The Israeli State is a non-state, it is the Western imperialist's policeman in the Middle East. It was created by the West to gratify the whim of a handful of Zionist fundamentalists. Like all policemen, they get out of control, and now that policeman is hell bent on the genocide of the Palestinian people and the seizure of their lands. A glance at the changing map of Palestine over the years is irrefutable proof of this cruel and bloody land grab. Apart from the theft of their land by the Zionist state of Israel, the Palestinian people have to contend with bombings, tanks, and aircraft bombardment, they continually face harassment and imprisonment backed up with torture, on a daily basis. This treatment is inflicted on every family of the Palestinian people living in that area.
The following article
from 325, is a letter of support from anarchist prisoners in Korydallos Prison in Athens, Greece, to the Palestinian hunger strikers.
The struggles of the Palestinian political prisoners are directly
and inextricably connected with the overall struggle of the
Palestinian people. 70 percent of the Palestinian families have at
least one member that has been imprisoned for action against the
state of Israel. 20 percent of the total population has been
imprisoned at least once in their life while according to other
estimations 40 percent of the male population has been imprisoned at
some point in their life within the past 30 years.
Another revealing manifestation of the situation the Palestinian
strugglers find themselves in while inside the Israeli prisons is the
fact that until 1999 “mild torture” during interrogation was
considered legitimate practice by law. These tortures included- among
others – deprivation of sleep, immobilization in an uncomfortable
body posture, loud music, exposure to extremely cold or
hot
temperatures, placement of malodorous cloths over the face
etc. In 1999 the supreme court of Israel upheld that in certain cases
these practices were illegal and thus imposed some restrictions.
These restrictions did not, however, rule out force-feeding as
illegal in accordance with the UN provisions.
On the 1st of May 2000 almost 1000 out of
the 1650 Palestinian political prisoners participated in a
large-scale hunger strike that lasted one month, demanding better
living conditions, better treatment by the guards, family visits,
abolition of the solitary confinement, access to healthcare and
release of political prisoners. During the solidarity demonstrations
seven Palestinians lost their lives while one thousand got injured.
Meanwhile, sixty Israelis got injured, too. On the 31st of the same
month the government of Israel satisfied some of the demands.
In February 2012 around 1800 Palestinian political prisoners
started a hunger strike against the regime of administrative
detention. That is, incarceration without evidence to back a charge,
without specific accusations, without trial and without sentence,
meaning they would remain detained for an indefinite amount of time
as ordered by the military authority of Israel. Out of the 4500
prisoners in total, 310 remained in prison under the status of
administrative detention. Among their demands was the ability of
those family members who resided in Gaza to be able to visit their
relatives in prison- a fact that was impossible since, as residents
of Gaza, they were not allowed by the state of Israel to leave Gaza-,
the termination of solitary confinement and the release of those kept
under administrative detention.
On the 24th of May of the same year and after a several-day huger
strike, the strugglers managed to strike a deal with the state of
Israel, which pledged to bring the maximum duration of administrative
detention down to 6 months if sufficient evidence were not provided
in between. Moreover, the family visits expanded and those in
solitary confinement returned to the regular blocks.
Today, 1500 Palestinian political prisoners have been on hunger
strike since the 17th of April and their number is expected to climb
up to 200 within the following days. United in a single battlefront
and despite their internal disputes and confrontations, members of
Fatah, Hamas, PFLP and Islamic Jihadists participate in a common
struggle as political prisoners.
Their demands resemble those of the previous mobilizations and
have to do with the prisoners’ access to telecommunication and the
placement of payphones in every block, in particular. Also, they
demand that they have visits from their relatives, who must get a
permit to enter the occupied territories –applications for such
permits are usually rejected and the visits are, in reality,
impossible
since the prisons are located inside the occupied
territories. Finally, they demand access to healthcare, the abolition
of administrative detention and solitary confinement. The state of
Israel has so far reacted with unannounced transfers of the prisoners
and their placement in solitary confinement.
We, as anarchist prisoners of the Greek prisons, can only join our
voices with the voices of the Palestinian strugglers. Beside our
straightforward and unconditional solidarity with the forces of
resistance against the forces of imposition, with the forces of
slings and knives against the forces of bombs and tanks, the forces
of the oppressed against the forces of state brutality, the forces of
the Palestinian people against the forces of the Israeli state, we
also express that we have yet another reason to support every act of
resistance against the state of Israel. The technology of
surveillance, the apartheid know-how, the derogation regime, the
interweaving of social and geographical marginalization, the
imposition of militarized control upon whole populations, the
administrative detention -which makes a come-back in Europe as a
tool to manage migration- and the overall dystopian reality that the
state of Israel imposes upon the people of Palestine constitute a
compass for those in power as well as an experimentation that the
rest of the states will eventually be called on to implement
elsewhere.
Victory to the struggle of the Palestinian political
prisoners
Victory to the arms of the Palestinian resistance
Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos,
Antonis
Stamboulos,
Argiris Dalios,
Dimitris Politis,
Fivos
Harisis,
Giannis Michailidis,
Giorgos
Karagiannidis,
Grigoris Sarafoudis,
Tasos Theofilou
Korydallos Prison, Athens
Visit ann arky's home at
www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
