After 42 days of hunger strike, Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger srike and announced that they have achieved victory in their humanitarian demands, following 20 hours of negotiations between the strikers' leadership and Israeli occupation prison administration.All salutes to the courageous, struggling Palestinian political prisoners, on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle for liberation!
The strike exposed the bias of Western mainstream media, throwing a spotlight on its silence in the face of one of the most remarkable Palestinian protests in recent years. The same media incessantly wants to discuss Palestinians when hey launch a rocket or initiate a knife attack. It became clearer than ever that Palestinians only appear in the Western media when it involves and concerns Israelis. Furthermore, the media itself constructs a narrative about Palestinians that is selective, inaccurate, and horribly unjust and irresponsible. The media is not documenting the ongoing denial of Palestinian freedom, they are a big part of the problem.
The Palestinians' treatment in the hands of the Israeli prison system serves as perhaps the most extreme example of the total control of occupation. Hunger strikes, like boycotts, are an attempt to gain back both some control over one's life and death, and also to achieve a measure of dignity, and Palestinians use both these essential forms of nonviolent protest to draw attention to their situation.Listen!
Hunger strikes in the modern age are hardly new. British suffrage activist warned prison officials that they would refuse to eat unless treated as political prisoners in 1909. After 66 days, the Irish nationalist Bobby Sands starved himself to death and nine hunger strikers died after him. South African hunger strikers in 1989 used exactly the same dietary regime as 10 Irish Republican Army members who died in Northern Ireland in 1981 in a protest over demands for political-prisoner status.
The conditions that have drove Palestinian political prisoners' demands are not new to the prisoners, it is as long as the occupation. And the main demands of the strike were simply that Israel abide by international law. It can't get simpler than that. So, where are the international judges?
It is crucial to understand who, exactly, is languishing in Israel's jails. The majority have been convicted, by Israeli courts, of terrorism, but that term is very loosely and brodely applied to any act of resistance. The category includes those who have been found guilty of throwing stones and those who are engaged in non-violent forms of protest, such as posting statements on social media or given speeches that the courts feel might have "incited" demonstrations - as if Palestinians needed any incitement to revolt against their hardship.
The Palestinians in jail are all political prisoners. If they are guilty of a crime, Israel should give them a fair trial.
Marwan Barghouti's son Arab, explained that the most crucial demand of the prisoners was to see their family members twice a month. "When you are in prison, there is not much to live for other than your family. If you are not allowed to see your family for years at a time, then what is the point of living? Israel falsely states that currently the prisoners are allowed a visit once a month but most of the time the visits are not allowed and families are not granted permits. For example, I have not been able to see my father for two years."
The other demands are also more than reasonable. "Rather than demanding release from jail, they are, for example, asking for phones to be installed in prisoner wings so they can speak with their families while supervised. They also want permission to register for academic study and matriculation exams, a solution to cell overcrowding, the installation of air conditioners, and routine annual medical exams for all prisoners."That is why Israel preferred not to descend into a third Intifada and instead listened to the prisoners.
Israel avoided as long as possible to meet the prisoners' demands, but the risk of attracting international attention was too high, as was of a third Intifada, as the IDF - Israeli occupied forces was brutally suppressing non-violent protest from a captive population.
Why Israel waited 40 days to talk to the prisoners?
Because meeting the prisoners’ demands means addressing the occupation as a whole. The prisoners’ demands are actually demands all the people in Palestine can relate to. Like the prisoners, Palestinians want the freedom to see their families in neighboring cities in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and other restricted areas.
Israel was more interested in asserting and maintaining its power over Palestinians in general than in offering a measured, politically strategic response to the strike.
But Israel lost once more. Peace can not be achieve through blackmail and oppression.Palestinians won't give up their land without putting up a fight.
On May 31st Marwan Barghouti issued his first statement since the end of the strike.
The Palestinian leader said the strike could resume after the close of the Ramadan holiday if planned negotiations with Israel's prison service are not successful.
Samidoun posted Marwan Barghouti's statement in English.
On 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, 1500 Palestinian prisoners out of nearly 6500 imprisoned in Israeli jails launched their strike for a series of demands. These demands were straightforward, focusing on the restoration of family visits, the right to education, access to media and health care. Among the accomplishments of the strike is the restoration of the second monthly family visit, cancelled last year by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) under the pretext of budget cuts, despite pledges from at least August 2016 to cover the costs of the second monthly visit for Palestinian prisoners.It is appalling that it should take a 40-day mass hunger strike for the Palestinian prisoners have ONLY family visits restored, after being taken away by an international agency that should be motivated by the rights and well-being of the prisoners. Far from a neutral bystander, the ICRC was in fact a party to this strike and a participant in the confiscation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners. This raises once again sharp questions about what really provoked the cut in family visits for Palestinian prisoners and the level of Israeli involvement in what was claimed at the time to be a mere financial decision, despite Palestinian pledges to cover costs.
While further information about the agreement has not yet been released, news indicates that further achievements of the strike also center on the issue of family visits, including access to more relatives including grandparents and grandchildren; improved communication, especially between imprisoned children and women and their families, and the installation of public telephones; easing security prohibitions and the frequent bans on family visit imposed by the Israeli prison administration. Al-Mayadeen TV reported further aspects of the agreement.
However, increasing family visits was but one of a number of demands hunger-striking prisoners were calling for -- including the right to pursue higher education, appropriate medical care and treatment, and an end to solitary confinement and administrative detention -- imprisonment without charge or trial.
Throughout the strike, the prisoners faced harsh repression. They were denied legal visits, family visits, beset by repressive raids, their belongings confiscated – even the salt that they relied on with water to preserve their life and health. Through it all, their steadfastness was an example of commitment and dedication to carry through their struggle. They were not alone in their steadfastness. The mothers and the families of the prisoners filled the tents of solidarity and support in every city, town, village and refugee camp in Palestine. Many prisoners’ mothers launched their own hunger strikes; they struggled, suffered, resisted and led alongside their children. Martyrs fell on the streets of Palestine as they protested and struggled for the liberation of their beloved prisoners at the hands of the occupation forces.
The Palestinian prisoners made clear through the Strike of Dignity and Freedom the power of Palestinian unity. That unity was felt on the streets and inside prison walls – and the effects of that unity have been felt in the achievement of the prisoners’ victory and popular mobilization.
The hunger strikers demanded that the Israeli occupation speak with their chosen leadership and defeated all attempts to circumvent the prisoners’ direction, leadership and choices. More than that, however, they demonstrated once again that the true, respected leadership of the Palestinian national liberation movement itself is found in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement is at the core of the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people as a whole; far from a side issue of the movement, it represents the Palestinian people and their resistance.
From within Israeli prisons, the strikers’ power and its reflection and resonance on Palestinian, Arab and international streets came to confront any and all such attempts to destroy Palestinian rights and push an apartheid “solution” of endless colonization. It made clear where the Palestinian people stand – with the prisoners, with the resistance and their imprisoned leadership, and not with reactionary Arab regimes or even the Palestinian Authority, which continued its security coordination with the occupation even as the prisoners, their families and their movement demanded that it come to an end.
Throughout Palestine, in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, everywhere around the world in exile and diaspora, it was clear that the Palestinian people were side by side with the prisoners’ movement in this strike. Despite mainstream media silence, the mobilization was worldwide: international political parties, global labor organizations, Palestine solidarity movements, women’s organizations, and hundreds of events in cities in every continent of the world, demonstrating again and again, developing creative protest mechanisms, taking the #SaltWaterChallenge, organizing one-day hunger strikes and building strength to support the Palestinian prisoners’ struggle.
Historically the Palestinian prisoners have always emphasized the importance of international solidarity and support for their struggle for liberation. Every one of these groups and individuals who have taken action around the world has a part in this collective struggle and collective political victory.
Through their strike, the Palestinian prisoners have developed growing support in the labor movement, where major union confederations in Canada and Uruguay joined social movements in Brazil issuing resolutions in support of the strike, and even among parliamentarians, as the Portuguese parliament, the Pan-African Parliament, many Members of European Parliament, Argentine and Chilean parliamentarians, Galician and Andalucian parliamentarians, Canadian NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton and US Congressperson Danny Davis , and the Irish Republican, Filipino, Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners.
From the only point of view of having their demands met, it can be seen as a very small victory, but the strike goes far beyond a list of items. This strike was not only about family visits, medical care and basic human rights; fundamentally, it was an assertion of Palestinian resistance, rejection of the occupier, and power to struggle, not only for specific demands, but for freedom, return and liberation. And above all, it asserted Marwan Barghouti's leadership and his recognition as the one and only person that can bring peace to Israel and freedom and dignity to Palestine.
His liberation is capital.
How to defeat the Israelis with a heroic mass non-violent civil resistance: Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike ends, Israel prison service says.
On 24 May three Palestinian security guards of the AL-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem were assaulted and detained by Israeli police on Wednesday, as hundreds of right-wing Israelis and settlers took to the holy site in celebration of “Jerusalem Day.” Jerusalem Day is celebrated by the ultra-right religious Zionist community to commemorate the 1967 Israeli annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, the same day Palestinians remember the “Naksa,” meaning “setback,” referring to the mass displacement that accompanied the Israeli takeover of the Palestinian territory in 1967.
TRUMP fools around
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s top diplomatic adviser on Thursday poured cold water on swirling media reports regarding a US-led regional peace process that would see Arab states partially thawing their relations with Israel as a first step toward restarting peace talks
"There is no regional peace process or anything like it,” Majdi al-Khalidi told The Times of Israel. “No one is talking about it with us, or with anyone.”
Trump’s approach appears to fall in line with that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been promoting a so-called “outside-in” approach that would see ties normalized between Israel and moderate Arab states as a way to promote peace with the Palestinians.
By contrast, the Palestinian leadership has insisted on the time-honored formula, first laid down in a 2002 Saudi-led peace initiative, that sees a peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians as a prerequisite for normalization with the entire Arab and Muslim world.
And that will be the only way that the Arab population, not their leaders, see it.
But let's see how Trump did in the Middle East.
There were two Donald Trumps last week. One of them was touring the Middle East, being feted everywhere. The second was in Washington, where he was battered from all sides, denounced for incompetence and even threatened with impeachment in the future.Against the background of his troubles at home, Trump's Arabian Nights were fantastic.
His first stop was Saudi Arabia. The desert kingdom put forward its best face. The royal family, consisting of a few hundred princes (princesses do not count) looked like the realization of all of Trump's secret dreams. He was received like a gift from Allah. Even Melania, demure and silent as usual, was allowed to be present (and that in a kingdom in which women are not allowed to drive a car.)
As usual among eastern potentates, gifts were exchanged. The gift for Trump was a 110 billion arms deal that will provide jobs for multitudes of American workers, as well as investment in American enterprises.
After his short stay, including a meeting with a large group of Arab rulers (which looked like a Daesh's financial summit), Trump came away with tremendous enthusiasm for everything Arab.
After a two hour flight, he was in a completely different world: Israel.
Not only did all cabinet ministers attend Trump's reception at Ben Gurion airport, but quite a number of ordinary (in both senses) parliamentarians and the like infiltrated the receiving line, which must have looked endless to the esteemed guest. Hazan was just one of many, though the most colorful.They did not just want to shake hands. Every one of them had something very important to convey. So poor Donald had to listen politely to each and every one of them reciting his historic remark, mostly about the sanctity of eternal Jerusalem.
The Minister of Police had an urgent news item for Trump: there had just been a terror attack in Tel Aviv. It appeared later, that it was an ordinary road traffic accident. Well, a police minister cannot always be well informed.
It all reminded me of a book I read ages go. The first British colonial District Officer in Jerusalem, almost a hundred years ago, wrote his memoirs.
The British entered Palestine and soon issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised the zionists a national home in in the country. Even if the Declaration was a pretext for grabbing Palestine for the British Empire. At the beginning, they were very friendly to the Zionists.
Not for long. The colonial officers came, met Jews and Arabs, and fell in love with the Arabs.They were much less enamored with the Zionist functionaries, mostly from Eastern Europe, who never ceased to demand and complain. They talked too much. They argued. No noble manners.
By the end of British rule, very few British administrators were ardent Zionist-lovers.
As for the political content of Trump’s visit, it was a contest of lies. Trump is a good liar. But no match for Netanyahu.
Trump spoke endlessly about Peace. Being quite ignorant of the issues, he may even have meant it. At least he put the word back on the table, after Israelis of almost all shades had erased it from their vocabulary. Israelis, even peaceniks, prefer now to speak of "separation" (which, to my mind, is opposed to the spirit of peace.)
Netanyahu loves peace, but there are things he loves more – annexation, for example. And settlements.
In one of his addresses, a sentence was hidden that, it seems, nobody noticed but me. He said that “security” in the country – meaning the right to use armed force from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River – will be exclusively in the hands of Israel. This, in simple words, means an eternal occupation, reducing the Palestinian entity to some kind of Bantustan.
Trump did not appear to notice, neither the mainstream media. How could they be expected to?
Peace is not just a word. It is a political situation. Sometimes it is also a state of mind.
Trump came to Israel with the impression that the Saudi princes had just offered him a deal – Israel will free Palestine, Sunni Arabs and Israelis will become one happy family, they will fight together against bad old Shiite Iran. Wonderful.
Only Netanyahu does not dream of freeing Palestine. He does not really give a damn about far-away Iran. He wants to hold on to East Jerusalem, to the West Bank and, indirectly, to the Gaza Strip.
So Trump went home, happy and satisfied. And in a few days, all of this will be forgotten. And the Palestinians will have to solve their problem by themselves with ours and European help.Like the South African filmmaker John Trengove, boycott and speak up for Palestine!
My condolences to the Manchester families striken by the side effects of Western war on terror.
Tariq Ali: Manchester Bombing is Part of Vicious Cycle, Likely Blowback from Ongoing War on Terror.
Let's have a little fun with Louis CK
BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
