person:mohammed allaan

  • Free Mohammed Allaan Now - Opinion - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News- Haaretz Editorial Aug 17, 2015 12:33 AM
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.671444

    Israel must announce the immediate release of Mohammed Allaan, the Palestinian hunger-striker who is being held in Israel without trial and whose condition deteriorated drastically over the weekend.

    The state did the right thing last month when it released Khader Adnan, whose life was at risk after a 54-day hunger strike, and it must do the same this time. Any delay could lead to a new cycle of bloodshed, the scope and consequences of which are difficult to predict.

    The West Bank is already simmering with violence because of Allaan’s hunger strike. This will intensify if he dies.

    Hunger strikers like Adnan and Allaan challenge Israel’s distorted justice system, which permits hundreds or even thousands of people, most of them Palestinians without civil rights, to be arrested and held without trial for months, or even years. Israel must stop using this unacceptable measure.

    Administrative detention, which in a law-based society is meant to be an extreme, last-ditch measure, used only in order to stop a “ticking time bomb,” has become a routine procedure in Israel. This must stop, even without reference to the hunger strikes that have been launched recently by such prisoners and the risk of death faced by Allaan. Now, with the deterioration in Allaan’s condition, the state has an opportunity to mitigate the damage caused by the widespread use of this measure.

    There are some 400 administrative detainees in Israeli prisoners now, after their number doubled over the past year in the wake of Operation Protective Edge last summer. Detainees against whom the state has evidence must be prosecuted; the remainder must be freed. The weapon of administrative detention must be reserved for use only in the rarest, most extreme cases, if at all.

    Those who oppose Allaan’s release argue that it would set a dangerous precedent for other detainees. Their claim is irrelevant. The release of administrative detainees in favor of proper legal action against them, as is customary in democratic countries, is what will prevent additional precedents of hunger-striking to the brink of death.

    Crises sometime lead to opportunities for positive change. This is one of those times; the release of administrative detainees will remove a malignancy from Israel’s reputation as a democratic state, governed by civil law. This is no time for power games or plays for prestige.

    This is the time not only to save Allaan, whose struggle to be freed is justified, but also to prevent the eruption of a wave of violence and bloodshed. No one benefits from Allaan’s continued detention, and no one will lose from his release. He must be freed as soon as possible.

    #Mohammad_Allan

  • Mohammed Allaan’s Blood Is on Our Hands
    A state in whose prisons hundreds of people are confined without trial is not a democracy, and all the excuses about ’security’ will not help.

    Gideon Levy Aug 16, 2015
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.671264Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.671264

    Mohammed Allaan’s blood is on our hands, on the hands of the State of Israel. The state will bear full and sole responsibility for his death if, perish the thought, he dies. No excuses will cover the shame, no propaganda will atone for the offense. While these lines are being written, Saturday afternoon, he tottered between life and death, in an induced coma and on a respirator. The death of this 31-year-old lawyer from the village of Einabus is liable to not only cause “damage to Israel’s image” and lead to a conflagration in the West Bank and Gaza – first and foremost, Allaan is the victim of one of the basest acts of the Israeli occupation: administrative detention. That, they do not see here.
    Allaan is a freedom fighter. There is no one who suits this definition more, no other way to describe him. Allaan is striking until death for his freedom, to which he is entitled according to any constitutional, democratic or moral criterion. Even if thugs of Ashkelon and its violent nationalists scream until the end of time “terrorist,” and even if inciting television reports talk about “blood on the hands,” Allaan will remain a freedom fighter, innocent.
    As we recall, he was never indicted nor tried. The security establishment has not a shred of evidence against him or against hundreds of his friends, not even evidence that could lead a military court astray – which is the easiest thing to do in a system that has no connection whatsoever with justice.
    Not by chance were almost all the longtime hunger-strikers administrative detainees. They did not fight against the settlements or against the occupation. They fought for their personal liberty, which is their absolute right. They are not prisoners, they are detainees of arbitrariness. Their administrative detention has become a terrifying normality, obvious, like a checkpoint, senseless killing and nighttime abductions. Over the past 15 years the number of such detainees has ranged from 150 to 1,000 at any given moment. Even in the most promising of quiet times their number does not decline. Right now there are about 400. In other words, there are hundreds of people being held without trial in Israeli prisons.
    If there is a reason to turn to the International Criminal Court – that is the reason, perhaps even before the killing, expulsions and the settlements. If there is evidence that can put the lie to “the only democracy in the Middle East” – that is the clear evidence. A state in whose prisons hundreds of people are confined without trial is not a democracy, and all the excuses about “security” will not help. There is not, never has been and never will be such a thing – a democracy with mass arrests without trial.
    Allaan knows all this. He and his friends have called upon their private, non-violent, doomsday weapon – the hunger strike, because justice is on their side. Because there is no other justice that can excuse their detention, except the justice of the Ashkelon thugs and their ilk: freedom or death, and Israel should have bowed its head in admiration for their determination, their justness and their courage.
    Allaan is dying, and with him, Israel’s pretense of democracy. Israel fears the damage it will incur. Most of its legal experts are silent and most of its journalists cover for it. Israel should not have arrested Allaan last November and sent him to six months’ detention without trial. Israel should not have subsequently extended his detention by another six months. It should not have done this to tens of thousands of people over the years. It should not have acted this way. But it is not too late. The debate now should not be dealing with ways to extend Allaan’s live. The only way to save him is to release him immediately, unconditionally, and with him the hundreds of other administrative detainees. That will be not only the great victory of these freedom fighters, it will also be Israel’s victory.

  • Hunger Striker a Headache for Both Israel and the Palestinians Mohammed Allaan’s death would spur unrest and a clampdown, while dulling the tool of detention without trial.
    Haaretz
    Amira Hass Aug 16, 2015
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.671292
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.671292

    The hunger strike by Mohammed Allaan, like that of Khader Adnan before him, has become a big headache for Israel and its Shin Bet security service, but also for the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian society in general.
    No party wants the conflagration and escalation that could erupt if this one-person hunger strike were to end in Allaan’s death. Islamic Jihad will have to make good on its vow to respond. If it does so, by firing rockets from the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government will not be able to prevent it: That would be considered unpatriotic.
    And if Israel insists on responding, in keeping with the result, its military superiority would presumably cause more casualties and property damage. There’s no telling what kind of new round of bloodletting that no one wants would happen, though it’s clear the Palestinians would pay the highest price. If Islamic Jihad tries to respond in the West Bank as well, there’s no way to predict what Israel would do, and whether Palestinians will once again face sweeping military incursions and arrests, injuries and killing. That is the last thing they want.
    Allaan’s ‘wildcat’ hunger strike is a headache for the Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces, for which administrative detention is a very convenient tool. Without having to present proof, without an indictment (which in the military courts is in any case very flexible), without having to explain anything to anyone (except military judges, who are easily persuaded), they neutralize various political and social activists and distance them from their society. The personal courage of the hunger strikers shines powerful spotlights on the method of lengthy detention without trial, and, as was the case with Adnan, also requires the Shin Bet to retreat.
    Four years ago the mass hunger strike sparked by Adnan Khader made it necessary for the Shin Bet and the Israel Prison Service to make concessions to Palestinian administrative detainees, that have since been reversed. The natural solidarity that Palestinians feel toward political hunger strikers has the potential to foment rebellion, the opposite of what the Shin Bet and the army want.
    Precisely because of this potential, Allaan’s personal initiative, and Adnan’s before him, has embarrassed the Palestinian Authority. Its representatives have had to issue warnings and condemnations of the prolonged detention, but the Islamic Jihad is an ideological foe. Islamic Jihad members irritate the PA when they criticize it publicly, and like Hamas activists, they are a target for investigations and arrests by PA security agencies. People regard the one-man strikes as strengthening this small organization’s criticism of the PA. The two voices in which the PA speaks — condemning administrative detention and concern for the detainee on the one hand, and opposition to the way of Islamic Jihad on the other, are authentic even if they ostensibly contradict each other.

    Palestinian and Israeli-Arab protestors hold posters of Mohammed Allaan. August 9, 2015.AFP
    The other Palestinian factions with members detained and in prison are also embarrassed. It is hard to meet the very high standard of personal sacrifice on principle and for liberty that has been set by these two strictly religious detainees.
    Noticeably, this time hundreds of other detainees and prisoners did not join the lengthy hunger strike in support of the demand to either release the detainees or try them.
    As much as these strikes reveal the strong character of the individual striker, they attest to the lack of solidarity of the population of political prisoners and of Palestinians in general. The lack of solidarity within the prison reflects that lack outside of it.