Samer Issawi's victory letter from hospital

Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi ended his 266 day hunger strike on Wed 24th April following an agreement with Israel guaranteeing his release home.

This is a statement from his hospital bed:
Now, I plead for a continuation of the popular movement and its escalation on all fronts, in order to struggle for our political prisoners. I also call for the continuation of the political and diplomatic mobilization to internationalize the issue of the political prisoners, and to turn to the International Criminal Court in order to indict the judges of the occupation under international law, for the crimes

Boy pleads in vain with Israeli soldiers not to arrest him as he has an exam the next day

In this clip from Youtube , Ahmed pleads with the Israeli soldiers who come to his house at night, not to arrest him as he has to sit an exam the next day . He tells them he will go with them if they come back after the exam. However they insist on taking him to Ofer Prison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4yjLq_iIjY

Letter to the Israeli people regarding their advice to Samer Issawi

HAMMERMAN: A satiated people’s advice 21Apr13 April 21, 2013



by Ilan Hammerman - Haaretz (translated from the Hebrew by Sol Salbe) - 18 April 2013

The road to hell is truly paved with good, even if sometimes ridiculous, intentions. A whole line of Israeli writers have signed up to an open letter to Samer Issawi, the prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for many months. “We feel,”they wrote to him, “that the suicidal act you are about to commit will add another facet of tragedy and desperation to the conflict between the two peoples… don’t pile more despair on the despair already in existence…. “We urge you to stop your hunger strike and choose life.” And because they have imposed the responsibility actually upon him, upon the skeletal bare bones that is still left of him, they, these fully satiated people, also demanded of him that he should give them hope: ” Give yourself hope, thus strengthening the hope within all of us,” they write.

Conditions in Israeli prisons

Condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails



12 April 2013 13:21 (Last updated 12 April 2013 13:23)
Condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails worse than people think, said former prisoner



GAZA (AA) - Ekrem Sellame, a former Palestinian prisoner who was in an Israeli jail and was freed after a prisoner swap agreement between Israel and Hamas, said on Friday that the condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were worse than people thought.

Having spent 22 years in the Israeli Ramle Prison, 40-year-old Sellame spoke to the Anadolu Agency (AA) in an exclusive interview and provided information on the time he spent in prison and the conditions there.

Israel's secret prisons

April 17, 2013



Study: Israel's Secret Prisons: Terrorism at Large

Translated by Center for Political and Development Studies, Palestine

The successive Israeli occupation governments adopted arbitrary policies after the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. Prisons and detention centers are used to crush Palestinians spiritually and psychologically. Those prisons were crowded with tens of thousands of Palestinians including children, elders and women. Some estimate the number of Palestinians arrested by Israel since 1967 is around 750,000, including 12,000 women and tens of thousands of children.

Palestinian prisoners' Day

My book The Prisoners' Dairies is released today in conjunction with Palestinian Prisoners Day .

The book is dedicated to Samer Issawi and all Palestinian prisoners, past, present and future. Let all of us continue the struggle, doing whatever we can do, till there is an end to administrative detention, arbitrary arrests, illegal imprisonment, and inhumane conditions in israeli prisons.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Free-Samer-Issawi-Campaign/194111744067340?fref=ts

OCCUPIED CHILDHOODS: Report by International Human Rights Workers in Hebron, OPT, Documents the Loss of Childhood in Occupied Hebron.

Occupied Childhoods: Impact of the actions of Israeli soldiers on Palestinian children in H2 (Occupied Hebron) during February, March and April 2013 documents the alarming regularity of soldiers violating the rights of children to access education, to play, to have a parent, guardian or lawyer present when detained, and to move freely on their streets



Full report available at : http://cptpalestine.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/occupied-childhoods-impact-of-the-actions-of-israeli-soldiers-on-palestinian-children-in-h2-during-february-march-and-april-20131.pdf

Addameer's "End Administrative Detention ! "Campaign

END ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION! FREE SAMER ISSAWI !
Friends, if you support my book, please support this campaign by Addameer to End Administrative Detention and sign the petition to Brig Gen Danny Efroni, the Advocate General of the IDF .
Israel uses AD as a substitute for criminal prosecution when there is insufficient evidence, and Samer Issawi ,is now on hunger strike for the 267th day, to protest against his unlawful imprisonment.

www.stopadcampaign.com

He sings in prison

His beautiful voice now sings out in prison.

Oday al-Khatib was accused of throwing stones and now faces 10 years in prison. The maximum sentence for throwing stones under Israeli military law is 20 years.

The only good thing here is that this article appeared in theLondon Review of Books, which means people not normally interested in Middle Eastern politics will read about this and feel horror and disgust at the Occupation.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/04/11/nicola-perugini/he-sings-in-the-prison/

After 27 years in captivity, freedom arrives for Ibrahim Baroud

Ibrahim Baroud reunited with his mother  today after 27 long years in prison, 7 of which was in solitary confinement.

Shahd Abusalama , a talented artist and eloquent writer had mentioned the courage and persistence of Ibrahim's mother in her blog dated March last year

"Despite her age, she has joined every hunger strike prisoners launched since her son was detained, and has never missed a protest for Palestinian political prisoners. She always says, “I am not only the mother of the detainee Ibrahim Baroud, but of all the prisoners and oppressed. I’ll keep calling for their freedom as long as I am alive”. Last Monday at the weekly protest in the Red Cross, she limped because of a pain in her leg, but was still fasting in solidarity with Khader Adnan and all prisoners. She spoke for the prisoners to the media, appealing to every human right organization to witness the suffering of Palestinian detainees and act."http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/shahd-abusalama/palestinians-owe-ban-ki-moon-no-apologies

In The Prisoners' Diaries, the mother of freed prisoner Marwan Alzard had recounted her pain at being separated from her son for 20 years. "Oh brave lion,I would sacrifice my heart to save you. I would give my soul and every valuable thing to free you. My imagination could not offer me a picture of my beloved patiently enduring behind the walls of humiliation. But my imagination was weaker than God's will, which always allowed me to see him in my dreams as if I was with him the whole night."

A Letter from Hassan Salama

Although The Prisoners' Diaries had started as a compilation of first hand experiences by freed Palestinian prisoners, I had included a letter from Hassan Salama in the book, to remind the readers that there are still almost 4,800 Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli detention.
Hassan Salama had written the heart wrenching letter during his 13 years in solitary confinement  where he appeals to the world not to forget him.

In recognition of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh who died of cancer 2 days ago having been refused treatment in an Israeli prison, Hassan Salama wrote another message to the world, which has been translated by Yousef Aljamal of CPDS.

http://yeljamal.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/veteran-palestinian-prisoner-welcome-to-death-if-its-a-means-to-freedom/

First grader arrested by IDF

The poem by Dorothy Law Nolte titled "Children live what they learn" goes "..if children live with hostility, they learn to fight". From the report below, it looks like Israeli occupation forces are creating the next generation of Palestinian resistant fighters.

Gideon Levy from Haaretz reports on the day 27 Palestinian children were arrested on the way to school.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/twilight-zone/aged-eight-wearing-a-mickey-mouse-sweatshirt-and-placed-in-israeli-custody.premium-1.512461

Cancer-stricken prisoner dies in hospital

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Palestinian jailed in Israel, died in an Israeli hospital on Tuesday, after protests to secure his release failed.


Hamdiyeh was transferred from prison to Soroka hospital in late March suffering from throat cancer which had spread to his spinal cord.


Prisoners in Eshel and Nafha prisons had launched hunger strikes to demand Abu Hamdiyeh's release.

Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian Authority prisoners minister, said Abu Hamdiyeh's cancer spread because he did not receive treatment earlier

http://electronicintifada.net/content/dying-prisoner-treated-cruelly-israeli-doctors-over-many-years/12329

As quoted by Ibrahim Joundia in The Prisoners' Diaries,  "..the prison clinic is not there to decrease pain, but rather to increase it".

"My father's memories of his release from israel's graves for the living""

Artist Shahd Abusalama from Gaza writes about her father's memories of his release from prison.

http://palestinefrommyeyes.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/my-fathers-memories-of-his-release-from-israels-graves-for-the-living-2/

Shahd 's drawing of Samer Issawi is featured in The Prisoners' Diaries.