Abdul Fattah Doula was only 24 when he was sentenced to 12 years for his activism during the second Palestinian uprising of 2000. Three years into his sentence, he was one of 700 prisoners who went on hunger strike for 22 days.
“Our demands at the time were simple,” he says. “We would reject prison meals in protest over the way we were treated. We wanted visitation rights for our families. We rejected being strip searched.”
Doula is now head of the media committee that speaks for the 1,600 to 1,800 Palestinian prisoners – about a quarter of Israel’s Palestinian prison population – in the Freedom and Dignity hunger strike. They stopped eating on April 17 and, 29 days in, are surviving on water and salt. In Ayalon prison in Ramla, some even stopped drinking water last week.
“Dozens of the hunger strikers have fainted and suffered concussions after hitting their head against the bed,” says Doula. “Most are at the stage where their joints ache. And migraines, of course. It’s different these days because the far right is in power. Usually, the government worries about prisoners dying of starvation and having to answer to that internationally. Now, a lot of them are saying: ‘leave them to die’.”
Most of the 6,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel have been convicted of charges related to terrorism. However, according to the Israel Prison Service (IPS) – as quoted in the Washington Post – only about half of them are really so-called security prisoners.
The IPS has prevented lawyers from visiting the prisoners on hunger strike, but one lawyer who managed to see an inmate in Nafha prison this week gave the committee an insight into life inside.
“We were told that they were hit with batons and sprayed with gas because one of the prisoners was physically unable to stand when the wardens walked into his cell to spot-check the window,” says Doula, who recalls the trauma of a 20-hour interrogation in his first 100 days in prison. “People think prisoners go on hunger strike to be released, but this is a myth. The number one motivation is improving living conditions and visitation rights.”
This is the 26th hunger strike staged by Palestinians since Israel began its occupation in 1967. The longest lasted 40 days but Doula says the 22-day hunger strike in 1992 was the most important.
“Our prisoners’ committee ticked many things off their list after negotiations with the Israelis that time, including the closure of the solitary confinement unit in Ramla prison and no more strip searching.”
Currently, prisoners are allowed 45-minute visits once a month from close family members. But the IPS routinely denies visits under different pretexts, says Muntaser Al Refai, a web designer and social media campaigner overseeing the Hunger for Dignity campaign on Facebook.
“Israel and the Red Cross used to allow families to visit twice a month. Now, either family members don’t get permits to travel from the West Bank to Israel at all and if they do, they are sometimes turned back as a form of psychological pressure on the inmates. Either they’ll say: ‘you’ve had enough visits, give someone else a chance’ or find any other excuse, such as ‘there has been trouble inside the jail’.” Prison officials sometimes prevent even mothers from visiting, claiming they are not related to the inmate.
Communication is via phone through a glass screen. The prisoners want visiting time extended to 90 minutes.
“They want to be able to hug their children. They want waiting rooms for their families to be bearable. They want doctors to stop neglecting them. The want internal telephones to be able to call their families,” says Doula.
The prisoners refused Israel’s recent attempts to negotiate with individual prisoners for the first time, insisting all discussions must be via their committee, says Mr Al Refai.
“More than 20 prisoners have suffered total breakdowns now,” he says. “We are expecting news within a few days and believe this has reached the final stage.”
As well as deteriorating health, the inmates are being subjected to psychological pressure, such as barbecues held outside their prison block or not being allowed to shower for a week.
“They recently took away their clothes and gave them a single pair of underpants to put on after the one time they were allowed to shower,” says Doula. “They took away their duvets and pillows, too. They closed off the outer part of the cell and barred inmates going into the courtyard even though they are usually allowed out for an hour a day.”
Most reject psychological counselling, according to Doula, considering their stance to be a matter of principle and therefore a source of strength.
As well as the thousands of incarcerated men, there are currently 56 female prisoners in a single jail, 13 of them under 18, and about 350 minors in prisons across Israel. They are no longer allowed to sit their high school exams or take university courses by correspondence.
Mr Alrefai says the hunger strike committee barred minors from taking part but some 16 and 17-year-olds insisted and were allowed to join for a limited period.
While the ICRC had previously been allowed access to other hunger strikers, Israel has restricted access to hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for his role in the second Palestinian uprising. On May 7, the IPS released a video purporting to show Barghouti furtively eating in his cell. The video was immediately denounced as psychological warfare.
“What the media forgot to say is that: if it were truly him, why would he need to be hiding in a toilet? Whose eyes would he be hiding from if he’s in solitary confinement? He knows his cell has CCTV cameras,” says Doula.
Pizza Hut also deleted an online advertisement which appeared to taunt the hunger strikers, after calls for a boycott mounted on social media under the hashtag #BoycottPizzaHut. The company apologised and said it had severed all ties with the Israeli agency that posted it.
Barghouti’s lawyer, Khidr Shuqairat, was allowed to visit him on Sunday. He reported that Barghouti was strip searched and put in solitary for four days but brought out when he stopped drinking water. He has not changed his clothes for a month and his cell is infested with insects. The prison guards are checking the strikers’ cells four times daily and playing deafeningly loud noises.
Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, this week appealed to the Pope to intervene. She says the prisoners’ committee drafted their demands in August last year.
"They had eight months to consider. The Palestinian Authority wasn't able to help us. Israel knew they would go on strike on April 17. It was written in the letter. This is a humanitarian plea, but Israel is making it political." She says her husband is punished with solitary confinement whenever he makes any public statement. He has been put in solitary 22 times since 2002. His longest stint lasted 1,000 days from 2002 to 2005. He wrote a book about his experience, One Thousand Nights in Solitary Confinement, and last month, The New York Times published an op-ed article by him on the eve of the hunger strike.
The Fatah Central Committee, considered the Palestinian movement’s top decision-making body, last week called on all healthy incarcerated party members – about 5,000 – to join in the strike.
“After 15 years, they have seen how they have been able to mobilise all this organised action from behind bars,” says Ms Barghouti.
To some extent, that resilience has paid off, says Doula.
“Our committees are rigorous and organised. The Israelis see this and the prison heads formally communicate with the prisoners’ spokesmen. Until the early 1970s, many of these jails didn’t have toilets. Inmates would have to use a bucket. There would be up to 40 people in a single room. Inmates were shackled when they walked and not permitted to talk to those in front or behind. If they did, they would be beaten up.”
Even the relationship between jailed and jailer has to some extent improved, Doula adds.
“One could even say it is one of respect. After all, no matter what conjecture takes place outside, daily human contact trumps all. I remember how their perceptions changed when I was in there. They saw how we interact and realised that we’re not the people we were painted to be. They start to respect you when they see how the committees take care of us. Some even understand why we’re in prison.
“In fact, one warden once told me: ‘I don’t want us to be at war. None of us deserve this. I know now that you don’t love war. You just want freedom.”
salsayed@thenational.ae