in the West” (p. 151).
The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn’t led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world — and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia’s book on a number of flights, even though this isn’t an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?
Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains?
Habash’s successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor’s successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.
During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It’s strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn’t failure, what is?

A mourning procession for George Habash, Nablus, January 2008. Nasser Ishtayeh / AP
To where is Israel galloping?
Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that “the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies .... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel” (p. 179).
From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.
After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.
On the 40th anniversary of Israel’s founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel’s success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.
And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: “The combination of a loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split” (p. 329).
This has yet to happen.
Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba.
Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash’s partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach — until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man.

@stevesalaita: "Jerry Seinfeld took his kids to play war games with the IDF. So cute, right? Now imagine the reaction if, say, Bella Hadid posed with the PFLP or DJ Khaled (brandishing a machine gun) hung out with Hamas."

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A dangerous 71-year-old
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.809634
The Israeli military authorities are keeping a retired Palestinian history teacher in detention without trial, and we’re not allowed to know why. Next comes the decision whether he’s healthy enough for prison

By Amira Hass | Aug. 30, 2017 | 1:04 AM

Badran Jaber , 71, is endangering the security of the region. Thank God we have the Shin Bet security service, which sent soldiers on the night of August 9 to break into his home, hold his seven terrified grandchildren (ages 2 to 10) in a room separate from the adults, and detain him. Jaber, a retired history teacher, is so dangerous that he and we aren’t even allowed to know the suspicions against him.

An administrative detention order for four months was issued against him on August 13, and the military authorities can extend the injunction repeatedly. And so Jaber was added to the 450 or so Palestinians who are now imprisoned without trial. On August 16 the secret information was whispered into the ear of the military judge, Maj. Rafael Yemini, who approved the detention — without evidence, witnesses, an indictment and a right to respond. Has an Israeli judge, military or civilian, ever been born who doubted the word of the Shin Bet?

I’ll let you in on a secret: Jaber is opposed to the Israeli occupation. The same is true of his seven children and his wife. When asked his opinion, he doesn’t hide it. There are pictures of him from a few years ago demonstrating with Palestinians and Israelis in Hebron against the destruction of the city by one of the most violent species of settlers.

“He’s very proud of his relationship with left-wing activists in Israel,” said his daughter Bissan, referring to his ties with Tarabut-Hithabrut, an Arab-Jewish social movement, and the joint conferences in Hebron of the Palestinian left and a genuine, socialist and anti-colonialist Israeli left. When she and her brothers weren’t allowed to travel abroad, she said, they were told that it was because of her father. Israel, the military and democratic power, is intimidated by his words and opinions. Or it’s sending a message: Imprison your thoughts and your words. Keep quiet.

With chains on his feet, Jaber will once again be brought into the military courtroom in Ofer. He will be holding a bag full of medication. Military occupation isn’t a recipe for one’s health, nor were Jaber’s previous periods of detention. Between 1972 and 2006 he spent almost 12 years in prison: in administrative detention, in detention during an investigation, and after being convicted of political activity for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Each time he was behind bars for two to three months to a maximum of 27 months. On Thursday it will be decided whether he is fit for detention, as an anonymous prison service doctor has determined, or not, as his lawyer, Mahmoud Hassan of the prisoner support and human rights group Addameer, will try to prove.

Jaber will be holding a bag full of medication because there’s no way of knowing how long he’ll be kept handcuffed in a kind of waiting cage before being brought into the trailer that serves as the courtroom. During the first extension of his detention, on August 10, which was one of the hottest days of the year, he was kept in that situation from 8:30 A.M. until about 5 P.M. A kind of torture, even for a healthy man, and certainly for someone suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, has had open heart surgery, is taking medication for prostate cancer and is connected to a catheter.

Bissan, 26, is a lawyer. On the morning before his detention, the proud father joined her when she was furnishing her new office. Thirteen years ago, after being tortured for an entire day in the cage where he was awaiting trial, he told her, his youngest daughter: I want you to be my lawyer the next time. Sure enough, she was there for the extension of his recent detention, before the administrative order was issued.

Her presence didn’t prevent the torture. After about six hours in one cage with a water faucet, he was transferred to another cage without one. There she was allowed to see him. She wanted to give him her water bottle, but the alert prison service guards prevented her and other lawyers from doing so. Beyond the letter of the law the guards brought him a bottle that they filled with water.

During their meeting, Bissan told him that she and her fiancé planned to postpone their wedding, which was scheduled for August 18, until her father’s release. “Absolutely not,” he told her. “I’ll be angry if you postpone it, if you let that interfere with your plans. Our lifelong struggle is only so that we’ll be able to live.”

13 PLC members held by Israel after Khalida Jarrar detained in overnight raidsJuly 2, 2017 10:49 A.M. (Updated: July 2, 2017 5:07 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=777878

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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar during predawn military raids carried out across the occupied West Bank on Sunday — just over a year after she was released from Israeli prison — bringing the number of Palestinian lawmakers imprisoned by Israel to 13.

At least 11 other Palestinians were detained in the raids, included the chairwoman of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

Israeli forces detained Jarrar, a deputy at the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) for the leftist faction the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), after raiding her home in Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

She was released from Israeli prison on June 3, 2016 on a suspended sentence of 12 months within a five-year period.

Following her detention 14 months prior, she was initially sentenced to six months of administrative detention — internment without trial or charge — though international pressure forced Israeli authorities to bring charges against her, all 12 of which focused on her political activism.

Jarrar was charged with security-related offenses related to her membership and activities with the PFLP — a Palestinian political party Israel considers a “terrorist” organization, along with the majority of other Palestinian political factions — and accused of inciting violence.

At the time, Jarrar accused the Israeli military prosecution of working to keep her in jail as long as possible, adding that she “did not expect anything from military courts. They are a joke, it’s like a big theater, I do not trust them and my detention has been political since the beginning.”

Jarrar also said that she refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court, stating that all charges pressed against her were “ridiculous” and related to completely legal activities, including social and political work as a member of parliament.

A statement released by the Israeli army Sunday morning claimed that Jarrar was detained for activities within PFLP and that her detention was not related to her post as member of the PLC.

Jarrar is also the head of the Prisoners’ Commission in the PLC, and vice-chairperson of the board of directors of Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer.

Addameer said in a statement Sunday morning that “the arrest of Khalida Jarrar constitutes an attack against Palestinian political leaders and Palestinian civil society as a whole. It also constitutes one arrest in the context of continuous arrest campaigns against Palestinians.”

#Khalida_Jarrar

Actualisation de la situation des prisonniers politique palestiniens au 17 Mai 2017 | Agence Media Palestine
17 Mai 2017, 31 ème jour de grève des prisonniers palestiniens.
▻http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2017/05/17/actualisation-de-la-situation-des-prisonniers-palestiniens-au-1

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L’avocat d’Addameer (association des Droits de l’Homme et de défense des prisonniers palestiniens) Farah Bayadsi, a rencontré Ahmad Sa’adat, gréviste et secrétaire général du Front Populaire pour la Libération de la Palestine (PFLP). L’avocat d’Addameer s’est déjà vu refusé le droit de visite, mais a reçu l’approbation suite à une requête de la Haute Cour présentée le 10 mai 2017.

Sada’at a informé l’avocat d’Addameer que les prisonniers sont soumis à deux raids de recherche violents tous les jours, au cours desquels les prisonniers sont forcés de quitter leur chambre, ce qui est épuisant physiquement pour les prisonniers en raison de leur état de santé. Il a également ajouté que 10 prisonniers sont détenus dans une cellule exiguë avec un évier et un toilette, pas de ventilateur ni de climatisation et chaque prisonniers reçoit 3 couvertures. Il a précisé par ailleurs que les examens médicaux effectués par l’IPS (Israel Prison Service) ne sont pas suffisants, car seule la pression sanguine et le poids des grévistes de la faim sont examinés.

L’IPS impose des restrictions aux prisonniers grévistes, y compris une amende disciplinaire de 200 NIS (équivalent à 50 euros environ), l’interdiction de visite familiale pendant deux mois, l’interdiction d’accès à la « cantine » (boutique où les prisonniers peuvent acheter des produits de la vie courante, tel que des cigarettes) et la saisie de sel ainsi que de tous les vêtements, uniquement un seul vêtement par prisonnier est autorisé.

Plus inquiétant encore : l’IPS a rendu extrêmement difficile pour les médecins indépendants de rendre visite aux prisonniers grévistes et a fourni aux prisonniers des tasses en plastique afin de boire du robinet plutôt que de l’eau potable, habituellement fournie.

35 autres prisonniers politiques palestiniens se sont joint à la grève dimanche 14 mai, a rapporté le média « Asra Voice ».

(...) Sa’adat a également noté que les prisonniers en grève avaient refusé de rencontrer des délégués du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge (CICR), qui sont venus pour leur visite, parce que les délégués du CICR ont refusé d’entrer dans les sections et les salles des prisonniers afin de voir par eux-mêmes les conditions de détention.

Les prisonniers en grève de la faim ont donc rejetés cette « proposition » du CICR et ont demandés au CICR de prendre ses responsabilités dans la protection des détenus et de leurs droits. (...)

Israeli troops shoot Palestinian teen in the back amid firebomb plot
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.779082

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Soldiers in ambush shot Murad Abu Razi while he was fleeing. He died on the spot.
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Mar 24, 2017 5:22 PM

Last Friday night, 17-year-old Murad Abu Razi went to a party celebrating the release of a resident of his refugee camp from Israeli prison, after 13 years. The party in honor of Ismail Farjoun, who had been let out that very day, was held in the clubhouse run by the popular committee at the Al-Arroub camp, which lies on the main road between Bethlehem and Hebron. It’s a crowded, hardscrabble place where happy events are few and far between. Perhaps that’s why so many people showed up to welcome the liberated prisoner home with sweets and cries of joy.

Murad left the party in the early evening, accompanied by both his father, Yusuf, who has been hard of hearing since birth, and an uncle, Hassan, a retired teacher. Murad bade them farewell without saying where he was going. Not long afterward he was shot in the back and killed by an Israel Defense Forces soldier who had been lying in ambush.

From the clubhouse, Murad had walked toward the camp’s western edge, which is delineated by a fence, toward Highway 60. There’s a permanent IDF post there – a fortified watchtower, concrete cubes that serve as roadblocks, and an almost constant presence of soldiers. Murad was joined by four more youths his age. They carried plastic bags that held improvised Molotov cocktails of their making.

On the way the teens encountered Murad’s cousin, who prefers to remain anonymous. He is 28 and lives in a small one-room apartment situated a few dozen meters from the camp’s fence. Fearing that Murad would get into trouble, he tried to persuade him – in vain – to go home. In the meantime, two members of the group left. Now they were three, approaching the fence.

They took the firebombs out of the bags and placed them on the concrete cubes. Their plan was to throw them over the high fence that had been built years ago by the Israeli authorities in order to prevent stones and incendiary devices from being thrown at vehicles on the busy road. Parked on the other side of the fence at the time was an IDF jeep. In the dark of evening the youths didn’t notice the soldiers who were lying in ambush inside the camp.

Suddenly, from a nearby abandoned tin shack with torn, perforated walls, soldiers sprang out. Spotting them, the three teens started to run toward the camp. The soldiers shot at them from behind as they fled. Murad was hit by a single bullet in the back. One of his friends, Seif Rushdi, was also hit, in one of his legs; he lost a great deal of blood, and is now in intensive care in Hebron’s Al-Ahli Hospital and could not be visited this week. The third teenager, who was wounded lightly, did not want to identify himself, for obvious reasons.

Murad collapsed, lying in a pool of his blood. He died almost immediately.

A trail of bloodstains, still visible this week on the road, marks their path of flight. This is the camp’s main road, traversing it from west to east without any sort of sidewalk. On both sides and in adjacent alleys, it’s lined with houses and shops, all appallingly crowded together.

As we walked, from the site of Murad’s death to the building where the celebration was held for the released prisoner – which has now become a house of mourning – we were engulfed by hundreds of children, who were just getting out of school. In light of the fact that six of Al-Arroub’s residents have been killed in the past two years, it was impossible to avoid wondering how many of the children who were streaming past would share a similar fate.

We had begun our visit at the end of the road, on the outskirts of the camp near the fence and the concrete cubes, where two soldiers were eating a meal from disposable aluminum trays. Maybe they’re the ones who shot Murad. Soldiers are posted at every entrance to the camp and in the watchtower that looms above it. To evade them, we left our vehicle at the car wash near one of the entrances and quickly stole into the camp on foot.

Murad’s cousin invited us for coffee in his tiny room, which resembled a beach hut, though in his case it’s accessed through a junkyard. An old television was tuned to an Egyptian movie channel, a pack of painkillers lay on the table along with the remnants of a snack. There was also an unmade steel bed and a wall painting of the Lebanese singer Fairuz as a young woman and next to it a quote from one of her best-known songs: “You are my prison, you are my freedom.” The cousin’s car is draped with posters commemorating the dead youth. He was the last person to see Murad alive.

Murad was shot at 8:40 P.M. on Friday, apparently from a distance of about 15-20 meters. He was obviously not endangering the soldiers as he fled. He managed to lunge forward after being shot, before he collapsed. He fell at the foot of the wall decorated with the image of Che Guevara, such as exists in almost every refugee camp, near a local medical laboratory. On the road we found a red casing with the inscription, “Stun grenade. Delay 3.5 seconds.”

Murad had run along the left side of the road, with Seif on the right side; paths of bloody drops are splattered on both sides of the road. The two must both have lost a great deal of blood. The cousin, hearing a woman shouting, said that he went outside and saw Murad lying in a pool of blood. The driver of a private car took the youth to Sa’ir Junction, where he was transferred to a Palestinian ambulance that rushed him to the hospital in Hebron.

A scratchy loudspeaker at the Popular Front clubhouse is blaring out Palestinian war songs from the period of the Lebanon War and the Israeli siege of Beirut. This is where the mourners were accepting condolences from camp residents, who arrived in a steady stream. Here, too, is where Murad attended his last celebration. When we got there, on Monday, a delegation from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah was just arriving. Murad’s father, who, in addition to being hard of hearing, has a speech impediment as well, shook the sympathizers’ hands mutely. He’s in a very bad way, his brother, Hassan, tells us. Murad was the youngest of his nine children.

The hall is adorned with photographs of Murad, yellow Fatah flags and images of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat. There’s also a photo of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. As is the custom, young people – wearing shirts with the deceased’s photo emblazoned on them – offer dates and bitter coffee to those who come to pay condolences. The arrival of the PA delegation is announced. Faces are grim.

Murad’s uncle, Hassan Abu Razi, takes us up to the second floor, where it’s quieter. He tells us that his nephew was already wanted by the Israeli authorities as a boy, for frequently throwing stones. Murad dropped out of school in the 10th grade and at the age of 13 or 14, was already hiding out and sleeping in various places in the camp. One time he was hit by an IDF jeep but wasn’t injured. Soldiers frequently came to his house looking for him. He had spent four months in jail.

Hassan tells us about the grinding poverty of his brother’s family, which mostly lives off charity. It was in this clubhouse where he saw his nephew for the last time. Murad behaved normally that evening, his uncle recalls, and said nothing about his plans. Hassan himself was in Hebron when his wife called him later with the dreadful news. He hurried to the hospital, first to the wrong one and then to Al-Ahli, where Murad had already been pronounced dead, at 9:15 P.M. The Palestinian media initially said that two people had been killed; the mistake was later corrected.

The hospital wanted to perform an autopsy but Hassan objected. Murad was already dead, he says, so what good would that do? He was shown the body: a hole in the back and a hole in the chest. From the medical report: “The wounded individual arrived at the ER in a Red Crescent ambulance after being shot by the occupation army. He was unconscious and had no pulse. Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful. After an examination we found that he had been shot with one bullet that entered his back and exited via the chest, on the left side.”

The IDF Spokesman’s Unit told Haaretz this week: “A Military Police investigation was opened in the wake of the event, and upon its conclusion, the findings will be conveyed to the office of the military advocate general for examination.”

▻https://seenthis.net/messages/579251

Israel assassinates Shalit-deal prisoner in Gaza, Hamas says
March 25, 2017 10:33 A.M.
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=776104

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GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Hamas movement announced Friday night that former prisoner 35-year-old Mazen Fuqahaa was assassinated by unidentified assailants in southern Gaza City, accusing Israel of carrying out the targeted killing.

Unknown assailants opened fire at Fuqahaa at the entrance to a residence in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in southwestern Gaza City, shooting four bullets into the man’s head before they fled the area, witnesses said.

The assassination was carried out with a gun equipped with a silencer, according to member of Hamas’s politburo Izzat al-Rishq.

Fuqahaa, from the northern occupied West Bank district of Tubas, was released from serving a life sentence in Israeli custody in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoners exchange deal, and then exiled to the besieged Gaza Strip.

According to Israeli media, Fuqahaa was a senior member of the al-Qassam Brigades, and had been sentenced to life in prison for planning a suicide bombing in northern Israel in 2002 that left nine people dead and tens of others wounded.

In a statement, the brigades said that it was “clear and obvious that this crime was arranged by the Zionist enemy,” referring to the state of Israel.

They went on to warn that “this enemy will be the ones who suffer the consequences and take responsibility for this crime,” and that Israel would “regret the day” they began carrying out stealth assassinations against “resistance fighters in Gaza.”

The Hamas movement called the assassination “a cowardly attack by the occupation,” promising that Israel would “pay for its crimes.”

The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also denounced the assassination, saying the killing “must be met with a harsh response by all resistance factions.”

The Islamic Jihad movement said Fuqahaa’s assassination marked the start of “a new offensive” by Israel against Palestinian resistance, and that the resistance had the right to respond and defend themselves.

Spokesperson for Gaza’s Ministry of Interior Iyad al-Buzm said security services had opened an investigation into the details of the incident.

#Palestine_assassinée

Leila Khaled (PFLP) on Daesh and Islamism, Syria and Palestine | the real Syrian Free Press
▻https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/pflp-leila-khaled

An Interview of Leila Khaled
to Dimitris Konstantakopoulos ~ Katehon

ISIS is a criminal organization which was created, and is used, by the USA. As for Syria, it was not only the intervention of Russia, which in any case came after a number of years of war. It was also the ability of the Assad government to defend itself, in particular by securing the economic viability and nutritional sufficiency of Syria but also by forging an army capable of defending its country. This is emphasized by Leila Khaled, leading cadre of People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in the following interview.

The People’s Front (PFLP) is, after Fatah, the second most powerful grouping in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It has its headquarters in Damascus and is the most important organization of the Palestinian Left, with more combative positions than those of Fatah. We took advantage of Leila Khaled’s recent visit to Athens, where she participated in the festival “Resistance”, organized by the newspaper “Dromos tis Aristeras” (Left Road) to obtain from first hand, the judgements of one of the centres of the Palestinian movement, on the dramatic developments that are now unfolding in all of the Middle East.

A terrorist for the Israelis, Khaled was a symbol throughout the world for the Palestinian armed struggle, following her participation in one of the four simultaneous hijackings of September 1970, inspiring songs, films and works of art internationally. These hijackings were part of the Palestinian “response” to the ignominious defeat they suffered with the occupation of their territories by Israel in 1967 and their massacre by Jordan in the “Black September” of 1970.

Because the PFLP was a Marxist organization with an internationalist ideology it was feted by the circles both of the European “anti-imperialist” Left (such as, for example, the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency [TMRI], an international organization headed by the Greek Michaelis Raptis (Pablo) ) and by the “Third Worldist” groupings such as the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. These forces also contributed practically to the international (outside the Arab world) armed actions of the PFLP. Conversely, their cadres were trained in Palestinian refugee camps. They included Greek opponents of the military dictatorship and Cypriot socialists, who wished to prepare for similar forms of action for the liberation of their island from Turkish occupation.

Palestinian former hunger striker Bilal Kayid released from prison
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=774389
Dec. 12, 2016 5:04 P.M. (Updated : Dec. 12, 2016 5:04 P.M.)

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NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities released former hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner Bilal Kayid to his home in the village of Asira al-Shamaliya in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus on Monday afternoon, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

Kayid went on hunger strike in June after Israeli authorities sentenced him to administrative detention — an Israeli policy of internment without charge or trial based on undisclosed evidence — on the day he was scheduled to be released from prison after serving a 14-and-a-half year sentence.

After refusing medical treatment, vitamins, and salt supplements, living off only water for 71 days, Kayid suspended his hunger strike in late August after reaching an agreement with Israeli authorities to end his administrative detention and release him on Dec. 12.

Kayid a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was originally detained in 2002 for alleged involvement in the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades — the armed wing of the PFLP.

He was transferred between several prisons during his 14-and-a-half-year sentence and was frequently placed into solitary confinement, the last stretch of which left him in isolation for nearly a year at Ramon prison after Israeli authorities learned of his leadership activities among Palestinians inside Israeli prisons.

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Muhammad et Mahmoud Balboul et Bilal Kayed, trois héros palestiniens ex-grévistes de la faim, libérés des geôles sionistes
Par ISM-France | 12 décembre 2016
▻http://www.ism-france.org/temoignages/Muhammad-et-Mahmoud-Balboul-et-Bilal-Kayed-trois-heros-palestiniens-ex-g

Bilal Kayed, qui a été libéré cet après-midi (photo ci-dessous par Hafez Omar), a été emprisonné à l’âge de 19 ans, le 14 décembre 2001, au début de la Deuxième Intifada. Le 13 juin 2016, date prévue de sa libération après 14 ans et demi d’incarcération, des « juges » du régime d’occupation ont décidé de prolonger de 6 mois son incarcération, sous le régime de la détention administrative. Le 15 juin, Bilal décidait d’entreprendre une grève de la faim illimitée pour contraindre l’occupant à respecter ses droits. Après 71 jours de grève, de nombreuses protestations et mobilisations en Palestine et dans le monde, le régime sioniste acceptait de ne pas renouveler la détention administrative de Bilal et de le libérer, 15 ans presque jour pour jour après le début de sa détention. (2)

Rare interview of PFLP leader Ghassan Kanafani revealed
▻http://www.albawaba.com/loop/rare-interview-pflp-leader-ghassan-kanafani-australian-journalist-revealed

http://img1.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/i/0/i005kgmyehrv50gv.jpg?kj8as6ye

La vidéo n’est viible que sur facebook ▻https://www.facebook.com/khajaj/videos/10153779969401556
Ghassan Kanafani...this is an amazing video of the late Australian journalist Richard Carleton interviewing Ghassan Kanafani discussing his view of history – which he describes as “weak people fighting strong people” – and the justice of the Palestinian struggle..
The interview is filmed in Beirut and demonstrate the brilliant intellect of Kanafani and the uncompromising position of his struggle. Interestingly his fiercest critique is aimed at other Arab leaders and especially King Hussein. Richard Carlton did an amazing job in gaining this interview and demonstrates what a great journalist he was..
▻http://oumma.com/13350/y-a-40-ans-mossad-assassinait-grand-ecrivain-palestini

Hamas, Fatah no longer the only candidates in Palestinian elections
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/08/palestine-left-wing-united-local-council-elections-october-8.html

This is the first time that left-wing factions run in Palestinian elections as part of a unified list. In the previous Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 these factions ran in separate lists, such as the list of Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Alternative list affiliated with the coalition of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA), the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) and the Independent Palestine list affiliated with the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI).

In a July 28, 2015, interview with a PFLP-affiliated website, Kayed al-Ghul, a member of the PFLP’s political bureau, said, “The five left-wing factions — the PFLP, DFLP, PPP, FIDA and PNI — agreed to form a unified list consisting of figures affiliated with the democratic current to participate in the Oct. 8 local council elections.”

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/08/palestine-left-wing-united-local-council-elections-october-8.html#ixzz4G

What a Palestinian Parliament Member Learned in an Israeli Prison

Khalida Jarrar knew a lot about prisoner issues, but her 14 months behind bars offered plenty of surprises.
Amira Hass Jun 19, 2016 5:18 PM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.725721

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.723118.1466303226!/image/2893370350.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_857x482/2893370350.jpg

In her first few days after being released from prison on June 2, Khalida Jarrar still described things in the present tense.

“We go to the yard twice a day, from 10:30 A.M. to 1 P.M. and from 2:30 to 5 P.M.,” she told friends. Or: “We are 61 women and girls, minors, in prison — 41 in Hasharon Prison and 20 in Damun Prison.”

The women who are still awaiting trial are in Damun Prison, while those who have been sentenced, the minors and the wounded — usually by Israeli bullets while they were waving a knife or trying to stab a soldier (one was seriously burned by a gas-cylinder explosion) — are in Hasharon.

Ten wounded prisoners were with Jarrar in the wing, five adults and five minors. At the press conference immediately after her release she didn’t explain what that meant — to live with the shooting victims in the same room or wing.

In personal conversations she said a little more, always careful not to infringe on the privacy of the women. And she constantly praised the longtime prisoner Lena Jerboni, who took on the difficult and sensitive jobs such as washing the wounded, accompanying them to the infirmary and to physiotherapy, and cooking.

Jarrar, a Palestinian member of parliament, also spoke in the plural. She didn’t speak of her own difficulties during her 14 months in prison. The cameras and journalists focused on her, the “famous” one, but she spoke in the name of the collective, where the intensive living gave her the chance to use her abilities, political experience and status as a public figure.

As part of this status, for example, she and Jerboni demanded from a prisoner who was an Israeli citizen and who supported the Islamic State organization to keep her dangerous opinions and thoughts to herself and not share them with the other women.

After she was convicted on two of 12 charges (relating to incitement and providing services to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Jarrar used the last five months of her term to conduct a field study of her fellow inmates, from the perspective of gender.

Palestinian society, which estimates that some 800,000 of its sons and daughters have been imprisoned in Israel since 1957, doesn’t lack research on and testimonies from prison. But mostly this research describes the experience from the perspective of the prison majority: men.

Jarrar focused on gender in the process of arrest and imprisonment from two perspectives: the prisoner’s and the jailer’s. She interviewed 36 women at length and about many aspects: the period before the imprisonment, the arrest (and injury), the investigation, the trial and the imprisonment. Some told her she was the first to ask them about their lives and listen so attentively.

She can suggest some generalizations because of the dramatic rise in the number of Palestinian women who entered Israeli prisons during her own term. This is the rise of the phenomenon of women who were pushed into being arrested for “social reasons.” This is also what brought a delegation of four representatives of Israel’s Justice Ministry to Hasharon Prison, Jarrar told Haaretz.

“They asked what could be done for those women,” she said. “I told them their place wasn’t in prison; they should be freed, and our role in Palestinian society was to treat and take care of them and the issues that motivated them.”

Women activists are certain that if these women are not sent to prison, the “social reasons” phenomenon would be reduced.

An example of “social reasons” could be heard last week at the military court in Ofer, near Ramallah. A woman we will identify only by her initials, A.B., was arrested early in the week near a checkpoint in Hebron. She had a 15-centimeter-long knife in her bag and did not resist arrest.

In her interrogation and at two detention hearings (on Monday and Tuesday), the circumstances were brought up: She quarreled with her husband, who does not help to provide for their children.

Nitza Aminov, a left-wing activist who monitors the Ofer military court, reported that the prosecutor, Capt. Elhanan Dreyfus, said the prosecution knows that many women come to the checkpoints with knives because of problems at home. Nonetheless, he requested that A.B. remain in custody.

The judge, Maj. Naftali Shmulevich, agreed and wrote in his ruling that the understanding in the region was that “possessing a knife outside the home is for purposes of carrying out a crime.”

Rocky ride in the bosta

Even before her arrest, Jarrar devoted a great deal of time to political and social activities relating to Palestinian prisoners. She ran Addameer, a human rights group supporting Palestinian prisoners. She was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 as a member of the left-wing slate of Abu Ali Mustafa, the Popular Front’s secretary-general assassinated by Israel in August 2001. And she heads the monitoring committee on prisoners.

Asked whether anything surprised her in prison, Jarrar told Haaretz: “I was surprised there were things that various [prisoners’ rights] institutions hadn’t managed to solve,” she said, emphasizing the transportation of detainees to court, hospitals and other prisons.

“Why is it impossible to solve this problem? After all, all the prisoners complain about it — Jewish and Palestinian, criminal and security [prisoners] — and Israeli institutions have criticized it too.”

Unequivocally, prisoner transport was the most difficult experience for Jarrar during her arrest and imprisonment, and the only one for which she occasionally mixes an “I” into the description.

For the eight months of her trial she was transported in a bosta, as the prison vehicles are known, about 40 times. She joked that she knew all the members of Nahshon, the security unit that accompanies prisoners.

But with serious tone she said, switching from “I” to the collective: “If we, the healthy ones, were sick for two or three days after every transport, what can we say about those wounded by gunfire?”

The medical treatment for the wounded and sick women prisoners is good, said Jarrar, as opposed to the initial treatment in Israeli hospitals immediately after their arrest. One of the seriously injured women fell ill one night, was rushed from her cell to a civilian hospital and the next day was brought to a court hearing. And all of it in the bosta.

The bosta is a kind of bus or truck whose passenger cabin is divided into several two-person compartments. They leave the prison at about 2 A.M. The iron benches are not padded, and every rock, pothole and bend in the road sends waves of pain through the bouncing body of each passenger.

A guards cuff the prisoners’ hands and feet before they enter the vehicle, so they must hop carefully up the steps. When they also have baggage, such as when being transferred between prisons, this maneuvering becomes an art.

After a few trips, Jarrar stopped reminding the guards that the prison doctor had instructed that she not be placed in restraints because of her chronic blood-vessel disease.

Jews, Arabs, common criminals, religious people, women and men, all may ride together in the bosta. Jerboni has filed a number of complaints with the prison service on behalf of women who complained of sexual harassment and racist abuse during these rides, Jarrar said.

After the prisoners are placed in the iron cells, they are driven to the prison in Ramle, where the “transfer center” is located, the place where inmates are gathered from various detention facilities on their way to the military courts, hospitals and other prisons. They wait three, four, five hours, which feel like 50. They are kept shackled in the bosta, without being able to go to the bathroom. As a result, many women prefer not to eat or drink before the transport.

One can decide to spend the waiting time at Ramle Prison, in a room divided into iron cells, instead of in the boosta. The humiliating search before entering a waiting “cage” in Ramle prison, instead of waiting in the bosta, discourages many women from choosing this option.

Time in the ‘refrigerator’

At the Ofer military court, southeast of Ramallah, the detainees are kept for hours in a sort of cell they call the zinzana or the “refrigerator,” until they are taken to the prefab building that serves as the military courtroom. It’s cold there even in summer. In the winter it’s freezing and “we all shiver,” Jarrar said. It’s also filthy.

After the court session, the detainees are returned to the “refrigerator” and wait for the return trip, first via Ramle, where the shackled human cargo waits again in the bosta for hours. Then they are returned to the prison — sometimes at midnight, sometimes at 2 A.M.

Jarrar began to learn Hebrew in prison, so she could understand the guards and communicate her requests and protests.

In the “refrigerator” she met other Palestinian women who were detained in Ashkelon or Ramle prisons, for lack of space in the women’s prisons.

It was clear they had not been allowed to shower for days or change out of the clothes they were wearing at the time of their arrest. Some had bloodstained pants, as they were not provided with menstrual products.

“I was shocked. I didn’t expect to witness such prison conditions in the 21st century,” Jarrar said. Jerboni informed the prison authorities that the Hasharon prisoners were willing to sleep on mattresses on the floor if they would only transfer the other prisoners there, said Jarrar.

Later the wing in Damun was opened, with its own problems — over 10 prisoners in a cell, with a single toilet, and for a long time, until a female deputy was assigned, a male warden. The overcrowding problem was partially solved, and in March the women at Hasharon were moved to a different wing.

It was in an old building and it was filthy, crawling with roaches, dripping with water and lacking essentials such as shelves and wardrobes. There were also bees, and everyone was stung.

Jarrar said that when the women complained that the place was unfit for human habitation, they were told “everything is fine.” They returned their lunches in protest, and workers were sent immediately to fix the situation.

“All told, the time in prison wasn’t particularly difficult,” Jarrar said. She got the impression that the administration at Hasharon didn’t want to increase tensions, and some problems could be solved through negotiation. Jerboni was the main negotiator for the prisoners.

The administration also allowed a Palestinian teacher from Israel to teach the minors for a few hours, three days a week. Jarrar taught them English and instructed the adults on how to prepare youths for the matriculation exams. They were also busy cataloguing the books they had.

Near the end of her sentence, Jarrar met with one of the senior wardens. Jarrar said she told her that the problem was the occupation, and will end with its end. Her impression was that the warden agreed.

How will Palestinians resolve internal divisions?
Adnan Abu Amer Posted June 14, 2016
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/06/pflp-member-khalida-jarrar-release-israeli-prisons.html
_ Khalida Jarrar , a member of the political bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said in an interview with Al-Monitor that the gateway to resolving the contentious issue of Palestinian reconciliation and electing a new president lies in revitalizing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and holding democratic elections_

Al-Monitor: What is your opinion concerning the effort that France is leading to resume negotiations? Can a breakthrough be achieved in light of the political atmosphere that prevails in Israel today?

Jarrar: I do not think that French efforts will lead to palpable results. On the contrary, I view them as a waste of time and an attempt to circumvent international resolutions. Instead of the French or other similar efforts, it would be better to demand the convening of an international conference endowed with far-reaching powers, in keeping with international resolutions relevant to the Palestinian cause, which, above anything else, affirm the need to end the Israeli occupation.

Al-Monitor: There are those who posit that Israel decided to punish you due to your strong support for joining the International Criminal Court [ICC]. Do you agree with this assessment, and are you satisfied with the pace of Palestinian efforts to join the court?

Jarrar: Israeli authorities arrested me for many reasons, among them my membership on the Supreme National Committee for Coordination with the ICC and because I refused to abide by a decision of the Israeli occupation forces to send me to the city of Jericho [as banishment] in August 2014. Add to that the fact that I constantly visited Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails and participated in many of the political and cultural events held in the West Bank. As a result, occupation authorities wanted to distance me from my Palestinian community. As for Palestinian efforts to join the ICC, to date I have not witnessed any serious Palestinian efforts to follow-up on the dossier, which, in my opinion, demonstrates clear laxity on the part of the Palestinians.

Al-Monitor: What are the latest developments concerning the relationship between the PFLP and the Palestinian Authority [PA] in light of the latest crisis subsequent to their dispute about the PA’s political conduct and [the] April 2016 decision [by Mahmoud Abbas, in his capacity as PLO chairman] to withhold funding to the PFLP, which exacerbated tensions between them to the point where PFLP members burned effigies of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza?

Jarrar: Irrespective of the details associated with these differences, it is clear that the situation of Palestinian division has preoccupied people with the multitude of its internal conflicts, sometimes between Fatah and Hamas and other times between other Palestinian factions that oppose one another. All these actions and practices emanate from a lack of national responsibility, particularly in light of the fact that Palestinians are passing through a critical historical and political period that requires drafting a unified strategy that transcends internal Palestinian tensions while maintaining the need for Palestinian factions to reassess their espoused political approach.

Khalida_Jarrar

Israël : une députée palestinienne condamnée à 15 mois de prison - Moyen-Orient - RFI - Publié le 07-12-2015
▻http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20151207-israel-une-deputee-palestinienne-condamnee-15-mois-prison

http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/imagecache/rfi_16x9_1024_578/sites/images.rfi.fr/files/aef_image/000_Nic6475648_0.jpg

La députée palestinienne Khalida Jarrar, accusée d’incitation à la violence et au terrorisme, a été condamnée ce lundi à 15 mois de prison par un tribunal militaire israélien. Les Palestiniens, qui se sont beaucoup mobilisés pour cette personnalité connue, dénoncent un jugement purement politique.

Avec notre correspondante à Jérusalem, Murielle Paradon

Khalida Jarrar avait été arrêtée chez elle, en Cisjordanie occupée le 2 avril dernier, dans un raid de l’armée israélienne. Cette députée palestinienne était accusée d’incitation à la violence et d’appartenance au Front populaire de libération de la Palestine, un mouvement d’extrême gauche considéré comme une organisation terroriste par Israël.

Le sort de Khalida Jarrar a beaucoup mobilisé. Féministe, militante des droits de l’homme et en particulier des droits des prisonniers, c’est une personnalité connue. Les Palestiniens ont aussitôt vu dans son arrestation par Israël un geste politique.

Le jugement rendu ce lundi, 15 mois de prison fermes et 2 500 euros d’amende, est dénoncé comme totalement arbitraire, venant d’un tribunal militaire israélien. Khalida Jarrar a déjà passé huit mois en détention, elle devrait donc sortir de prison l’été prochain. Selon une association de détenus, cinq députés palestiniens sont actuellement emprisonnés dans les geôles israéliennes.

#Khalida_Jarrar

Israeli forces kill Palestinian teen in Duheisha camp
Dec. 8, 2015 8:59 A.M. (Updated: Dec. 8, 2015 11:45 A.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769224

http://www.maannews.com/Photos/357082C.jpg

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian during a predawn detention raid into Duheisha refugee camp to the south of Bethlehem on Tuesday.

Medics identified the Palestinian as Malik Akram Shahin and said he had been shot in the forehead, where the bullet remained lodged.

Witnesses said he was “left bleeding for long before he was evacuated to the public hospital in Beit Jala, where medics pronounced him dead.”

He was killed when large numbers of Israeli forces stormed Duheisha camp in the early hours of Tuesday, detaining a number of local residents and delivering summons to others.

As the soldiers broke into Palestinians’ homes, they reportedly fired live rounds, tear gas canisters, and stun grenades “indiscriminately” through the camp’s narrow alleys.

An Israeli army spokesperson said that “overnight, a riot broke out” in Duheisha camp, with Palestinians throwing “pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails” at Israeli soldiers.

She said the soldiers fired “warning shots” into the air to disperse them. She had no immediate information on Shahin’s death.

The left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine later said that Shahin had been one of its supporters. The group said in a statement that he fell “during fierce clashes with Israeli troops who raided the camp to detain young men affiliated to the PFLP.”

The statement added: “The ongoing ugly crimes by the Israeli occupation against our young men who lead clashes at the front line won’t prevent them from escalating the clashes with Israeli occupation soldiers and settlers.”

Locals identified some of the Palestinians detained during the raid as Mustafa Atiyeh al-Hasanat, 20, Muhammad Ali Abu Ajamiyeh, 19, Diyaa Khalil al-Jaafari, 20, and Muhammad Ilias Sarahnah.

Shortly after Shahin was shot dead, dozens of young men rallied in the camp in protest. A Bethlehem committee announced a halt to all business across the district and stores were closed.

At least 113 Palestinians have now been killed in just over two months of unrest across the occupied Palestinian territory.

#Palestine_assassinée

What is Islamic Jihad’s role in the intifada? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/gaza-islamic-jihad-movement-support-intifada-non-military.html#ixzz3rDl1

Within the last month, the Islamic Jihad has organized more than nine rallies in the Gaza Strip in support of the intifada that began in early October in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In the past, the movement had typically organized rallies with other Palestinian factions, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The current rallies organized independently are not part of a military initiative or a border confrontation, but in fact go beyond any demarcation line of Israeli forces in supporting and energizing the intifada from afar. For instance, one rally was called Hebron Martyrs’ Friday, which is also reflective of the group’s adopted practice of individually naming marches held every Friday.

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/gaza-islamic-jihad-movement-support-intifada-non-military.html#ixzz3rMT0

A propos de Leila Khaled et du film Hijacker de Lina Makboul, trois articles de 2014 en anglais:

“For me, Palestine is Paradise” – Conversation with Leila Khaled
▻http://lemuradesoreilles.org/2014/04/07/for-me-palestine-is-paradise-conversation-with-leila-khaled
(traduit en français ici: ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/246174 )

Cinema Politica : a democratic screening space
▻http://freecityradio.org/post/128868369500/cinema-politica-a-democratic-screening-space

Hijacker : interview with filmmaker Lina Makboul
▻http://freecityradio.org/post/128864382980/hijacker-interview-with-filmmaker-lina-makboul

#Palestine #Leila_Khaled #FPLP #PFLP #Hijacker #Lina_Makboul #terrorisme