I like to think of myself as a realist, neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic. However, part of being a realist is not exaggerating expectations or getting hopes up too high. My hope is that other Palestinians feel the same, especially come this September. September 2011 has been earmarked as the cutoff date for what Palestinians are calling international “obligations” towards their cause. Negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, which were re-launched in September 2010, were scheduled to end a year later at which time a final peace deal was to be reached. Consequently, the talks hit an impasse just three weeks later after Israel refused to renew its freeze on West Bank settlement construction. The September 2011 deadline for reaching a deal was endorsed by US President Barack Obama along with the Middle East Quartet Committee. Last September, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Obama even went as far as saying he hoped that should a peace deal be reached, the United Nations could welcome a new member – the state of Palestine. Furthermore, Prime Minister-designate Salam Fayyad set September 2011 as the end of his two-year institution-building process after which he also said the Palestinians could declare their independent state. For his part, President Mahmoud Abbas is looking to hold legislative and presidential elections in the same month provided that Hamas and Fatah reconcile. To say the least, September is proving to be a very busy month indeed. With all the commotion about September, there is one thing I would ask of my fellow Palestinians, leaders and laymen alike, which is to keep it real. I say this, not because I don’t want a Palestinian state to be established or because I don’t think the international community – the United States in particular – should pressure Israel into accepting a viable and contiguous Palestine - but because I see what is going on in real time. From where I’m standing, I still can’t see the Palestinian state of my dreams on any horizon, September’s or otherwise. If anything, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is spinning some new scheme to present to the international community before September. Rumor has it that come May, he will be ready to present a new “peace offer” to the Palestinians, one which would guarantee them a state, or at least an entity that faintly resembles one. This “state” would be part of an interim agreement where “Palestine” is demilitarized and on 60 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians have already said they would reject any interim agreement on the principle of “been there, done that” but it remains to be seen what exactly will transpire if and when the Israeli offer become official. Right now, we Palestinians can work on two tracks. Internally, we need to achieve reconciliation in order to face the challenges and/or accomplishments September might bring. A united front is always better than a divided one, especially when demanding recognition. The second track is at the international level. The United States, Europe and the Quartet should “put their money where their mouth is,” to put it simply. The Palestinians need to make it clear that they have done just about everything in their power to acquiesce to the world’s demands and that it is high time the international community reciprocates. September does not necessarily have to be a setup for disappointment. While a Palestinian state may not be in the offing just yet, I think if we play our cards right, September could push that ultimate goal one step closer. Joharah Baker is Director of the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
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By: Joharah Baker
Date: 14/02/2024
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A new day will come
I once heard that anger is not a real emotion, but a cover for other feelings such as sadness, disappointment or fear. You need to peel back that outer layer to understand what is really going on inside. Strange how this has lately resurfaced for me, but I think I know why. Lately, I and surely, millions of other Palestinians, have been filled with a blinding rage -- at Israel, at the United States, and at the world overall. This is a rage that is all-encompassing, the depth of which is palpable at the cellular level, permeating every molecule and every atom of our being. The genocide in the Gaza Strip has grated our emotions raw and we are left stinging and burning from our head to our toes. Our anger is like a huge magnetosphere and we are all trapped inside, but its walls are translucent and we can see the source of our rage mocking us from beyond. We Palestinians are angry because we are so disappointed and we are angry because we are disillusioned and we are angry because we are drowning in sorrow. Our disappointment lies in the fact that the world has failed us in the worst possible way and has allowed the unspeakable to be committed against us. Genocide is the ‘mother of all crimes’ and, contrary to the promises, the conventions and the historical lessons the world was supposed to learn, it has been committed over and over again. The Palestinian genocide, however, is unique in at least one way: it is live-streamed, which means no one can claim ignorance and everyone has a responsibility in stopping it. Hence, our disappointment is not limited to countries, Arab or otherwise, or to international and human rights organizations. It has spread to everyone in our orbit; acquaintances and people we thought were friends, but whose silence towards our slaughter is a deafening betrayal. Our sense of disappointment has discolored every relationship it touches because every relationship for us is a dichotomy: you are either with or against genocide and either support Palestine in word and deed, or not. Our anger is a thin veil concealing our disillusion with the international community and its institutions, supposedly established to protect people in situations precisely like ours. We have confirmed what we knew all along, that these organizations were constructed for some and not all, for colonial powers and not those who suffer beneath them. Even when the highest court in the land rules in our favor, the Global North ensures that its ruling will not be implemented to save us, the oppressed, indigenous brown people whose lives apparently do not matter. And finally, our anger is a survival mechanism to shield us from our own grief. Our sorrow over the murdered men, women and children, defenseless, homeless, starving and shivering in the cold, is so deep, so immense, we ourselves cannot fathom it. If we dare peek behind this anger and truly feel a fraction of the aching in our hearts, it will paralyze us for sure, because no people can endure the magnitude and scale of such suffering and not lose their minds. We Palestinians know we cannot let go and that a new day is near. We know we must hold on just a little bit longer, because Palestine depends on it. We are no strangers to oppression, suffering and sacrifice and we know the price of our freedom has and continues to be painfully high. Still, we also know that a life without shackles and the yoke of oppression around our weary necks is the only life worth living.
By: Joharah Baker
Date: 01/02/2024
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Killing the flowers will not delay spring
This may be the hardest article I’ve written so far, for obvious reasons. As the genocide in Gaza grinds on into its fourth month, with winter in full force, the situation is so dire it has been described as hell on earth. To date, some 27,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel, nearly 70% of them women and children. Another 70,000 have been wounded and at least 1.9 million people have been displaced. With only 2.3 million in the Gaza Strip to start with, this computes to 1% of its population being exterminated, and in less than four months. However, in the midst of these horrific times, let us allow ourselves a sliver of hope. The ICJ ruling, announced on January 26, prompted mixed feelings among Palestinians who naturally, wanted to hear a clear and firm demand on Israel to stop its onslaught. However, even without the express demand for a ceasefire, the ICJ offered something to the Palestinians for which they have been demanding for many years: their suffering, their plight and the brutal oppression they live under, was finally acknowledged by the highest court in the world. More importantly, Israel is being called out for its crimes, displayed in real time for all to see. For this, we will be eternally grateful to South Africa and its exceptional legal team for bringing this case of genocide to the ICJ and forcing the world to look straight down the barrel of Israel’s cruel intentions. Of course, for the Palestinians, we did not need an international court to tell us that Israel is committing a genocide, but it was cathartic to hear this acknowledged on a global platform. While we are aware that the actual charge of genocide perhaps needs years to prove, it only takes hearing the ruling and the case argued by South Africa to surmise that Israel is as good as convicted. This is not insignificant, and we will cling to any shred of hope we can find in this unjust world. Having said that, this is no time to rest. If anything, it is time to push even harder because now, we have ICJ rulings in our favor and legal backing to claims we already knew were legitimate. However, while this may have offered us some ray of light in the darkness in which we are all engulfed, the fact of the matter is that things continue to worsen on the ground in Gaza. This genocide is so heinous, not only in the brutality of the Israeli bombs and denial of basic aid to the people of Gaza, but in the fact that its people are suffering from multiple and simultaneous injustices. That is, those who are being starved are the same people who have been displaced and the same people who have been injured and cannot receive medical attention. They are the same people who have lost their homes and family members and the same people who are under the rubble. One atrocity does not cancel out another in Gaza and that is what makes this genocide so unimaginable. We have reached a point where it is unnecessary to describe the horrors of life in Gaza because frankly, in the past four months, everyone has seen them. It is not a matter of the world not knowing. This may have been the case in other genocides and atrocities, but not this one. It really boils down to two things: The dehumanization of the Palestinians and Israel’s impunity for its crimes, the latter being a direct result of the former. Shame on the world for accepting Israel’s vile propaganda, hook, line and sinker. Shame on the “western world” in particular, who we will never forgive. Shame on them all for aiding and abetting the slaughter of our people, their displacement, starvation and annihilation. This will not go unnoticed in the annals of history, which will paint each and every accomplice in the criminal light it deserves. But these despicable powers do not know the lion-hearts of the Palestinians and their fierce loyalty to Palestine. They will never be able to kill us all and my hope is that this thought haunts them day and night. A sign held up in one of the many protests around the world reads: “Killing the flowers will not delay spring”. Our Spring is coming, without a doubt.
By: Joharah Baker
Date: 10/01/2024
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Let’s talk about our hostages…Palestinians in Israeli prisons
By now, we have all grown accustomed to the unabashed media bias in this genocide, particularly from western media outlets, commentators and political pundits. We no longer gasp in shock when we hear the unwavering western support for Israel, even as the latter continues to slaughter, starve and displace millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. However, let us for a second, imagine that the world was fair and therefore measures its responses based on justice and rights. It is a tough assignment for sure, but maybe we can stretch our imaginations, just for a while. Let us talk about our hostages. Yes, you read correctly, our Palestinian hostages, and there are thousands. Since terminology is key, our hostages are known as ‘prisoners’ in Israeli prisons, but in reality, they are captives, being held by an illegal system of occupation, oppression and apartheid. I will not fully delve into the long history of Palestinian imprisonment by Israeli occupation authorities, which is a tale of mass arbitrary incarceration, torture and denial of rights. Instead, I want you to imagine this description, magnified tenfold. This is where we are today, in the midst of a genocide, while thousands of our men, women and children are being held captive in Israeli detention centers under inhumane conditions. Since October 7, Israel has arrested over 5,700 Palestinians, over and above the nearly 3,000 already in Israel’s prisons, many from the Gaza Strip, ripped from their homes and families, their fate unknown. What’s more, over 2,000 of these detainees are held under administrative detention, without trial or charge. The number alone should be shocking enough, but the conditions of their detention and incarceration is what will surely push you over the edge. At present, there are close to 700 known Gazans in Israel’s detention center(s), all under the amended 2002 “Unlawful Combatants Law”. This law, given Israel’s wartime state of emergency, allows it to hold “enemy fighters” for up to 75 days without seeing a lawyer or being legally processed. In other words, they are ‘disappearing’ Palestinians. Take for example, Director of Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who was abducted from the hospital by Israeli occupation forces on November 23. His condition and whereabouts remain unknown. Gaza workers outside the Gaza Strip on October 7 were also in limbo for weeks, some of whom were arrested and kept in horrible conditions, while others found themselves stuck in the West Bank. On November 3, some 3,000 workers were released and dumped back into Gaza, without money, phones or any form of redress and showing clear signs of torture. Other Gazans who were illegally detained and later released, along with West Bankers rounded up arbitrarily, tell of harrowing experiences. One young woman said the month she had been in prison felt more ‘like years”. She recounted how they were cursed at and beaten, how there was hardly any food and how the women were forced to sleep on the floor with no blankets or mattresses. Gazan women were held separately from West Bankers, but the detainees said they could hear their screams and pleas to find out about their children and families. Women testified they were threatened with rape, and many were sexually harassed, stripped and beaten. One woman, who will remain unnamed, said Israeli prison wardens smugly informed her that “now we are at war with you so we can do whatever we want.” The men may have it even worse. The world saw the harrowing pictures released by the Israeli army itself, of men stripped to their underclothes, blindfolded and handcuffed, held in the cold for hours in Gaza before being hauled off to one of Israel’s infamous detention centers in the Negev desert or a military base near Beer Saba. These are run by the military, which means “no holds barred” when it comes to their treatment. Palestinian men later released, told of being kept handcuffed and blindfolded the entire duration of their incarceration, beaten if they shifted position, electrocuted and spat on. They saw no lawyer, no Red Cross representative and of course, no family. Then there are those prisoners who did not make it at all. Since October 7, seven known Palestinian detainees, previously healthy, mysteriously died in Israeli incarceration and God only knows how many more from Gaza in particular have perished at their brutal hands. The issue here is not that “disappearing” and brutality occurs. We all know this happens in despotic, authoritarian and tyrannical regimes. Throughout history, we have heard stories from South America, Africa and in Arab countries as well, and Palestinians are all too familiar with Israel’s brutal abuse in their prisons. What is mind-boggling is how Israel is still treated as a nation among civilized nations by the global community. How is it that a regime, which has occupied, brutalized and dehumanized an entire people for over 75 years, culminating in one of the ugliest genocides in history, is not considered a rogue state? How has it not been sanctioned, penalized and its leaders behind bars in The Hague? That is the real question the entire world must ask itself.
By the Same Author
Date: 08/11/2023
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This recurring nightmare is real
Whatever you do, do not believe them. Push back against the insidious language and the dangerous narrative Israel is employing to justify the unjustifiable: a horrendous genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Do not believe them when they say they ordered people living in the northern Gaza Strip to “evacuate” for their own safety and to move south. This is no evacuation. The people of northern Gaza are not vacating their homes because of a fire or flood. No, this part of a much deeper, much more sinister plan hatched by Israel’s leaders, not today even, but many years ago. Today, as the bombs rain down on Gaza, slaughtering everything and everyone in their path, we must be very careful to use the right words to describe this nightmare. Make no mistake, this is a genocide. When multiple Israeli leaders, military and political, actively call for the leveling of Gaza, dismiss the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians and even go as far as saying that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is “an option”, their intentions become very clear. Hasn’t the Zionist movement always pedaled the phrase “a land without a people”? The carpet bombing of the entire Strip is of course, the most immediate and visible manifestation of this objective. How better to get rid of an entire population than to kill them en masse? In any case, with the green light from nearly the entire western world, with the US at the helm, this has been both easily “said and done.” However, this is not the only instrument of terror being employed against our people in Gaza. The term “evacuation” so casually being used by Israel and wholeheartedly regurgitated by the West is in fact “forced displacement”. This has nothing to do with the safety of Palestinian residents in the north, because frankly, there is nowhere safe in Gaza. Every region has been on the receiving end of the colossal bombs dropped on residential blocks, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and shelters. Even those who still believed they could escape the bombardment were not safe as Israel bombed the displaced as they traveled on the southbound coastal road in search of refuge. Remember, Rafah and Khan Younis are in the south, both of which have been heavily bombed, killing thousands of civilians and burying hundreds of others under the rubble. No, this Israeli scheme, being cloaked in the uncontroversial word “evacuation” is just a continuation of what the Zionist project began in 1948, which is to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous peoples. Why else would the Sinai even be on the table? And why would anyone even lend an ear to this dangerous proposal? The reason this is still even a debatable option is because the United States and much of the western world, namely those countries with a shameful colonialist past themselves, are actively complicit in Israel’s plans. They know that whoever is pushed across the border into the Sinai, will never be allowed to return. It was not that long ago when close to a million Palestinians were forced out of their homes to escape the terror of Zionist massacres in 1948, keys in hand, which would never be used again. There are still living survivors of the Nakba, it was that recent, and yet here we are again, watching in horror as the world facilitates for a fresh, new Palestinian catastrophe. So beware when you hear words like “evacuation” or ‘temporary refuge.” These are outright lies. Remember that 70 percent of Gazans are already refugees, expelled from their homes in 1948 during Israel’s first attempt to annihilate the Palestinians. Since they could not finish the job then, they are back now with the cruelest of intent. Israel has already surrounded and divided northern Gaza from its center and south and we have all heard Israeli voices, both official and civilian, making floor plans for ‘amusement parks and beaches’ after the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from Gaza. The fact is, even if the approximately one million Gazans who fled from north to south to somehow try and escape the bombs, are able to go back to their cities and camps, they will be returning to a wasteland. Their homes are probably gone, all of their belongings and memories vanished, buried deep beneath the rubble. If they are “lucky”, their memories will be the only things buried. More likely than not, members of their family are still missing, also buried under layers and layers of gray, unyielding cement. The Palestinians have seen this horror movie before. They will not be forced out of Palestine again, even if their displacement is candy-coated with terms like ‘evacuation.” Don’t believe Israel. Don’t believe the United States. Believe us.
Date: 08/07/2023
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Jenin, we salute you
When Palestinians insist that nothing will be resolved until the root cause of their predicament is addressed, Jenin is exactly what they are talking about. The atrocities over this past week perpetrated in the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp are the manifestation of Israel’s settler-colonial project in Palestine and the reason why its apartheid regime and decades-long occupation must be dismantled. If this oppressive system continues unabated, Palestinians will continue to suffer time and time again at the hands of Israel’s brutal military machine, commandeered by the ever-increasingly extremist and right-wing Israeli governments that pull the strings. For two days straight, the Israeli occupation army and air force pummeled the Jenin refugee camp with airstrikes, artillery fire and ground forces. In 48 hours, Israel killed 12 Palestinians and injured hundreds of others. This number is likely to climb, given that even ambulances were prohibited from reaching the wounded, undoubtedly exacerbating the status of the injured. Harrowing videos showed young men, boys even, wounded and incapacitated on the street, bleeding because ambulances were not able to reach them. This is not the first time Jenin has been under fire, and if Israel is not stopped in its tracks, it will not be the last. In April 2002, Israeli occupation forces and fighter jets invaded the Jenin refugee camp, backed by armored tanks and bulldozers. The “battle for Jenin” lasted for 10 days, at the end of which at least 52 Palestinians, civilians and fighters were killed. The bulldozers deliberately razed over 400 homes and damaged several hundreds of others. Cut to July 2023 and the situation is painfully reminiscent. On July 3, Israeli occupation forces proceeded to tear up the roads in the camp, severing water pipes and cutting the power. Hospitals, severely overcrowded and overwhelmed by the mass influx of casualties and people seeking shelter from the bombing, also suffered water cuts and electricity outages with scenes outside the hospital looking like a full-blown warzone. However, this is no war. This is an occupied, civilian-populated area, whose residents have already been displaced at least once, in 1948 and perhaps again in 1967. Most of the residents are young, having only lived under Israel’s military occupation, which began in the West Bank in 1967. Their parents and grandparents will recall even more heinous atrocities and massacres from the Nakba of 1948, when they were forced out of their original homes inside what is now Israel. This is why, when thousands of Jenin camp residents were seen fleeing the gunfire, the explosions, destruction and home raids, men and women carrying their terrified children in their arms out of the camp, the whole of Palestine was reminded of this generational trauma. The Nakba is still etched deep in the collective memory of Palestinians, its trauma not ‘post’ but ongoing, the wound reopened over and over again. There is no doubt that Jenin and its refugee camp will survive and rebuild, just as they did before because that's how Palestinians operate. The scars created by this trauma will always run deep. It is not only unfair that they remain under occupation and apartheid, it is cruel and it is inhumane. The world cannot continue to look on as Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps are decimated and still consider itself moral and civilized. The longer Israel is allowed to brutalize the Palestinians under its occupation, commit war crimes and violations with impunity, while still being welcomed among so-called civilized nations, the more the international community’s own moral standing will continue to erode.
Date: 17/05/2023
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Today, the Nakba is yours
This is not a story about numbers. Granted, numbers are very relevant, but not today. This is about role-play, about imagining yourself in another’s position and then, once realized, demanding justice, accountability and compensation for the unbelievable atrocity that must no longer be ignored. This is about the Nakba, but this time, it is yours. Imagine that in a matter of days, sometimes hours, your entire world is turned upside down. You no longer have a home, belongings or money, except for whatever you could manage to hastily stuff in your pockets before running for your life. Zionist militias, armed and ready, invade your city or burn down your village and you have nowhere to go, so you flee. You have heard that in neighboring villages and towns, these militias have slaughtered hundreds of people, pillaged their homes and claimed the land as their own. Deir Yassin, where over 100 innocent people were killed, is just one of these documented massacres. This terrifies you to the bone, so you flee, children, house keys, maybe some pictures or personal documents, in tow. You join the leagues of other terrified people who are walking to an unknown future, hoping beyond hope that this nightmare will end in a few short days. Not in your wildest dreams did you imagine that you would never see your home again; that it does not matter if you left your front door unlocked or the clothes still hanging on the clothesline. Someone else, a stranger, will soon have taken your place. This is just temporary, you convince yourself; this situation is not sustainable, you say, because nobody has the right to take away your home and your property, much less your homeland. If anyone dared, there was a world that believes in justice, rights and humanity that would not allow it. At least that is what you believed then. But this is not your story and you should be very grateful for that. This is the story of the Palestinian Nakba and it is as real as it gets. According to official UN estimates, at least 750,000 women, men and children, or 75% of the Palestinian population of historical Palestine, were displaced, expelled and ethnically cleansed over the course of a few months, never to return to their homes. Their false hopes of return eventually turned into shattered dreams and a lifetime of exile in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan, or for those exiled closer to the northern border of Palestine, to squalid refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. Even the United Nations, upon realizing the magnitude of the Nakba or “catastrophe’ that had occurred, did not believe it would last for 75 years and counting. It created UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to cope with the fallout of Israel’s creation over the wreckage of what was once Palestine. The agency was meant to provide emergency assistance to Palestinians displaced by the war until a permanent solution could be found. Its mandate has been renewed repeatedly since then for obvious reasons. For those who were exiled, it is hard to tell when it finally dawned on them that they would never go home. Hope is a double-edged sword because it motivates people to continue to strive for their goals, in this case, the legitimate demand to return to their rightful homes. However, the flip side is the disappointment and desperation that takes over when year after year, this demand is ignored, maligned and pushed back by the powers that be, first and foremost by Israel, the perpetrator and maintainer of the atrocity and secondly, by its powerful global allies, the United States in particular. The result is that these people, who had productive and meaningful lives just like anyone else, were so cruelly uprooted and dispossessed by no fault of their own and demand nothing more than their legitimate right of return. This is a right enshrined in international law and in particular, UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which clearly states: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date...” These are nice words, ones that by any standard, should be binding. However, for anyone who has languished in the Biqa’a camp in Jordan, the Shati’ camp in the Gaza Strip or the Yarmouk camp in Syria, this resolution is nothing but useless ink on paper. The Palestinians have and never will relinquish their inalienable right of return to their original homes; time has proven that. Still, this is only part of the equation. It falls on the international community to uphold the standards, which it espouses. It has an ethical, legal and moral obligation to ensure that justice is realized for Palestine refugees and that Israel, the creator of this catastrophe, is held accountable for its dark past and crimes against the indigenous people of this land. Now, think of this story, not from the lens of the Palestinians, a foreign people you may not know much about. Think of this story as if it were your own: it was your house that was stolen, your land that was given to another people, your relatives massacred and displaced and you whose identity and cause have been systematically denied for almost a century. Can you see it?
Date: 04/05/2023
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No rest for the weary…life under Israeli occupation
Hard times are exactly as they sound. But when these ‘hard times’ continue for close to 60 years, they become basically intolerable. Ask any Palestinian living under Israel’s brutal occupation and they will erase any doubts that ‘hard times’ doesn’t even come close. Take this testimony from a woman, a teacher living in the northern West Bank city of Tubas, who told MIFTAH about the terrifying night the Israeli occupation army raided her home. The raid took place on February 23, 2022 at around 4:30 am. This is not unusual for occupation forces, which are trained to storm homes with families quietly sleeping in their beds, in the wee hours before dawn, to instill fear and panic and turn their lives and homes upside-down in a second. This teacher, Maha, shares her home with her older sister, Dua’ and her elderly mother. She and her sister are also blind. “I was awakened by my sister yelling: who are you? Are you djinn or human? Maha, answer me! Is that you?” There was no answer. “I was still in bed when I felt something – I was not sure what – pull off my covers and push me to the floor. I was terrified and started calling out for Dua’. I could feel there were people in the room, all around me, right before one of them began to beat me. I was so scared and called out to my mother but I couldn’t hear her voice.” Maha spent half an hour in sheer terror, alone, confused, being beaten and not knowing the fate of her elderly mother, as the Israeli trespassers ransacked her home, petrifying them all. “I cannot begin to describe the terror I felt; I have never felt that way my whole life,” she recounts. Finally, after what seemed to be an interminable period, she heard the voice she was longing for the most: her mother. “She was screaming to us, telling us that the intruders were Israeli soldiers and that they had a large dog with them.” This terrified her even more, especially since she was forced to remain on the floor and she could hear her sister’s cries. “I remember thinking: if only I could see, to know what was happening around me, I would then go back to being blind. I just wanted to help and calm my sister down. I just wanted to help my mother. The soldiers made me totally incapacitated.” Maha’s story is one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have endured grueling house raids, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions and settler attacks. Still, even when there are no ‘active’ Israeli assaults on Palestinians, merely existing under Israeli military rule is anything but normal. Every Palestinian in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip is all too familiar with the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints interrupting the geographic flow between Palestinian cities, villages and camps. They are accosted by the sight of the illegal annexation wall, cutting along, and in places, deep into, West Bank territory, severing Palestinians from their farmlands, from their loved ones, from Jerusalem and from historic Palestine. They must apply for permits to build, to travel, to seek medical attention or to visit their loved ones in Israeli prisons, all at the whim of Israeli occupation authorities. The raid on Maha’s house that night ended in zero arrests, but hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians have not been as lucky. Since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip in the June, 1967 war, over one million Palestinians have been illegally arrested by its occupation forces. That is a staggering number for a population that stands at approximately 5.3 million, according to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates for 2022. At present, there are nearly 5,000 Palestinian men, women and children being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers inside the West Bank and in Israel, the latter illegal under international law, which does not allow an occupying party to imprison their ‘subjects’ outside of the territories it occupies. International law has never been an obstacle for Israel, something the Palestinians know all too well. According to testimonies collected by MIFTAH field researches, collected between 2020 and 2022, Israeli occupation forces never presented a legal search or arrest warrant during the raids. All of the testimonies stated that large numbers of soldiers participated in the raids, sometimes exceeding 20 or 30, irrespective of children, women or the elderly. Once detained, the men, women and oftentimes children, are taken to Israeli detention centers, sometimes held for days on end without having access to legal counsel, mistreated, deprived nutritious food, sleep, appropriate clothing and in the worst case, tortured. The detainee is then brought before a “kangaroo” Israeli military court, which for Palestinians, has an almost 100% conviction rate. They are charged with ‘crimes’, all related to some form of resistance to the occupation and summarily sentenced, or placed under administrative detention. While this form of detention, which allows Israeli authorities to hold Palestinians without charge or trial, is technically not banned under international law, it is never meant to be renewed for years, as is the case with the Palestinians. The nightmare does not stop there, however. For the families of prisoners, visiting their loved ones in Israeli prisons is always a grueling process. According to a January, 2023 MIFTAH report on Israeli violations of Palestinian rights in the West Bank, affidavits from families visiting imprisoned relatives in Israeli prisons reported that on average, the entire process takes between 12-14 hours. What’s more, once they arrive, the actual visit only lasts 45 minutes and takes place in rooms with no direct contact and a glass wall separating them at all times. In a 2019 testimonial, documented by the Israeli rights organization B’Tselem, 80-year old Hilweh Shabaneh, from the Ramallah-area village of Sinjil sums up the horrific journey to visit her son in the Nafha Prison. “From four o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night, 17 long hours of dragging around from one place to another, from one bus to another and one security check to another, getting on, getting off, on and off. Even if I were made out of iron I would collapse”. Shabaneh then unwittingly sums up Palestinians’ sentiments regarding life under Israeli military occupation, overall. “I swear to God, I wouldn't wish this on anybody.”
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