December, 2000 Volume 3, Issue 3 Past Issues About dis/content Editorial Collective Contributors Contact Us Submissions Links Home   Interviews with Women Activists from Palestine and Indonesia by ronica mukerjee & ronni tartlet Amal Jadou – Palestinian Prisoner Society Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine 9/24/99 AJ: My name is Amal Jadou and I am the public relations director at the Palestinian Prisoner Society. I started working here in 1996. I’m doing volunteer work here. I’m interested because it’s an issue that each Palestinian family has suffered from. And people need to do something about it. So many people all over the world are ignorant about the question of the Palestinian prisoner--they are described by Israeli and Western media as murderers, terrorists – this is how they are portrayed to the whole world. So I thought that we need to do more to educate people about the issue of Palestinian prisoners. This is why I started working here. I’m a student in international affairs, and I thought that I could contribute to my people. rm: Can you tell us about your masters thesis, and what kind of research you’ve been doing? AJ: My masters thesis is a comparison of the Oslo Agreements with the political treaties that have been made between the United States government and Native Americans particularly the Lakota Nation in South Dakota, Pine Ridge reservation. I thought that the agreements both spring out of the same ideology – and the Israelis are following similar techniques to oppress the Palestinian people as the US government did with the Native Americans. rm: What correlations would you make between reservations in the United States and refugee camps here in Palestine? AJ: Well, I’m not really focusing on the refugee situation; I’m mainly concerned with land confiscation, and then trying to allocate certain areas of land for the Palestinians to live in. They are confined places; they are separated from one another, they are designated A, B, and C area – these techniques were also used with the Native Americans. This is one thing. And then you have social problems – like, look into Jerusalem now, and you see a drug problem. This is a major issue in the United States with Native Americans. Another thing, and it may seem a small thing, but really I think it’s quite major: casinos. There is now a casino in Jericho, and you immediately think of the spread of casinos on Native American reservations. So there are many similarities. And finally, there is this message, by Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel. In a letter addressed to the Palestinian people, mainly to the refugees, he said: “Okay, we agree that this is your land. But we can’t give it up. What we can do is give it names, like, ‘in the past this village was called Malha’” – that’s a village that was destroyed in 1948. So this is the mentality. They know it, the Israelis know that this is what they’re doing to the Palestinians. It’s only out of fear for the future of my people that I’m trying to point out the similarities, so that what happened to the Native Americans will not happen to my people. rm: Is there a drug problem among Palestinians? AJ: It’s only really in the Jerusalem area. It’s not really yet spread in the Palestinian community. rkt: What are the living conditions in the prisons? Have you been inside? AJ: No, as Palestinians we cannot visit the prisoners, unless we have a special permit from the Israeli administration and they are rarely given. The head of this organization, Mr. Issa Alaska, has been several times, but only because he is part of the negotiation team on prisoners. And this started only after the Oslo Agreements were signed. In the past, no Palestinian was able to visit the prisons, unless an immediate relative of a prisoner.     Conditions of the prisoners: often they suffer from being put into solitary detention where there is a lack of adequate ventilation. According to the agreements on prisoners, you cannot put them into a dark place, a damp place, or a place where the sun cannot enter. And all these legally-mandated hygienic conditions simply do not exist for the Palestinian prisoners. The Israelis use this kind of punishment frequently.     Another problem is the health conditions. Many prisoners get sick, suffer from diseases like rheumatism and cardiac infections due to the prison conditions. And the Israeli prison administration does not do anything about it. They have a clinic where you sign up on a list, and no matter how urgent your condition you have to wait and wait. Once you finally see the doctor you get an aspirin. They don’t deal with the real conditions of the prisoners. Many prisoners have died because their health conditions were not attended to. They needed surgeries and were ignored.     Another difficulty that the prisoners face is conditions of visitation. First of all, there’s no direct contact between the prisoner and the persons who come to visit. Second of all, only a mother, a father, a sister or a brother, and sons and daughters who are young can visit. And the families suffer when they make the visit. Because they can’t travel directly, they must get special permits to make the trip. They have to move from one bus to another. They must be driven in a bus with Palestinian plates to the checkpoints, and then they transfer to a car with yellow plates, Israeli plates. Sometimes the families of the prisoners spend two or three hours waiting before they are allowed to visit. And sometimes family members, like a father or a mother, can be prevented from visiting – they’ll say, “he’s a security threat.” There are approximately one hundred families who are prevented from visiting their sons and daughters in prison because they are “security threats.” I just can’t understand how a 70 year old woman can be a security threat to the state of Israel. This is really . . . you can’t understand it. It’s unrealistic. Also, concerning the visitation question, the Arab political prisoners inside Israeli jails can’t be visited because their father and mother, or their immediate family, are not here because they’re from Egypt, Syria, or Iraq. So by only allowing the immediate family to visit, they are preventing friends, other relatives, everybody else from visiting. Also, the lack of food, clean food, in the prisons . . . it’s not adequate what they are given.     Torture is a major problem. It’s only now 14 days since the Israeli High Court has issued a law that prevents the use of torture against Palestinian prisoners, but, you know, who’s going to guarantee this? I mean, who will watch over the Israeli secret police, the Shabak, to see that they will not use it. There are no guarantees at all. And many Palestinian prisoners were tortured to death, like Suleiman Abu-Daiyeh. So many others. There are so many names I could mention, people who were killed from the torture.     Another problem is that the Palestinian prisoners are used for experiments like guinea pigs. They do experiments upon the Palestinian prisoners. It’s been published by an Israeli organization – I think it was Physicians for Human Rights in Israel – they came out with a detailed report about how Palestinian prisoners are used for experiments. rm: What are the experiments? What are they testing? AJ: They test medicines. It’s done under the authority of the Israeli prison administration. rm: Do you feel that all Palestinian prisoners are political prisoners? AJ: Yes, I do, because they are freedom fighters. They are not terrorists, they are not murderers who love to see the blood of others. They have a question, you see. It’s as simple as this. We are Palestinians, we were living in Palestine. Peacefully. And then a Zionist movement came up, came to this country, started evacuating the people who lived here, using terrorism, massacring people – like in Der Yasin, a village where 100 people were massacred during the war of 1948 – and then they took the land, kicked the people out of the land, and then call them terrorists. Imagine yourself – you’re living where? rm: Seattle. AJ: OK, you’re living in Seattle, and somebody comes not just to your city, but into your own home, kicks you out of your home, now how would you feel? You would feel angry, and you would want to get back to your home. And this is your right! I’m just. . . . It makes me so angry because this is the major lie of the twentieth century. People came up with a lie, and maybe now they believe it themselves, although really I don’t know if that’s true. I think it must be that down deep in their hearts they know that they’re lying and they’re thieves. I mean, what do you expect the victim to do? If it’s a human being, with dignity, well then he must defend it. This is a simple question, as simple as it can be. rkt: What are the political prisoners being charged with? Can you explain “administrative detention”? AJ: Well, this has changed a lot; it used to be that people were imprisoned for simpler reasons than nowadays. Like during the Intifada, if a child threw a stone at an army vehicle that was imposing a curfew on his camp, be would be put in prison for three years. As young as twelve years old. There are a number of prisoners in Israeli jails who are minors, still kept up to now. Belonging to a political party was reason for the Israelis to come and imprison you. After the peace accords were signed, belonging to an Islamic party was reason enough for them to come and imprison you. Carrying out an operation against Israel was a reason for the Israelis to come and imprison you. Now, under administrative detention they can just come to you and put you in prison and say that you are a security threat to the state of Israel so we want to keep you in prison, without a trial and without any charges. It begins with six months, but they can keep renewing the six month detentions. A prisoner called Ahmed Khatamish spent five years in Israeli jails under administrative detention. Another man, Issa Mubarak, spent six years in Israeli jails under administrative detention, because it was renewed. rm: So, the prisoners are not entitled to a trial? AJ: Under administrative detention? No, nothing. And some prisoners who were sentenced and in prison, when their sentences ended they were told, OK, you’re under administrative detention and they kept renewing it. So it’s unpredictable. And it presents a major psychological bleary for the prisoners because, you know, some prisoners have finished the six months and they are longing to go out, and then on the very day they are to be released, they are told, no, it’s been renewed for you. Stay. I don’t expect you to understand. I can’t understand it myself, how it must feel. rm: What about women in prison? AJ: Currently, we have four women political prisoners in Israeli jails. We had so many women before the Oslo Agreements. After Oslo, I think 25 or 30 women were released. A major figure I want to tell you about, her name is Atafa Alaeyan. She was put into administrative detention because she belonged to Hamas, a jihad Islam organization. She fought it. She was a very rebellious person, she did a hunger strike for forty days until she was released. Her struggle was a major one. Many women who entered the Israeli jails have suffered a great deal. Many pressures were put on them: they were threatened with being raped, which is something – so precious to yourself, your body, and having her body violated is something no woman can accept. And this was a threat that the Israelis used with the women. And they used it also with the men like, if you don’t confess, then we’re going to rape your mom, or rape your daughter. And this is really degrading. rkt: I’m wondering about the changing role of the Palestinian Authority. I’ve heard from some people that, now that the PA has its own jails, and is gaining more control over areas of the West Bank, that Israel is beginning to transfer some of its repressive duties to the PA, and that the PA is now arresting Palestinians who are considered by Israeli to be security risks. What is your take on this? Do you support the Palestinian Authority? AJ: Well, first of all, the Palestinian Authority are Palestinians. They represent the Palestinian people. Yasser Arafat is now the head Palestinian Authority because more than 80% of the Palestinian people voted for him in the elections of 1996. He’s there because the people wanted him to be there. It is not because he imposed himself on the people. This is one thing. Another thing is that the PA, as you’ve mentioned, is bound by agreements. If you look at the Wye Agreement of October 1998, it’s full of constraints on the PA. They’re being told, arrest so-and-so, put these restrictions on this faction. So many human rights organizations are blaming the PA, and mainly they are human rights organizations in the United States, or in the western world, and at the same time they’re pushing the PA to accept these constraints and restrictions. President Clinton attended the signing of these agreements; the CIA was asked to interfere directly to ensure the implementation of these restrictions placed on the PA. So, this is what I have to say about the PA. I mean, they’re Palestinians, and they represent the people here     Although it’s something new, it’s a new experience for the Palestinian people, and we are not expected to be perfect. You know, it’s going to take us a long time until people are trained, they’re experienced enough to be able to respect human rights. Because yes, there are violations of human rights by the PA. But I’m not expecting them to be perfect. Of course, I am not going to sit down and shut my mouth and not say anything about it. This is an internal matter, and I think that the Palestinians who fought so many years against the violations of the Israelis can really do something about it, together with their fellow Palestinians. rm: I think that’s an interesting point. For example, in America, I think many African Americans who are politically aware tend to have anger toward police officers who are African American, because they feel like the police are protecting the rights of corporations, of the government, the system. And so I wonder, because we’ve talked to many different people here, and some folks think that the Palestinian Authority is kind of taking over the role of Israeli authority. But you don’t see it that way. AJ: No, I don’t see it that way. I mean, I see failures here and there, but we are just starting. We don’t even have a state yet. And we are in the process of building that state. Mistakes will happen here and there, but you know, we have to struggle, we have to fight in legal ways, in lobbying, in building a civil society wherein the rights of every person are respected. rkt: What can people in America, and in other countries, do to help the Palestinian people in their struggle to end the occupation? AJ: They can do a lot. First of all, they can stop calling us, or thinking of us as, terrorists, people who love blood, and they can start to think of us as . . . not as victims, I hate us being thought of as victims. But to think of the Palestinian people as fellow human beings. Human beings who are suffering from an injustice. And people can take this on, as human beings who want to end an injustice that is happening to other human beings. Many people made loud protests when the Nazis were persecuting the Jews. And the Jews now are doing the same thing that the Nazis were doing to them. It’s so strange, sometimes they’re using the same means that were used against them. And nobody’s saying anything. So I’m asking the American people, and the whole world to take a stand. I’m calling for a position based on justice. I’m not calling for sending all the Jews into the sea. But I’m calling for a position that takes into account a dignified life for Palestinians that helps them to live peacefully in this region. So this is what I’m asking the American people to do, and to stop supplying the Israelis with weapons that they use against the Palestinian people. rm: Is there anything else you would like to talk about? AJ: Peace will never be achieved, when we have settlement activities still going on, when prisoners are still kept--we’re supposed to be in an era of peace, but prisoners are still kept, and how do you expect their mothers to live in peace, their fathers, their children, when their breadwinners are in prison? How do you expect there to be peace, when we are deprived of the right to entering Jerusalem, our cultural, religious, social and economic center, our capital? How do you expect peace to be attained in Palestine when there are so many people who are kept in refugee camps, and they can’t get water? These are all conditions that prevent any sort of peace, real peace, from existing. I mean, the leaders can sign peace agreements, but real peace will not occur until both peoples respect one another, understand the needs of each other, and create a better environment for both of them. So, what I’m looking for is justice. Give the Palestinian people justice, and then we will have a sustainable peace. Next Section     Table of Contents