After serving two years in jails, Israel releases Palestinian prisoner Khalida Jarrar
September 26, 2021 - Quds News Network
▻https://qudsnen.co/?p=29738
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israeli occupation authorities on Sunday have released the Palestinian political prisoner Khalida Jarrar from its jails after serving two years.
Khalida Jarrar has been imprisoned several times since 2015 by the Israeli occupation and spent numerous terms under administrative detention.
Jarrar was first arrested in 1989 and held for a month without trial.
For her second detention in 2014, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
She was arrested for a third time in 2017.
She was released from Israeli jails in February 2019 after spending 20 months in prison, but the Israeli occupation detained her again in October 2019 from her home in Ramallah city, and she was accused of taking a position in the PFLP.
Jarrar was elected as a member of the Legislative Council in the last Parliamentary elections held in 2006.
Last July, the occupation authorities refused to release Jarrar to be able to attend the funeral of her daughter, Suha. She was denied the right to bury her daughter whose body was found near Palestine medical complex in Ramallah as she died of a sudden heart attack.
]]>Khalida Jarrar: The Land is Ploughed by the Faith of the Peasant by Hind Shraydeh
11 May 2020
▻https://samidoun.net/2020/05/khalida-jarrar-the-land-is-ploughed-by-the-faith-of-the-peasant-by-hind-sh
(...) Khaleda was born in February 1963 in Nablus, known to locals as “Jabal an-Nar”; translated literally, this means “the mountain of fire.” Khalida belongs to the first generation born to Palestinian refugees after the Nakba[1], (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people in 1948, as her family was forced to flee from the occupied town of Bisan.
Khalida is a calm and balanced woman. She can be described as radical in her stances and insightful in her visions, as seen by her participation in areas and activities that address her people’s concerns. She is not easily provoked, and responds to absurd and irrational statements with a smile and a sound convincing answer. Khalida is not only a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), but also a wife, mother, comrade, friend and a sister. She is also a “totem pole for those who are alone,” as described by the distressed people who arrive at her office to seek her help. (...)
]]>Shin Bet claimed she was behind Israeli teen’s murder. Her indictment says otherwise - Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-shin-bet-said-she-was-behind-israeli-teen-s-murder-indictment-says
The re-arrest of Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar sparked a media campaign accusing her of alleged involvement in the murder of Israeli teen Rena Shnerb. No one took an interest in the actual indictment
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Dec 27, 2019
Indictment: “Military prosecutor vs. Khalida Jarrar. Nature of the offense: holding a position in an illegal association. Offense under article 85(b) of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945.” This charge sheet, which has one clause and takes up just one page, is mandatory reading. It exposes the naked – and disturbing – truth about Israel’s occupation authorities and security apparatuses, but also about the country’s media, their bonded lackey.
This is not only a story about tyranny in the territories, not only about the fact that Jarrar, like thousands of other Palestinians, is a political prisoner in every respect – as the military prosecution itself admits this time. Nor is it only about the fact that Israel allows itself to arrest Palestinian elected officials without any inhibition. Equally disturbing is the blind, knee-jerk mobilization of the Israeli media in the service of the security establishment’s propaganda. The Shin Bet dictates the narrative, the media repeat and declaim it, no one checks, no one asks, no one presses for more information – and that, too, is called journalism. That’s the left-wing media for you, after all.
Khalida Jarrar was arrested on the evening of October 31 at home in El Bireh, in the central West Bank. Last week, the Shin Bet briefed military correspondents about the widespread arrests it had made of members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in connection with investigation of the murder of Rena Shnerb in August, at a spring in the West Bank that settlers have forcibly taken over. The day after the briefing nearly all the newspapers ran screaming headlines about Jarrar’s supposed involvement in the killing. Yedioth Ahronoth: “Shin Bet arrests Khalida Jarrar, responsible for murdering Rena Shnerb”; Israel Hayom: “Among those responsible for murder of Rena Shnerb: ‘Human rights activist’ of 56.” The other media outlets – with the notable exception of Haaretz – followed suit in their coverage: Jarrar murdered Shnerb – or at least gave the order for her to be killed.
No one took an interest in the actual indictment. It contains not a word about Shnerb’s murder, about any sort of murder, not even about any acts of violence to which Jarrar can be linked. The charge sheet, signed by the military prosecutor, Maj. Tal Ziskovich, states that Jarrar is accused of being a “director or assistant to the administration of an illegal association, or held a position or standing of some kind in an illegal association or under its auspices.” This feeble wording was the best the military prosecution could do. But the media were convinced: Jarrar committed murder.
The indictment also reveals information about a meeting of three Palestinian figures, mentioned by name, that took place in 2014, “or at a proximate date,” in which the three discussed the situation of the PFLP. The conversation’s participants, it was stated, decided “to renew and implement activity of the Front in the region and to serve as leaders of the organization.”
Moreover, the document states: “In this meeting the three agreed on a division of the tasks among themselves. According to the division, the accused is responsible for the PFLP’s national and political activity, and for the official connection with the Palestinian Authority and the organizations.”
It follows that Jarrar is in charge of the PFLP’s political activity and of that alone – even according to the army’s indictment. The indictment reveals that the accused continued to meet with the two others, and reported to them about her political activity. At a meeting in June 2019, “the accused provided an update about the national and political situation. By so doing, the accused held a position in an illegal association until the day of her arrest.”
No murder, no terrorism, no Rena Shnerb, no violence – only political activity in a movement that Israel decided to place outside the law of the occupation.
The PFLP is a political movement with an ideology and a platform, which also has a separate and compartmentalized military wing. But the Israeli lexicon contains no entry under “Palestinian political movement” or “Palestinian political party” – only “terror organization.”
Thus, Jarrar, a secular woman, a feminist, a human rights activist and an opponent of the occupation who was elected on behalf of the PFLP to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 – was transformed into a terrorist, and not for the first time. From July 2017 until February 2019 she was held in “administrative detention,” arrest without trial, under a military order that stated that she is a political activist “who endangers the security of the region.” That followed about a year after she finished a 14-month prison term after admitting to political activity on behalf of the PFLP. Among the absurd counts in that earlier indictment, in 2015: Jarrar visited the home of mourners and had given a talk in a library. Initially, after her arrest, an administrative detention order was issued against her; after 13 days the powers-that-be had a change of heart: The military prosecution issued an indictment against her on 12 counts, which a month later had been reduced to two: “membership in an illegal association” and “incitement.”
From February to October this year Jarrar was left alone, eight months of freedom and euphoria – we met her in her home the day after her release – but then came her rearrest just under two months ago. Her husband, Ghassan, 60, who owns a factory that makes children’s furniture and colorful stuffed animals, was in Jordan at the time. At home in El Bireh one evening this week, he joked that the most distant destination he had reached in his life was the Ketziot Prison in the Negev, even though he holds a diplomatic passport by virtue of his wife’s status.
Khalida’s photo, with the caption “Freedom,” is again on display in the living room on the second floor of the handsome stone house. The troops treated his wife gently this time, Ghassan relates; they didn’t even bind her hands or blindfold her. The only other person in the house at the time was their daughter Suha, a climate scientist who works for the human rights organization Al Haq. The couple’s other daughter, Yafa, who has a law degree, lives in Canada. Ghassan watched her wedding in Ottawa some years ago, in which she married a Canadian man, via the internet together with friends. Khalida was in jail at the time, as usual, and he was not allowed to leave the country, as usual.
The arrest this time around took him by surprise, he tells us. Since her release, Khalida tended to her health and looked after her aging mother, who lives in Nablus (her father died while she was in prison), and had received a teaching position at Bir Zeit University. She had intended to give a course on human rights and began preparing for it, but it’s unlikely now that the course will start as scheduled, during the second semester, in February.
Ghassan recalls that Khalida told him upon her release earlier this year, “They don’t want to see me outside. I am going to resign from all my activities and focus on teaching at the university, at least temporarily.” But then he adds, with a smile, “But you know how hard it is for a politician to retire.”
In late October, Ghassan received a permit to leave the territories for the first time in his life. He went to Jordan, to see his two brothers, four sisters, three aunts and 22 cousins who live there. Some of the younger relatives he had never seen before. He hadn’t seen his brother Hussam for 50 years; the last time he saw his brother Zuheir was in 1998. The rare family reunion was emotional – a video clip captures the embraces and outpouring of tears. Suddenly, he says, he got a call from an employee at his factory in Beit Furik, near Nablus. “I’m so sorry about what happened to Khalida,” she said. That was the first he heard about the arrest. He dropped everything and was in Ramallah within hours. The family gathering, planned to last two weeks, ended abruptly after two days.
Khalida is incarcerated in Damon Prison, near Haifa. Her trial is scheduled to resume next Monday in the military court at the Ofer base, near Ramallah. She was interrogated for 20 days in a Shin Bet facility, and the results of the interrogation appear in the indictment. According to her husband, she wasn’t even asked about the fatal incident that took place at the West Bank spring in August. During her remand hearing, Ghassan managed to ask her a quick question: “Did you get your medications?” From past experience with his wife’s arrests, he’s always concerned about her getting her medicine; she suffers from blood-clotting problems.
Why was she arrested again? Ghassan is convinced that Israel has decided to uproot the PFLP and imprison all its activists. For her part, her attorney, Sahar Francis, is certain the arrest is a political ploy aimed at vilifying human rights organizations that are still operating in the territories.
Initially, a gag order, valid until December 31, was placed on the arrest of Jarrar and the other PFLP officials. The Shin Bet briefing that linked Jarrar to the killing of Shnerb took place on December 18; the gag order was lifted in its honor, ahead of schedule. Attorney Francis believes that there is a connection between the briefing about Jarrar’s supposed complicity in the murder and the fact that the day before, the American organization Human Rights Watch published a sharply worded report about the situation in the territories.
Entitled “Born Without Civil Rights: Israel’s Use of Draconian Military Orders to Repress Palestinians in the West Bank,” the HRW report devotes a chapter to Khalida Jarrar and the history of her imprisonments. It concludes with a list of recommendations, among them that Israel should provide full protection of the human rights of Palestinians living in the West Bank. As for the Israeli army, it should “cease arresting and detaining people for their nonviolent exercise of their rights to free assembly, association and expression.” The report also recommends that Israeli military prosecutors stop charging persons under the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945.
The author of the report, Omar Shakir, director of the Israel-Palestine branch of HRW, was recently expelled from Israel.
]]>Yafa Jarrar
@YafaJarrar
▻https://twitter.com/YafaJarrar/status/1194378667025149952
UPDATE: Day 13. Israel’s military kangaroo court extends Khalida’s detention for another 6 days. It has become abundantly clear that Israel is scrambling to justify her unlawful detention.
Full statement:
]]>إسرائيل تعتقل القيادية الفلسطينية خالدة جرار - الخليج الجديد
▻https://thenewkhalij.news/article/169371/%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%AA%D9%82%D
Une fois de plus, la députée palestinienne Khalida Jarrar à nouveau arrêtée cette nuit. La dernière fois, elle était restée 20 mois en prison sans que le chef d’accusation soit rendu public...
]]>Israel’s release of Palestinian lawmaker lets her forget the larger prison for a moment
In a festive meeting, Khalida Jarrar gave well-wishers a chance to celebrate her release from a small prison and temporarily shelve fears about an escalation of Israeli violence
Amira Hass | Mar 09, 2019
▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-release-of-palestinian-lawmaker-lets-her-forget-larger-prison-for-
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Khalida Jarrar at around 1 P.M. Sunday to congratulate her on her release from administrative detention – detention without trial – which had lasted 20 months. At his side was his intelligence chief, Majed Faraj, who was actually the first to congratulate her. She responded by congratulating Faraj for his recovery from an illness; he then gave the phone to Abbas, who said that he had “missed her.”
This is a routine exchange of pleasantries, almost like the American ‘How are you?” – and Jarrar responded as is customary, saying “I missed you too, Abu Mazen,” using Abbas’ nickname. He told her that he and Faraj were on their way to Baghdad, to what official spokesmen would later define as an important meeting with the Iraqi government.
According to reports on several websites, the last time Jarrar and Abbas met, at a meeting of Palestinian leaders in June 2017, she sharply criticized Abbas’ punitive policies toward Gaza. She also assailed the security coordination with Israel.
There were even reports that Abbas was planning to block her participation in leadership meetings, which include the executive committee of the PLO, different factions in the (now formally dispersed) Palestinian Legislative Council and the heads of various organizations. A month later Israel’s Shin Bet security service and the army arrested her at home.
This week, though, both Abbas and Jarrar sounded at ease during their brief exchange. Their conversation took place between Jarrar’s interview with a local TV station, a conversation with Haaretz, a phone call from a senior Fatah member inquiring about a good time to visit, and a short visit from an emotional and teary acquaintance who came to hug Jarrar not knowing there had already been a mass welcoming event.
Based on experience, following a previous incarceration of Khalida and her release in June 2016, Khalida’s husband Ghassan knew that their house would be too small for all the well-wishers. Ahead of her release he rented a hall at Ramallah’s Catholic church for three days, six hours a day, beginning on the day of her release a week ago Thursday.
Several thousand people showed up during those three days. People came in delegations and as individuals, from Hebron and Jerusalem, Jenin and Tul Karm, Haifa and Nazareth, from villages and refugee camps, young and old. There were people with or without political affiliations, people Jarrar knew and many she didn’t. There were celebrities and ordinary folk, former prisoners (“I’m on leave between arrests,” one of them joked), as well as probable future prisoners. Every Palestinian family has experienced a detention or a stint in an Israeli prison by one of its sons or daughters for the crime of opposing the Israeli occupation.
Jarrar shook hands, hugged people, and talked in a relaxed manner with anyone who sat down beside her, as if that person were the only one in the hall. She had her photo taken with anyone requesting a selfie with her, and gave short interviews. Most of all, she laughed and smiled a lot.
“For a long time we haven’t smiled so much or been in such a good mood,” wrote on Facebook a feminist activist who was among the people greeting Jarrar. As another woman put it, “How good it was to meet everyone, and for a change not at a mourning tent.”
Collective depression
The reception was an invitation to taste the flavor of “national unity,” to experience together a sweet moment inseparable from the constant sense of burden experienced alone and together, brought about by a life under foreign rule, a hostile and violent one. This was an opportunity to overcome, for three days, the collective feeling of depression and helplessness caused by internal political, economic and social fissures, setting aside for a short time fears about an escalation of violence by Israel. This was an opportunity to celebrate together a release from a small prison while ignoring for a moment the big cages.
“I’m still confused, I think it will take me two or three months to get used to it,” Jarrar said. At home, too, she was all smiles, laughing with her guests. The laughter was contagious, coming from the heart. Ghassan was busy making coffee or tea, coming in with loaded trays, offering baklava and chocolates, insisting that guests eat, trying to make sure that Ajwa, the orange tabby cat, didn’t run out when the door opened for another guest.
“How is Tamar?” Khalida wanted to know Saturday at the church hall, referring to Israeli lawyer Tamar Peleg.
On Sunday she contacted the 93-year-old Peleg, who since the first intifada and until not very long ago represented hundreds of administrative detainees, including Ghassan Jarrar, Palestinians who were imprisoned by Israel without trial or indictment and with no assumption of innocence. “I won’t forget what you did for the detainees,” Khalida told her. “I think about you a lot and miss you.” This time the “miss you” wasn’t a pleasantry.
Jarrar was first arrested in 1989 for participating in a demonstration on International Women’s Day, March 8. In April 2015 Jarrar was arrested at home and convicted, after a plea bargain, of membership in an illegal organization, of providing forbidden services, and of incitement. She received a 15-month sentence and was released in June 2016.
A year later, in July 2017, soldiers again barged into her home in the middle of the night and arrested her – a member of the suspended Palestinian parliament, an elected representative in a faction named after Abu Ali Mustafa, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated by Israel in August 2001. He was replaced by Ahmed Sa’adat, who was convicted of involvement in the assassination of far-right Israeli politician Rehavam Ze’evi in October 2001 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
When Jarrar was arrested, her interrogator had nothing to ask her; the military prosecution couldn’t even come up with allegations that would allow for a show trial. “I was arrested and don’t know why,” Jarrar said. “Actually, I know that it was for nothing, and that’s scary. Do they expect us to sit at home and say nothing?”
Her father’s death
During the two periods his wife was in prison, Ghassan would say that he bore his own detentions much better than he did Khalida’s. But now she was surprised by the question “did you feel the same way? Was it easier to bear your own imprisonment rather than that of Ghassan?” After a long reflection she said: “I now understand better how difficult prison is. It’s true that I worried about Ghassan when I was in prison, about how he manages alone at home.” Then she laughed her rolling laughter.
The hardest experience in prison was her father Canaan’s death a month and a half after her arrest. That experience – the death of a loved one while you’re in prison – is one shared by thousands of Palestinians.
Jarrar relates how one day she and the prisoners’ representative were called at 5 P.M. to the clinic at Sharon Prison. “I was puzzled. I didn’t have a clue. There was a team of wardens there, one of them Druze, who began by saying the usual words of consolation before telling me about my father, showing me a death certificate sent to the prison by Mahmoud” – attorney Mahmoud Hassan from the Addameer prisoner support rights group that Jarrar headed before being elected to the legislative council.
She continued: “When I returned to my cell, they allowed a few female inmates from other cells to come and take part in my grief. The next day they let me talk by phone to my family, for 20 minutes.”
Her father, who owned a toy store in the center of Nablus, was unwell. The day before her last arrest she visited him in the hospital. Her daughter Suha reminded her this week: “You brought him a pea dish you had cooked.”
Suha asked her what change struck her most when she came out of prison. She immediately replied: the deterioration in the health of her mother, who can now barely walk. Here’s another collective Palestinian experience: Time in prison seems suspended, frozen, only to be rediscovered, once a person is freed, by parents who have aged and children who have grown.
Despite the difficulties of prison life, Khalida took advantage of her time behind bars. She read and studied, but mainly encouraged other female prisoners and detainees to study, read and discuss human rights, women’s rights, prisoner rights, their status in society and discrimination.
It is said that the tradition of studying and reading, practiced by Palestinian security prisoners in the past, has dwindled since the end of the 1990s. In recent years some prisoners have tried to revive it, and Jarrar joined the trend. Last year, on the eve of International Women’s Day, the government of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah revoked several laws discriminating against women; this led her to initiate a celebratory discussion within prison walls. On March 8 they studied the achievements of International Women’s Day.
The parliament Jarrar was elected to in 2006 was suspended most of its tenure, but some of the legislators, mainly belonging to small left-wing parties, including Jarrar, tried various ways to influence the public discourse about social issues such as the Palestinian Authority budget and women’s rights.
In prison, Jarrar made good use of her former sociopolitical experiences. But in prison, she says, she became more closely familiar with social issues such as violence against women, a phenomenon that has driven some women to get arrested on purpose or attempt suicide by brandishing a knife in front of soldiers. “Prison isn’t where you belong or a solution for you,” she told those women. Women released from prison say she was always available, supporting and helping them during crises.
Don’t say you don’t have an opinion,” she would say. She was happy to discover during her last detention term that one of these women, for example, has become more assertive and plans to run in local elections when she gets out of jail. “Living for a long time in close quarters with women from all walks of life and geographic areas, holding conversations with them,” Jarrar told Haaretz, further increased her understanding of “how much these women suffer” under occupation and in Palestinian society.
]]>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
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.
]]>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
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.”
]]>» Legislator Jarrar Receives Another Administrative Detention Order For Three Months
IMEMC News - October 22, 2018 1:02 AM
▻http://imemc.org/article/legislator-jarrar-receives-another-administrative-detention-order-for-three-m
The Israeli Authorities renewed, Sunday, the arbitrary Administrative Detention orders against Palestinian legislator, Khaleda Jarrar , for three more months, for the fourth consecutive time.
The Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs issued a statement strongly denouncing the continued imprisonment of Jarrar, holding her captive under arbitrary orders without charges or trial.
The Ministry said that “Israel continues to violate the basic principles of International Law, and all related human rights resolutions,” and condemned the ongoing abduction and imprisonment of many elected legislators, and political leaders.
It also denounced the escalating violations targeting the detained women and children in occupied Palestine, and called on the International Community to intervene and expose the Israeli crimes.(...)
]]>Le cas d’un avocat franco-palestinien met en lumière la pratique de la « détention administrative » par Israël
▻https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Moyen-Orient/Le-cas-dun-avocat-francopalestinien-met-en-lumiere-la-pratique-de-la-deten
In a democracy, Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar would be free - Haaretz.com | Gideon Levy | Jun 21, 2018 1:13 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-a-democracy-palestinian-lawmaker-khalida-jarrar-would-be-free-1
The continued detention of Palestinian parliament member Khalida Jarrar can no longer be presented as a worrisome exception on Israel’s democratic landscape. Nor can the incredible public apathy and almost total absence of media coverage of her plight be dismissed any longer as a general lack of interest in what Israel does to the Palestinians. The usual repression and denial cannot explain it either.
Jarrar’s detention doesn’t only define what is happening in Israel’s dark backyard, it is part of its glittering display window. Jarrar defines democracy and the rule of law in Israel. Her imprisonment is an inseparable part of the Israeli regime and it is the face of Israeli democracy, no less than its free elections (for some of its subjects) or the pride parades that wind through its streets.
Jarrar is the Israeli regime no less than the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Jarrar is Israeli democracy without makeup and adornments. The lack of interest in her fate is also characteristic of the regime. A legislator in prison through no fault of her own is a political prisoner in every way, and political prisoners defined by the regime. There can be no political prisoners in a democracy, nor detention without trial in a state of law. Thus Jarrar’s imprisonment is not only a black stain on the Israeli regime; it’s an inseparable part of it.
A Palestinian legislator has been imprisoned for nothing for months and years, and no one in Israel cares about her fate; only a very few protest. None of her Israeli counterparts in the Knesset say anything, not even those from the hypocritical Zionist left; no jurist groups or even the enlightened High Court of Justice are working to get her freed.
There’s no point in reporting on the trivialities that the Shin Bet security service attributes to her, or to explain that she is innocent until proven guilty. There is no point in writing again and again about parliamentary immunity, lest this be considered delusional – how can a Palestinian have immunity? – nor is there any point in wasting words to describe her courage, though she is perhaps the bravest woman living today under Israeli control.
All these things fall on deaf ears. There are no charges and no guilt, just a freedom fighter in jail. The Shin Bet is the investigator, the prosecutor and the judge, three positions in one in the land of unlimited possibilities, in which a state can define itself as a democracy, even the only one in the Middle East, and most Israelis are convinced that this is the case, while the world accepts it.
Jarrar could end up spending the rest of her life in prison; there is no legal impediment to this since all the pathetic arguments used to justify her continued detention could be deemed valid indefinitely. If she’s dangerous today, she’s dangerous forever. Political prisoners, detention without trial and unlimited imprisonment define tyranny.
Of course, Jarrar is not an exceptional case; she isn’t even the only Palestinian MP in an Israeli prison. So the pretentious talk about Israeli democracy must be halted, given her imprisonment. Israel with Jarrar in prison is at most a half-democracy.
Therefore, the resistance should no longer be directed solely against the occupation. The resistance is to the regime in place in Israel. Her imprisonment is the regime and she opposes the regime under whose boots she lives. Many of the Palestinian resistance organizations, which are always defined as “terror organizations,” solely because of their means, rather than their goals, are opponents of the regime under which they were forced to live. Their goals are similar to those of others who resisted tyranny, from the Soviet Union to South Africa to Argentina. Just like the handful of Israelis who want to support Jarrar. They are not expressing only human solidarity or opposition to the occupation; they are opponents of the regime.
All those who support her continued detention, anyone who is silent while she remains in jail, and all those who make her detention possible are saying: Forget democracy. That’s not what we are. Get used to it.
]]>Israel renews detention of Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar
June 16, 2018 3:01 P.M.
▻https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780244
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. (...)
]]>Israël condamne la présidente de l’union des femmes palestiniennes à la détention administrative
Ma’an News | Le 9 juillet 2017 | Traduction : J. Ch. pour l’Agence Média Palestine |
▻http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2017/07/11/israel-condamne-la-presidente-de-lunion-des-femmes-palestinienn
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) – Les autorités israéliennes ont condamné dimanche Khitam al-Saafin , présidente de l’Union du Comité des Femmes Palestiniennes, à trois mois de prison administrative, politique israélienne hautement contestée d’internement sans procès ni charges.
Le chef de l’unité juridique de l’association pour les droits des prisonniers Addameer, Mahmoud Hassan, a dit qu’une audience se tiendrait mercredi au tribunal du centre de détention d’Ofer pour confirmer la sentence.
Les forces israéliennes ont arrêté al-Saafin le 2 juillet dans le village de Beituniya, au centre de la Cisjordanie occupée, le même jour que celui où elles ont arrêté la députée palestinienne Khalida Jarrar, autre éminente féministe et défenseure des droits de l’Homme.
Le tribunal d’Ofer a rallongé lundi la détention et d’al-Saafin et de Jarrar afin d’inspecter les ordinateurs qui avaient été confisqués chez elles au cours des raids d’arrestation et pour donner au procureur israélien le temps nécessaire à son argumentation en faveur de la détention administrative.
Les militaires israéliens ont dit à ce moment là que leurs arrestations à toutes les deux étaient dues à leur rôle majeur dans le Front Populaire de Libération de la Palestine (FPLP) – parti palestinien de gauche bien connu qu’Israël déclare être un groupe terroriste. (...)
]]>Des députés européens exigent la libération de Khalida Jarrar, Khitam Saafin et de prisonniers palestiniens
11 juillet | Samidoun |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
▻http://www.aurdip.fr/des-deputes-europeens-exigent-la.html
Le 5 juillet à Strasbourg, des députés européens et des députés espagnols de Izquierda Unida (la Gauche Unie et le Parti Communiste Espagnol) se sont rassemblés en solidarité avec Khalida Jarrar et Khitam Saafin et d’autres Palestiniens emprisonnés. Des députés d’un certain nombre de pays du GUE/NGL (Gauche Unie européenne/Gauche Verte des pays du Nord) ont participé à cette action de solidarité.
]]>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
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: A lifelong quest to heal Palestine - News from Al Jazeera
Recently released from Israeli prison, the Palestinian politician says she will never stop pushing for social change.
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/khalida-jarrar-lifelong-quest-heal-palestine-160616082640492.html
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
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.
]]>Ma femme, la députée palestinienne emprisonnée
▻http://www.france-palestine.org/Ma-femme-la-deputee-palestinienne-emprisonnee
Une représentante élue comme Khalida Jarrar, qui est envoyée en prison pendant six mois sans avoir été jugée – de telles choses sont des évènements ordinaires en Israël. Mais il n’y a pas du tout de débat public. Source : Haaretz via Association France Palestine Solidarité
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