FREE HANA SHALABI

 

Israeli authorities should immediately release a Palestinian detainee or charge her with a recognizable criminal offence and promptly try her, Amnesty International said amid fears that the woman could die in detention after 37 days on hunger strike.

Hana Shalabi, 30, from the village of Burqin in the northern West Bank, held under administrative detention has never been charged with a criminal offence.

She was transferred to Meir Hospital in the central Israeli town of Kfar Saba on Tuesday night, but remains under Israeli custody and constant armed guard.

“When her lawyers and independent physicians met her, Hana Shalabi reported to them that Israel Prison Service officers handled her violently while transferring her to hospital or the military court, and have consistently pressured her to end her hunger strike,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s interim deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

(Amnesty International)

President Carter said the same thing about Israel and Apartheid

Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the German Social Democratic Party and a possible candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany, described on Wednesday Israel as an “Apartheid-Regime” on his Facebook site.

 “I was just in Hebron. That is a lawless territory there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification,” wrote Gabriel.   (Jerusalem Post)

 

YOUR TIME IS GONNA COME

"It will not go on for ever, it will not go on for ever. Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown." Member of the UK's House of Lords, Baroness Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat peer, was filmed making the remarks during a student panel last week.

She also went on to say, "One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70 billion [$112 billion] a year to Israel to support what I call America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough."  (The Guardian UK)

Khader Adnan: My honour is more precious than food

Khader Adnan's two-month hunger strike has made him a hero among Palestinians outraged by Israel's policy of arbitrary detention. 

His hunger strike has focused growing attention on the malicious practice of Israeli administrative detention, in which Palestinians can be held without trial and on the basis of secret intelligence dossiers which are not shown to the defendant or his lawyers. He was from Jenin and was arrested on 17 December.

A Red Cross delegation had gone to his home to warn her wife that her husband's heart could fail "at any minute".

Khader Adnan says, "I reject administrative detention and I will continue the hunger strike until I am released". Mrs Adnan said that he is determined to continue his fast.

His resolve has been hardened, she said, not only by his summary arrest and its circumstances but by his treatment during interrogation. Her husband had been held for seven-hour periods – on a short chair with his hands tied behind its back, causing him intense discomfort, and that parts of his beard had been torn out by Israeli interrogators. He had also been subject to psychological pressure, including his Israeli interrogators saying cruel things against his wife.

Mrs Adnan said that her husband had repeatedly declared that "my honour is more precious than food".

He had done quite enough to transmit his message to the world protesting about the use of administrative detention without trial or charge.

According to his sister, Mr Adnan was a model father who "loves life", she added: "I am not sure that he wants just to deliver a message. He also wants to end the administrative detention. We have so much faith in Allah to get him out of this situation. We believe that God will not let him down."

Khader Adnan told one of his lawyers: "I do not want to go to oblivion or death. But I am a man who defends his freedom. If I die it will be my fate."

(adapted from The Independent UK)